New to using Music library....some questions

[Ronstang 293]

I finally loaded one of my music folders into emby to experiment.  It contains over 84K songs from almost 4500 artists.  My collection is very organized and 99.9% have comprehensive and correct tags.  Every time I load them into a new way to see them I of course find a few flaws and that is when I clean up the ones that don't display correctly.  I have always used WinAmp as a way to see my entire database at once so I can find flaws in tags like and artist missing "The" or the like.  With emby I have all kinds of new aspects to think about and before I go wasting a bunch of time to clean things up I need to understand a few things.....and I will add to this thread over time as I find more to keep it all in one place.

To start with I need to understand how images are handled.  I have never had any way to organize my music that needed artist pictures.  I like it but it opens up a can of worms in my mind.  I will have to fetch and ad A LOT of these pictures by myself as I have some very eclectic and odd music from the Punk and Power Pop genres that are simply not going to show up naturally.  I started doing this on my own with a few as an experiment.  I found the picture I wanted and used the add image URL function and it works great, and since I have my library set to save pictures to the media folders I checked and I now have an artist picture in my folders where there were none before.

BUT....this brings up a big question.  How does emby handle these pictures when the artists are from a compilation album?  I have quite a number of artists that I have only 1 track from that come from a collection of various artist albums.  If I save this picture where is it going to go?  If it goes into the folder for that various artist does that mean the next artist from that album I add will overwrite the one I just added?  I don't want to waste time doing this to lose all my work.  It's easier to add the URL than to download and organize a bunch of pictures so I am confused here how to handle this and would appreciate some guidance.

I am currently focusing on getting the artists to display correctly so my other question at the moment is about artist name.

I have one band named 20/20 and that is how it shows in the tags but emby only shows 20, if I go into metadata and try to correct it it won't allow me.  If I change it to 20-20, even though incorrect it's better than 20, it still won't allow me.  If this is locked because it's source is the tag I understand this but why won't it display correctly?  It shows up correctly in every other music player I have used correctly.  How do I handle this issue.

Thanks.....I am sure I will add many more questions to this thread over time as I have a huge music collection and it is one the important things to me so I am pretty particular and want it all done right.

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

27 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

BUT....this brings up a big question.  How does emby handle these pictures when the artists are from a compilation album?

They are dumped into /metadata/musicartists as your folder organization would be albumartist/album/tracks with the Music folder structure library setting.  Usually by artist-musicbrainzartist-id folder.

32 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

have one band named 20/20 and that is how it shows in the tags but emby only shows 20, if I go into metadata and try to correct it it won't allow me.

Artist with slashes in name need to be requested per this topic.

Whitelist Request for Artists with Slash in Name - Feature Requests - Emby Community

 

[Ronstang 293]

2 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

They are dumped into /metadata/musicartists as your folder organization would be albumartist/album/tracks with the Music folder structure library setting.  Usually by artist-musicbrainzartist-id folder.

Thanks for clearing that up Happy, I went to that directory and verified it now has the pictures I added earlier....awesome! 

I added my request to the whitelist too....thanks so much.  This is helping me love the music section quickly 

[Ronstang 293]

Why is emby displaying an artists name the way IT WANTS and not according to my tags?  Emby is incorrect.....Avion is not Plane and AllStar Weekend shows up as All Star Weekend.  It won't let me edit the metadata and my tags are correct.  So what is going on here?

Even under metadata it has Avion in both title and sort title but no matter what it shows up as Plane.....that is whacky....and strangely enough it shows up in the correct spot alphabetically even thought "p" isn't in the "As"

Edited March 23, 2023 by Ronstang

[Happy2Play 9780]

Are you sure the folder structure is correct?  Can you show the complete folder structure.

Do you write nfo files?  If so what does the nfo show as there are quirks when it comes to structure.

 

[Luke 42078]

9 hours ago, Ronstang said:

Why is emby displaying an artists name the way IT WANTS and not according to my tags?  Emby is incorrect.....Avion is not Plane and AllStar Weekend shows up as All Star Weekend.  It won't let me edit the metadata and my tags are correct.  So what is going on here?

Even under metadata it has Avion in both title and sort title but no matter what it shows up as Plane.....that is whacky....and strangely enough it shows up in the correct spot alphabetically even thought "p" isn't in the "As"

Hi, can you please show screenshot examples to demonstrate? Thanks.

[Ronstang 293]

8 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Are you sure the folder structure is correct?  Can you show the complete folder structure.

Do you write nfo files?  If so what does the nfo show as there are quirks when it comes to structure.

Yes, all my music is organized MasterFolder\Alphabet Letter\Artists\Album\Tracks which to me is the only logical way to do it and emby found all my files instantly even thought it took some time to fill in all the info, but we are talking about 84K files so I understand that is a lot of tags to read.

I always write nfo files and the ones for the artists in question are correct.

[Ronstang 293]

25 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, can you please show screenshot examples to demonstrate? Thanks.

No need now Luke.  It seems as I slept it corrected itself.  I refreshed the library many times last night to no avail but I have so many files in this master directory that I assume it just took a while to find and apply the changes.

[Happy2Play 9780]

34 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

Yes, all my music is organized MasterFolder\Alphabet Letter\Artists\Album\Tracks which to me is the only logical way to do it and emby found all my files instantly even thought it took some time to fill in all the info, but we are talking about 84K files so I understand that is a lot of tags to read.

I always write nfo files and the ones for the artists in question are correct.

But what folder did you add to the music library as MasterFolder\Alphabet Letter\Artists\Album\Tracks has additional layer and alphabet is Artist level.

[Ronstang 293]

The master Folder is Mp3 and under that there are folders that look like:

Mp3\

          ~Christmas Music\Ablums  in format Year-Album Name

          ~Soundtracks\Ablums  in format Year-Album Name

          ~Various Artists\Ablums  in format Year-Album Name

          Country\Alphabet Letter\Artists\Album\Tracks

          Rock\Alphabet Letter\Artists\Album\Tracks

But that is the only logical way to organize once again, I don't want a jumbled mess.  I like to be able to find exactly what I am looking for when I need to fix tags and organization is key to that when you have 1.5+ TB of music.  This structure has worked fine for me for 20 years, and it works perfectly in emby too....with a few exceptions that I can trace to errant tags which emby is helping me to identify and correct.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Sounds like you will have to leave it unstructure in library setting and just allow Emby to dump into /metdata folder.  Structure is only relavent if you are letting Emby try to save/identify what level is what and setting perfect for a structure the is not Artist/Album/track will have quirks and saving with media will break.

So if your Library points to /MP3 the structure inside that is not Perfect from info above.

Now folder view is exactly that and will honor the image you place in that folder.  Other tabbed views will ultimately come from whatever Emby creates in /metadata.

[Ronstang 293]

@Happy2PlayNot really sure what you are talking about, all my music is in the emby database and fine, all the issues I have had so far have been with problems related to tags which means I have some errors here and there which is to be expected.  Those issues have corrected themselves, my issue was that after I edited the tags nothing changed for hours but it did overnight.  I don't care if it takes a while to read all the tags, I understand because it is over 84K tracks and that is a subset of my collection.

[Luke 42078]

Quote

I don't care if it takes a while to read all the tags, I

It happens on the next library scan.

[Ronstang 293]

Artist photos, what is the resolution in emby?  It appears that emby forces the files into the resolution it wants by resizing on a temporary basis so the actual saved picture retains it's original resolution so I would like to redo some of them to the correct resolution through cropping or adding to get the pictures to not be stretched.

[Luke 42078]

23 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

Artist photos, what is the resolution in emby?  It appears that emby forces the files into the resolution it wants by resizing on a temporary basis so the actual saved picture retains it's original resolution so I would like to redo some of them to the correct resolution through cropping or adding to get the pictures to not be stretched.

Hi, why do you think emby "forces the files into the resolution it wants"?

[Ronstang 293]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, why do you think emby "forces the files into the resolution it wants"?

OK I'm using the wrong term, I meant that emby forces the aspect ratio it wants.  Many bands are really hard to find pictures of and your choices are limited on many and thus they may not be square.  If the pictures have a square aspect ratio then they display correctly, if the aspect is some other form of a rectangle whether long vertically or horizontally then the picture looks stretched in some manner to be forced into a square aspect ratio.

So really I want to know what is the aspect ratio and size of the picture emby natively displays on the artist page as any file that size or larger with the same aspect is going to look the best.  So 300X300 or similar?  When I first started collecting digital music most music tags had a normal size of 280X280 which was pretty much standard 20 years ago but any picture that was at least square was OK so most of my tags have album art that is 280X280 or 300X300 depending upon age.  Newer ones are usually 500X500.

Edited March 26, 2023 by Ronstang

[Ronstang 293]

Ok this seems to be a phenomenon of the Web App where the pictures are forced in to a "round" porthole view.  I just went on one of my TVs to look at the music for the first time and there the pictures show properly and if they are rectangle in aspect they are just sized to fit into the available space based on the longest side.

Is there a way to get rid of the porthole view?  It looks nice but it causes the issue I am talking about.

Edited March 26, 2023 by Ronstang

[CharleyVarrick 283]

On 3/26/2023 at 12:39 AM, Ronstang said:

Is there a way to get rid of the porthole view?  It looks nice but it causes the issue I am talking about.

3 dot menu brings up View options, default is Primary (what you call porthole).

With thumb, you get a landscape picture.

Edited March 27, 2023 by CharleyVarrick
typo, what else

[Happy2Play 9780]

It really comes down to the aspect ratio of the majority of images.  When you have mixed the majority usually wins as Emby will not show both. 

But yes the Round images can be client specific.

But overall, any 1:1 resolution will work.  None 1:1 will be manipulated to fit.  If all (majority) primary were 16:9 it would change placeholders as this applies to almost every area of Emby to my knowledge.  Example Genres are square unless you have majority 3:2 poster or 16:9 thumbs.

And yes changing View image type will provider different images per the images you have for the Artist.  As Thumb will show thumb if available but most likely will be a backdrop for the Artist.

For the web client (only not online web client) yes this can be changed by custom css as showing the image in the Square placeholder.

button.cardContent-round {
    -webkit-border-radius: 1em;
    border-radius: 1em;
}

[Ronstang 293]

Thanks to everyone for all the info.  I am eager to learn all this.  My music collection is very important to me and I love emby....so much so it has become integrated  completely into my life so bringing the two together is a must.  I have finally started sharing with my new and second server and the two users I added this last week are completely blown away by what emby provides.  They tell me it is better than any other platform they've used to stream content.  They love all the information available and the ability to look up actors etc.  Them being happy makes all the effort worth it for sure.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Ronstang

[Ronstang 293]

New question....I am about to start converting my lossless library over to a new SSD making sure everything is in FLAC individual tracks.  I have some FLAC files but is not my preferred format but since emby does not natively support my format of choice I am going to use FLAC.

Does emby care what compression level you use, will if affect playback quality?  I only ask this because I have seen some chatter online that it may depending on the software used for playback.  I don't really believe this but it is always better to be safe than sorry and possibly learn something. Lossless is lossless which means it only strips out the digital silence in each audio frame so I assume the faster, thus lower compression, settings grab the low hanging fruit and the higher you go the more it gets and I assume  you see a bigger difference where there is a lot of dynamic range.  That is pure speculation and thinking out loud.

 

[Luke 42078]

On 3/28/2023 at 8:56 PM, Ronstang said:

 

Does emby care what compression level you use, will if affect playback quality? 

 

There's always the possibility that certain players could have trouble with certain compression levels but I haven't seen any examples of it lately.

[Ronstang 293]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

There's always the possibility that certain players could have trouble with certain compression levels but I haven't seen any examples of it lately.

What would I see if there was an issue?  Would it happen on any track played or just randomly?  I have a huge collection....if I have to redo it all it will take some serious time. I have never had a problem using Foobar2000 but that is not what emby uses....but it is by far the best player I have ever found.

[Junglejim 385]

 

1 hour ago, Ronstang said:

What would I see if there was an issue?  Would it happen on any track played or just randomly?  I have a huge collection....if I have to redo it all it will take some serious time. I have never had a problem using Foobar2000 but that is not what emby uses....but it is by far the best player I have ever found.

I think you should be fine, I have a few high q FLAC albums and from memory Emby played them fine. The emby filter for music is total garbage, so I can't remember which albums they where so I can test.

If you need remote play I can't comment on that but it should be ok.

Playing one right now.. M.J.. Off the Wall. Sounds great (depends on the sound system your outputting it to) 

Not my highest bitrate by far but gives you some idea.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Junglejim

[Ronstang 293]

How long does it take to get an artist name with a slash in it added to the whitelist.....I requested a month ago, I'd kinf of like one of my favorite band's name to show correctly