Multiple libaries best practice

[Albertax 14]

Hi Everyone

I have a situation where I've split out my TV into Action / Drama etc libaries. I am wondering if i also have another library that contains all genres (e.g. those of Action/Drama, too) if i could get away with turning chapter markers, skip intro etc on the "All Libary"? Or will the option need to be on for each libary for it to be shown/functioning as expected.

Thanks 

Edited August 5, 2023 by Albertax

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

My experience is that you can have multiple libraries pointing at the same content. That is:

If you have directories A, B and C all containing TV shows you can have:
Library Adventure pointing at A
Library Fantasy pointing at B
Library Drama pointing at C
And you can have:
Library
All TV pointing at A, B and C

That works BUT there are drawbacks:
1. Anything watched in one library gets marked watched in all of them.
2. Unless you exclude most of the libraries from Continue watching and Next Up the items that are available in those rows can be repeated. I allow just the All TV library on those rows.
3. If two people start the same show at the same time from different libraries things can really get screwy. I do not have that problem as I am my only user BUT that is a huge problem for others, potentially.
4. Unless something has really changed if you use a structure like that and have problems you will get almost no support as it is an unsupported structure but it does work, or at least did a year or so ago.

I would think you can achieve the same results by using only the All TV library and using genera as filters (which has real problems as the genera is not well handled in any database I know of. Or you can use collections. That is what I do now and I have no problem and remember that an item can be included in multiple collections.

I hope that helps some.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Gilgamesh_48

[Albertax 14]

On 06/08/2023 at 08:00, Gilgamesh_48 said:

My experience is that you can have multiple libraries pointing at the same content. That is:

If you have directories A, B and C all containing TV shows you can have:
Library Adventure pointing at A
Library Fantasy pointing at B
Library Drama pointing at C
And you can have:
Library
All TV pointing at A, B and C

That works BUT there are drawbacks:
1. Anything watched in one library gets marked watched in all of them.
2. Unless you exclude most of the libraries from Continue watching and Next Up the items that are available in those rows can be repeated. I allow just the All TV library on those rows.
3. If two people start the same show at the same time from different libraries things can really get screwy. I do not have that problem as I am my only user BUT that is a huge problem for others, potentially.
4. Unless something has really changed if you use a structure like that and have problems you will get almost no support as it is an unsupported structure but it does work, or at least did a year or so ago.

I would think you can achieve the same results by using only the All TV library and using genera as filters (which has real problems as the genera is not well handled in any database I know of. Or you can use collections. That is what I do now and I have no problem and remember that an item can be included in multiple collections.

I hope that helps some.

This is great, and sort of what I've got going on - a multiple library setup. And you may be wondering why my users don't click and make use of the Genres feature, etc. - Because they are lazy. So, this is a way to "surface" content for them, and it seems to be working. I have had good feedback so far.

But my question is centered more around for a couple of things.

• Intro Skip Detection
  • Do I need to have this option turned on for just one library (E.g., Library A which points Folders A-Z), but is also used by Library B, etc.? 

The reason for this is because I don't want to extend up with duplication & putting the server under pressure for no reason if i don't have too.   As my Server is quite an old box. 

Edited August 8, 2023 by Albertax
Grammar

[rbjtech 5284]

My honest advice is to keep it simple - single TV Library, Single Movie Library - and just use the power of the metadata held on each item to do the 'sorting/grouping' for you.

Yes, I agree emby doesn't make this easy to 'present' to users (still no 'smart playlists .. ) but trying to do this manually, is imho just going to end in tears/frustration.

Maybe take a look at the Smart Playlist Plugin - or 'Channels' based on Genre etc.

[Ronstang 294]

The fact that emby wants you to just drop everything into a single directory is actually pretty ridiculous in my opinion.....especially since then they will tell you it's non supported.  Anyone who has a large collection, especially music, is going to use a non supported directory structure by their standards.  It is impossible to stay organized using their "supported" way of doing things.  I need to be organized at the file level to have a grip on my collections, not at the database level.  

I don't follow emby's rules of organization because it is impossible for me to do so and keep my collections organized, but everything seems to work fine for me.  I haven't noticed any issues but that doesn't mean there aren't that I am not seeing.

I have music organized by  Category (Rock, Country, etc.)\A, B, C, etc.\Artists in those directories\then albums in chronological order.  I have had a few little issues with this that I have solved on an individual basis but other than that it seems to work fine even though the emby staff tells me it's not supported.  The problem is there is no way I could stay organized just dumping everything into a giant trash can of a directory.

For TV show I have 2 directories, one for recorded series, and the other for ones I own on disc.  Movies are similar, I have different directories based on source of recordings (TCM, STARZ, etc.) and then I have a directory for those I have on disc....which is further organized by collections or sometims actors when I have a lot of their content.  Once again, not necessarily supported but works fine for the way I use emby.

I don't suggest separating by genre though, that is a tough task, and genre can be a rather muddy way to parse since many movies fall into several genres at once so that makes the way emby handles genres superior using the database.  This way some movies will show up in multiple genres and give the user a better chance of making a viewing choice that satisfies their mood.

I suggest you teach your users to use the genre feature for their own benefit and be done with multiple directories that you don't actually need which will simplify things for emby and actually make for a better viewing experience for them in the long run.

I wish I could follow emby's guidlines for simple directories but I have over 1OK movies and 6K CDs so from an organizational standpoint that is not possible for my German mind....LOL.

[rbjtech 5284]

The actual 'storage' of where you put files is entirelly up to you - each 'library' can have multiple 'share/folder/file' locations - that is not the issue here and emby have never said it all needs to go into a single folder ..

The issues arise (as you have alluded to) when you try seperate them as individual libraries - and start to try and overlay 'human logic/organisation/ocd (or ocpd to be technically correct..  ) into the mix.

Edited August 8, 2023 by rbjtech

[Ronstang 294]

2 hours ago, rbjtech said:

The actual 'storage' of where you put files is entirelly up to you

That is not true from what emby staff have told me....they have explicitly told me the way I have my music collection organized is not supported by emby.....but I don't care because I have had that organization structure for over 23 years and I am not changing it for emby.....but my music mostly plays nice with emby so it really doesn't matter even if they say it is not supported.

Emby is a database....the only thing that should matter is the metadata, location should be irrelevant but I think where that comes into play is how emby "finds"  your files.  Once again, I have not had enough issues to change my organizational structure which I've used for decades.

I have a large number of libraries I use to manange, tag, and add my content to my stable server but those are all separated by which directories I add, not changing directories to match a library so there is always some overlap by design to give me the tools I need to organize when using my beta server, which I am the only one that has access to all of that.

Edited August 8, 2023 by Ronstang

[Albertax 14]

@LukeI know you're dealing with a lot of stuff at the moment, so this is probably very far down on your list. 

But do you have anything to add here? In the sense: that if I have Library A looking at folders 1, 2, 3, 4 - is Emby smart enough that it won't rescan/duplicate metadata/look for intros if Library A already has it when I'm attempting a scan for metadata on another library on a second library pointing at the same files? 

[rbjtech 5284]

Just now, Albertax said:

@LukeI know you're dealing with a lot of stuff at the moment, so this is probably very far down on your list. 

But do you have anything to add here? In the sense: that if I have Library A looking at folders 1, 2, 3, 4 - is Emby smart enough that it won't rescan/duplicate metadata/look for intros if Library A already has it when I'm attempting a scan for metadata on another library on a second library pointing at the same files? 

If the Item has an Emby unique ID (which it will, even if it's pointing to the same source file), then it will require it's own set of processing, metadata, thumb images, intro's etc etc

[Albertax 14]

32 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

If the Item has an Emby unique ID (which it will, even if it's pointing to the same source file), then it will require it's own set of processing, metadata, thumb images, intro's etc etc

Thanks for this. Clears it up

[Luke 42083]

1 hour ago, Albertax said:

@LukeI know you're dealing with a lot of stuff at the moment, so this is probably very far down on your list. 

But do you have anything to add here? In the sense: that if I have Library A looking at folders 1, 2, 3, 4 - is Emby smart enough that it won't rescan/duplicate metadata/look for intros if Library A already has it when I'm attempting a scan for metadata on another library on a second library pointing at the same files? 

It won't duplicate the work.

[pwhodges 2012]

11 hours ago, rbjtech said:

My honest advice is to keep it simple - single TV Library, Single Movie Library - and just use the power of the metadata held on each item to do the 'sorting/grouping' for you.

IME the Genres and other metadata that gets downloaded is just too inconsistent for me to use like that, not to mention the number of things I have that don't have any significant metadata anyway.  I just keep my stuff pre-sorted, like this:

For the family's login, the ordering is changed to better suit them.

 

3 hours ago, Ronstang said:

The way I have my music collection organized is not supported by emby.....but I don't care because I have had that organization structure for over 23 years and I am not changing it for emby.....but my music mostly plays nice with emby so it really doesn't matter even if they say it is not supported.

My music is structured differently in different parts of my collection.  Some is organised by composer, some by performer, some by instrument, some by collection (big box sets), some by genre (e.g. anime OSTs), and various other oddities.  It's been like that for 20 years and my brain knows immediately where anything I want is likely to be.  The bulk of it has no metadata at all because of how it was ripped (I add some when I feel like it), but Emby will never have a chance of understanding my organisation.  I default to Folder view, and that works fine now (though even that had teething problems!).

Paul

[Ronstang 294]

2 hours ago, pwhodges said:

The bulk of it has no metadata at all because of how it was ripped

LOL....like me?  I started with my digital music collection in 2000 when many of my large vinyl collection was not all available on CD and I didn't "rip" it I had to play the vinyl in real time and use the computer to record to WAV file which I then used AIPL Singulator to break into single tracks before converting them to mp3 and archiving the WAV files.  Mine all had metadata because I manully added it at the time.  My early digital collection was mostly from vinyl and over time I replaced almost all with CD versions as they became available.  Many bands took years to make it to CD.  My folder structure is the same as then and actually a lot of those folders were actually created 20+ years ago and have just had things added and deleted and migrated to new HDs for backups.....which then became my new working drive.....rinse, repeat.  It's all finally on NvME drives.

[Albertax 14]

10 hours ago, Luke said:

It won't duplicate the work.

Great, thank you