What library type for BD Audio?

[SteveFintel 30]

I have a growing collection of ripped BD (BluRay) Audio disks stored as MKV files that I would like to manage with Emby Server. For now I have them stored in a mixed content library. The problem is that Emby Server tries to identify them as movies with laughable results. If I create a library with a type of Music, Emby doesn't find anything. Are there any other options to try? What about turning this into a feature request?

[Happy2Play 9780]

I would put them as Home Video.  There are no metadata providers for this content type.

Might get away with Music Video.

Edited February 29, 2024 by Happy2Play

[SteveFintel 30]

Thanks for the response. I'll give those options a try

[Luke 42079]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[SteveFintel 30]

Music Video and Home Video types didn't work. Even though all the content currently has .nfo files in the same folder, no content was added to either library. 

I'm seeing more BD Audio content being added regularly. I think a media type to support BD Audio would be appropriate for Emby Server.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Not sure I follow as the mkv should have been imported, but would guess if possible could you post or pm a test file.

[crusher11 1101]

Yeah, this thread makes no sense. BD-Audio is a format, not a media type. So it depends what's actually on the discs.

[SteveFintel 30]

What's actually on the BD Audio disks are (usually) music that has been encoded in high bandwidth audio tracks. It usually also includes some video to go along with it, but that is usually something along the lines of an animated album cover.

Here's an example: The Beatles Abbey Road in BD Audio has the entire album with chapter markers for each of the 17 tracks on the album. There is a single 1080p video stream that has a tree waving in the wind and occasional birds flying by on a loop and the speaker icon (shown below next to Come Together) moves to highlight the playing track. There are 5 audio streams: 24/96 Stereo, DTS-HD MA 24/96 5.1, DTS 24/48 5.1, MLP Atmos 24/48 7.1 and DD 5.1. There is also a separate program track that has the official music video for George Harrison's Something with 2 audio tracks. 

I have tried splitting the the MKV into MKA files which preserves the advanced codecs and allows me to insert the individual tracks into my music library, but that is a large PITA that I would like to avoid. Musicbrainz.org contains full information for the BluRay (https://musicbrainz.org/release/5c700b4e-949e-40a4-a363-7841d8195a50) so I think there's a way for Emby Server to handle this content

[SteveFintel 30]

9 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Not sure I follow as the mkv should have been imported, but would guess if possible could you post or pm a test file.

I don't understand why, but the MKV's were not imported when I had the library configured as Music Videos or Home Videos & Photos.

[Luke 42079]

HI there, what makes you think they weren't imported?

[SteveFintel 30]

I could only see them in the Folders tab. The only other tab was Genre's and it was empty. 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Minus having a test file it is hard to say as to the content of your files.

Home Video

[Luke 42079]

Are you saying the library only has a Genres and a Folders tab?

If so then how many libraries have you created, and what folder paths did you add to each one?

[SteveFintel 30]

12 minutes ago, Luke said:

Are you saying the library only has a Genres and a Folders tab?

If so then how many libraries have you created, and what folder paths did you add to each one?

Correct, only Genres and Folders tabs. 

There are currently 10 libraries, each are pointing to a local (mounted) filesystem. Each library is pointing to a single file path. As part of this experiment, I have one library configured as Home videos & photos pointing to the same folder as another library configured as mixed content. The Home videos library is empty and the Mixed content has all the BD Audio disks there but I had to manually generate the metadata with the Edit metadata tool.

Edit: I manually added tags to a couple of items and now the Home Videos configured library is showing 3 tabs: Genres (empty), Tags and Folders

Edited March 1, 2024 by SteveFintel

[Luke 42079]

Quote

There are currently 10 libraries, each are pointing to a local (mounted) filesystem. Each library is pointing to a single file path. As part of this experiment, I have one library configured as Home videos & photos pointing to the same folder as another library configured as mixed content. The Home videos library is empty and the Mixed content has all the BD Audio disks there but I had to manually generate the metadata with the Edit metadata tool.

This could be the reason for the issue. using the same folder in multiple libraries is only lightly supported.

By light I mean the libraries should have the same library options otherwise you're going to see quirks such as this.

[SteveFintel 30]

So if all the metadata is saved in .nfo files, I can remove the library that I already massaged and I'll see that metadata come in the newly created library (of different type)?

[Luke 42079]

5 minutes ago, SteveFintel said:

So if all the metadata is saved in .nfo files, I can remove the library that I already massaged and I'll see that metadata come in the newly created library (of different type)?

Yes, although you should probably remove both and then add back the one that you want.

[SteveFintel 30]

45 minutes ago, Luke said:

Yes, although you should probably remove both and then add back the one that you want.

That's working better. Thanks.

It would still be nice to have a library type that understood this kind of media natively. A lot of the content sold at https://immersiveaudioalbum.com are in MKV containers and have an entire album in a single MKV file. Apple is pushing hard on immersive audio content as well.

[Happy2Play 9780]

11 minutes ago, SteveFintel said:

That's working better. Thanks.

It would still be nice to have a library type that understood this kind of media natively. A lot of the content sold at https://immersiveaudioalbum.com are in MKV containers and have an entire album in a single MKV file. Apple is pushing hard on immersive audio content as well.

The one I made shows in Video and Folder and only has audio tracks in the mkv.  Only tested in Home Video.

But have no idea on how this is suppose to look.

[solidus28 12]

Also starting to tinker with BD Audio.  I tried Music Audio as I had done this previously with some DVD-Audio.  I did seem to have to convert from MKV to MKA as they never seemed to show up in my library with my existing tracks (existing tracks were WAV).  Once changing to MKA, they showed up, but I can't seem to find a way to change the audio stream.  These discs have Atmos, 5.1, 2.1, etc.  Is there any way to change which audio track is played in the Music Audio library type?

[Luke 42079]

On 5/31/2024 at 9:20 AM, solidus28 said:

Also starting to tinker with BD Audio.  I tried Music Audio as I had done this previously with some DVD-Audio.  I did seem to have to convert from MKV to MKA as they never seemed to show up in my library with my existing tracks (existing tracks were WAV).  Once changing to MKA, they showed up, but I can't seem to find a way to change the audio stream.  These discs have Atmos, 5.1, 2.1, etc.  Is there any way to change which audio track is played in the Music Audio library type?

Hi, no, the audio user interface is currently not designed for that, meaning that although in theory the server could handle it, the user interface for music doesn't present it.

[SteveFintel 30]

On 5/31/2024 at 8:20 AM, solidus28 said:

Also starting to tinker with BD Audio.  I tried Music Audio as I had done this previously with some DVD-Audio.  I did seem to have to convert from MKV to MKA as they never seemed to show up in my library with my existing tracks (existing tracks were WAV).  Once changing to MKA, they showed up, but I can't seem to find a way to change the audio stream.  These discs have Atmos, 5.1, 2.1, etc.  Is there any way to change which audio track is played in the Music Audio library type?

If you're ripping from DVD-A or SACD that don't require an advanced codec, you can use FLAC which Emby happily treats as music files. I have a lot (hundreds?) of those tracks in my music library. Things become tricky when you have content that's encoded in Atmos. FLAC cannot represent the music objects and you need to use MKV or MKA. Emby server does a good job with MKA's but it took a lot of work to split the MKVs. And a lot of that content doesn't have a break between tracks and I lose a few seconds of playback while my equipment figures out it's an Atmos recording.