Search works erratically and does not find items.

[thelanranger 11]

I'm having issues with the search across the board and I'm not sure why. I have tried to narrow this down to a very specific issue because it has been driving me nuts and this is what I have come up with:

1) When using only the web version of emby, I can manually dig into my music and find a song (this example will be Johnny Cash - Hurt). The item shows perfectly and plays fine. If click the little dots and hit edit metadata, copy and paste the word "Hurt" from the name (so I know it is exactly what is in the name of the song) and paste that into the search, it will not find the song. Why is this?

2) If I'm on my phone and perform a search of essentially any kind, if I type the exact same thing into the search bar and let it search (example "Hurt") it will give me different results each time. (Seemingly dependent upon some kind of timeout?) This is most noticeable when using the Android Auto app as it will not even display complete lists of folders when clicking around most of the time.

3) If I search (again using just the web) for "Johnny Cash" I will get a complete list of all the songs and the artist. If I search for "Johnny Cash H" (as if I was searching for "Hurt" or "Hello I'm Johnny Cash") then I will get a list of only johnny cash songs but many that do not even CONTAIN an H, let alone start with an H. It also does not return the same result as "no H" as if it was ignoring the H. 

I'm totally confused, how do I fix/troubleshoot this. Thanks!

[visproduction 315]

This music video is searchable just using Gold.  Try setting your metadata to match these selections for Johnny.  Don't bother with a country name.  I just use that to help sort my international music.  You would probably also need to rescan the music video library before the search would start to work.

Edited June 9, 2024 by visproduction

[Luke 42080]

Hi, can you please provide a specific example of #1? Thanks.

[thelanranger 11]

This is a screenshot of the metadata:

If I type: "Cash" or "Johnny Cash" into the search I will get the artist. I can click the artist and then hit "songs" and this song will be in the list. Plays, shows up, no issue. Same with the album. If I type in "hurt" into the search, I will get a massive list of every single song that contains the word 'hurt', this will be in that list. If I type "cash hurt" or "hurt cash" or something like that it will not return the song in question. Either it will return a single track of some other song that has that entire string in the song title or something or nothing at all.

[Happy2Play 9781]

7 hours ago, thelanranger said:

If I type "cash hurt" or "hurt cash" or something like that it will not return the song in question.

Personnally don't see this ever working as no specific naming in the database is either of those.  But in the end you want search to have and/or/either which is will not do with the more info you provider.

 

[Happy2Play 9781]

Further testing Does not look like Artist/song linking but album/song linking in partial search words.

Plastic

Farewell Plastic

Artist/song will not provide results.

So "cash hurt" or "hurt cash" would have to be something like "American Hurt" or any variation of Album name/song "American IV The Man Comes Around".

[Luke 42080]

Right currently the album is incorporated but not the artist. on the to do list.

[Stroudy 21]

While incorporating the artist to the search will help resolve my issue, but maybe there could also be a toggle for an exact match?
Sometimes if a song name is a common word, or made up of letters that tend to go together in another word, lost of results appear.

For example, if I search for Stan (The Eminem song). I get results such as: Standard, Stand Back, Here I Stand, Stand by me, Stand up and 37 episodes of American Dad with the word Stan in the title.
In fact Stan by Eminem came up as result 79 on the list of 346 results.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

For me Emby has one of the worst search functions i have ever seen. But, again fortunately for me, I only use search to search for movies and, on rare occasions, a TV show or two. 

I do not use Emby for audio at all and i would be hesitant to even try as it seems that when Emby has problems in display or searching it is almost always the audio files that fail. 
On the search the way I use it I see nothing wrong at all. Emby finds everything I have it search for and that is all I need.

However I have found that if you give Emby the info it needs they usually find problems if they exist or point to what is wrong in the file names or the searches used.

To get Emby's best help:
1. Include logs covering the time the problem happened.
2. Give an exact example that includes the exact name of what you are searching for and file names involved
3. Give EXACT steps to produce the problem
4. Provide screen shots after each step
5. If you see any error messages or unusual pauses give details.

6. repeat steps 1-5 and give even more detail if the "fix" or an "explanation" does not come your way quickly