Linking TV season into one entry

[JamesSmith 0]

Emby installed on Windows 10 for access from a Fetch Mighty.,.

I have a directory with collections of episodes from several TV series:

Science Fiction/
    Show1/
       Show1 - 0101 - name1
       Show1 - 0102 - name2
      ....
    Show2/
      ....

Emby merges "Show1 - 0101 - name1", "Show1 - 0102 - name2" and the rest of the episodes in the Show1 subdirectory to make "Show 1: name" in the Science Fiction directory, and hides the Show1 subdirectory. But I want them kept as separate entries in the Show1 subdirectory. How do I make Emby put them back the way I want them? I tried using the split command, but that just created entries in the Science Fiction directory. I tried reorganising the subdirectories as spelled out in the manual, but Emby just lost it and couldn't find the files. I must be missing something. Please help.

Jim

[GrimReaper 4740]

Disable/untick "Automatically merge series spread accross multiple folders" in your TV show library settings, re-Identify misidentified shows (and potentially revert same option back, depending on your preferences/usage). 

Edit: Upon re-reading, I might have misunderstood your issue and tbh don't quite understand it, can you attach few screenshots in order to get better idea of your issue? 

Edited June 12, 2024 by GrimReaper

[Happy2Play 9781]

Yes a real example may help but sounds like you are saying Emby has merges all content into one show instead of individual shows.

We would need to know exact structure and name to determine why.

[JamesSmith 0]

I'm not sure where "TV show library settings" are. I think I remember seeing "Automatically merge series..." and changing it yesterday, but... old age. If so it didn't change anything so I moved on.

I found a fix, which is to rename the subdirectory "Show1" to "TV Show1". Thereafter Emby does the right thing, but it's not a good solution.

What puzzles me is that before I started trying to fix it there were five subdirectories, and Emby merged three of them while leaving the other two as separate files. And I couldn't see a difference between them that would account for it.

Not sure what you want screenshots of.

[Happy2Play 9781]

4 minutes ago, JamesSmith said:

I'm not sure where "TV show library settings" are. I think I remember seeing "Automatically merge series..." and changing it yesterday, but... old age. If so it didn't change anything so I moved on.

Yes that option is in library setup.  And if that did not ungroup your items after a library scan then we need specific examples.  As renaming will basically remove old merged from the db and create entirely new entries.

But sounds like naming scheme/structure needs to be changed.  But can only guess without real examples to work with.

TV Naming | Emby Documentation

 

[JamesSmith 0]

Directories:

Emby:

 

Note Leftmost Ahsoka is linked contents of subdirectory "Ahsoka (2023)/Season 1" presented as one item.

[Happy2Play 9781]

Okay the library merge option is irrelevant all items are seen as Star Wars.  Then you have mixed shows with and without season folder and mixed episode naming schemes.  I see it Star Wars is the folder and Ahsoka is identified correctly do to proper structure and naming.

So what is 0101 supposed to be episode Season 1 Episode 1 or episode 101?  As one technically will only work for Absolute display order and could be parsed wrongly for Aired order.

In the end the parser chokes somewhere and merges everything.  Similar discussion here.  

Will guess you need to adjust structure/naming scheme 

TV Naming | Emby Documentation

 

Edited June 12, 2024 by Happy2Play

[JamesSmith 0]

All my media files use the encoding 0101 to mean season 1, episode 1. I don't use season level folders unless the total number of episodes makes it a necessity, which is rare. The Ahsoka (2023) layout is different because I created it to match the standard to see what would happen. And what happened is that it didn't work. Before I started trying to fix it, the Andor and The Mandalorian folders worked, and the other three presented as concatenations in the Star Wars directory.

Programmatically, neither "0101 - Fred.mkv" nor "0101.mkv" match the "SnnEnn" format and so the 0101 should be interpreted as part of the title of the episode, which is what I want. The problem here looks to be that the "Ahsoka - 0101 - Master and Apprentice" contains the name of the subdirectory ("Ahsoka") at the start of the episode name and on that basis they are being concatenated. Except that the same thing happens with the Andor subdirectory and that isn't being concatenated. Except that when I changed the "Ahsoka" subdirectory to "Ahsoka (2023)", which doesn't match the starts of episodes, the episodes *are* being concatenated. It doesn't make sense.

When I change "Ahsoka" to "TV Ahsoka" it fixes the problem, but it's a fudge.

I imagine there are people who have a use for this concatenation stuff, but I have no use for it. There should be a flag somewhere that turns it off. Or a file like ".ignore" that suppresses it.

Thanks for your help.

Jim

[Happy2Play 9781]

41 minutes ago, JamesSmith said:

Programmatically, neither "0101 - Fred.mkv" nor "0101.mkv" match the "SnnEnn" format and so the 0101 should be interpreted as part of the title of the episode, which is what I want

Sounds like a feature request as that is not how it works for TV.

Four digit numbering will be hit and miss as it technically is only suppose to be used for Absolute numbering.

The parser tries to accommodate all this user mismach naming structure but if you want it right the first time you should follow the guide.  You do not need season folders but you need a naming scheme that works all the time and four digits is not it.

There is a KB for a reason.  As it is impossible to support everyone unknown structure/naming.

https://emby.media/support/articles/TV-Naming.html#episode-naming-conventions

Only issue in the KB would be 02 Episode Name.ext as it technically requires season folders but can get away with it on limited occasions.

[JamesSmith 0]

> The parser tries to accommodate all this user mismach naming structure but if you want it right the first time you should follow the guide.

I don't want Emby to parse anything. I already have my library set up and named the way I want it. I just want Emby to serve the files to my Fetch. I would be happiest if the names I saw on screen were the actual file names in all their glory. I started using Emby because Windows Media Player/Server didn't work. The ads said Emby would just work. And it did. Now I find out that it won't work unless I rename all the files in my library to match the naming structure preferences of it programmer. That's too much work for me. Can you suggest a different product that will do what I want it to do? That is, just serve up the files using the existing directory structure?

 

Thanks in advance.

Jim

[pwhodges 2012]

Are you using Emby's Folder view oof the library?

Paul

[Happy2Play 9781]

13 hours ago, JamesSmith said:

> The parser tries to accommodate all this user mismach naming structure but if you want it right the first time you should follow the guide.

I don't want Emby to parse anything. I already have my library set up and named the way I want it. I just want Emby to serve the files to my Fetch. I would be happiest if the names I saw on screen were the actual file names in all their glory. I started using Emby because Windows Media Player/Server didn't work. The ads said Emby would just work. And it did. Now I find out that it won't work unless I rename all the files in my library to match the naming structure preferences of it programmer. That's too much work for me. Can you suggest a different product that will do what I want it to do? That is, just serve up the files using the existing directory structure?

 

Thanks in advance.

Jim

Emby has always had a KB and anything outside of it that worked was just luck and does not mean any future updates will not break the unsupported structure/naming.

But just serving the files is what Home Video and Photos does and breaks all Series/Show layout into individual items with no metadata providers.

[JamesSmith 0]

Making progress.

I set up a second library as Home Video and Photos rather than Mixed Content, which is what I used for the first one. Looking at the science fiction directory I discovered that most of the material was being displayed as I wanted it to be, with only a handful of items being concatenated into single entries. It appears that if any item in a subdirectory, or a subdirectory thereof, contains a file that has a name that contains SnnEnn or Enn, where n represents a digit, then the content of that subdirectory gets concatenated and displayed as one entry. For example, I have a collection of classic Dr Who serials -- 26 series, made up of 155 serials, made up of 695 episodes, with a length of at least 17700 minutes, or 12.3 days -- which is numbered using the SnnEnn format and is therefore being offered as one indivisible entry. If I want to watch Time and the Rani that's a lot of fast forwarding.

I've changed a number of directories to get rid of the SnnEnn elements from the files they contain, but it hasn't fixed anything, because the server doesn't seem to pick up the changes and adjust. I've tried rescanning the libraries, which should work because new file names means new content, but it doesn't work. The system continues to serve me the concatenated entries and then tell me that the files they are referencing are not there. I can't figure out how to force the server to do a full rescan of the library as opposed to just looking for new files.

[JamesSmith 0]

I think I'm happy now.

If I am on my PC then I can access the Browse Library option from Emby Server. Which is nice, but I can access my library directly, so I don't need to do that. If I am watching television I can access my library from the Fetch Mighty through its app, which connects to the Emby Server to get directory structures and download files. When the Emby Server discovers what it thinks is an album, TV show, or other media collection, it tries to present it with a nicer interface, which is fine on the Browse Library option, but to the Fetch it just looks like one big media file. I'm assuming there will be other apps that do the same.

A way to fix this, assuming the developers want to, might be to provide a .noreformat file option similar to the .ignore file. Or add an option during library creation.

I also found an interesting bug. I created a Library. I created a second Library pointing to some of the same contents. I removed the first library. The second library became empty. I had to remove all the folders from it and re-add them to fix this.

Thanks for your help guys.

[Happy2Play 9781]

5 minutes ago, JamesSmith said:

I also found an interesting bug. I created a Library. I created a second Library pointing to some of the same contents. I removed the first library. The second library became empty. I had to remove all the folders from it and re-add them to fix this.

Yes duplicating folder paths or adding subfolders of an existing parent folder will break library folder in some from requiring removal of all folder and readding correct specific folders.  But the dev is aware of this.