Fresh Emby user, how to correct strange tag problem?

[lusoemby 2]

Just installed Emby (QNAP nas, apple ecosystem). I'm running a large library of my own music and movies, which is very well organized, particularly regarding ID tags. 

I've got a strange error on a bunch of albums, it just assumed "ROCK" as the band name and I can't seem to find any option to correct this under the metadata menu. These same files are running perfect in other apps (like Apple music) but anyway I opened them in my tag manager app and sure enough everything is correct, so it's not a problem with bad tagging.

Looks like it took some random albums and yanked them from under the original artist.

How can I correct this?

[user24 313]

Hi, 

From the PJ Harvey Album screenshot example, it appears that Emby is correctly importing the Artist tag as "PJ Harvey", but importing the AlbumArtist tag as "ROCK". And it seems like you (annoyingly) have 78 problem albums with this issue.

For one of the problem Albums, what does your tag manager app show exactly for:

• Artist
• Album Artist
• AlbumArtist

and/or any other related artist tags/fields?

Do you use MusicBrainz Artist IDs?

What tagging app do you use?

Are there any tagging differences between correctly imported Albums and the problem ones?

What music folder structure do you have - are the albums in a folder called "ROCK"?

While not doubting that your tags are correct, sometimes there can be slight importing differences between various applications that can cause issues (as I found out for myself when first using Emby).

Providing a screenshot of your tags from your tagging program (and any more info you can think of) could be useful to help resolve this.

There is some basic info here, if you haven't seen it already:

https://emby.media/support/articles/Music-Naming.html

Sorry if that is more questions, rather than an immediate answer for you, I expect Emby would ask you for the same/similar details?

P.S. I use Windows (not MacOS) and Artist/Album Artist metadata can be edited in Emby only at individual track level (I think?). I don't recommend this though. Better to get the metadata importing right, if at all possible. Cheers!

Edited September 19, 2024 by user24
Added P.S. Section

[lusoemby 2]

Thanks for the detailed reply! My music folder structure is indeed like that, albums in folders like ROCK, JAZZ, etc, so that explains psrt of the problem. My music files are in a couple of drives I don't have here, but I checked one of the affected albums I have on my laptop and it does indeed lack the "album artist" field, so that should explain the rest.

Plex allows for tag correction but from what I can see, Emby doesn't have that possibility, so maybe the best would be to delete the albums from Emby and then re-upload corrected versions?

[user24 313]

Yes, a blank Album Artist field and a ROCK folder was my suspicion!

If you fill in the Album Artist field with your tagging app and then rescan the relevant folders in Emby (likely no need to delete them from Emby first), then hopefully that will fix the problem for you.

[lusoemby 2]

Ok, we'll do! On a related note, there are a few albums that didn't seem to get the correct album co er image. I try to use Emby sources (I basically selected all the ones available when setting up the libraries) to fetch images but it always just stays a black screen with only the sources available. Seems strange it doesn't find anything on all those sources for the 20 albums or so I tried?

Edited September 19, 2024 by lusoemby

[user24 313]

I have all my album covers embedded in the files, so don't really rely that much on Emby fetching them from MusicBrainz, etc.

I assume you have all these turned on:

Are they obscure albums that are not in these databases perhaps??? Did they appear in Plex for you previously???

Also, sometimes when you are setting up a large library, it takes a while for the scan to import everything.

Perhaps start up a separate thread/post about this with some further example details. More info is usually useful!

I won't be able to look at it immediately, but if no one else does in the meantime, I might be able to help a bit later on...

[lusoemby 2]

18 hours ago, user24 said:

I have all my album covers embedded in the files, so don't really rely that much on Emby fetching them from MusicBrainz, etc.

I assume you have all these turned on:

Are they obscure albums that are not in these databases perhaps??? Did they appear in Plex for you previously???

Also, sometimes when you are setting up a large library, it takes a while for the scan to import everything.

Perhaps start up a separate thread/post about this with some further example details. More info is usually useful!

I won't be able to look at it immediately, but if no one else does in the meantime, I might be able to help a bit later on...

I'm finding Emby overall to be pretty great, but comparing to Plex it seems to handle library updates worse though. In Plex, I add some new album or movie, hit scan library and it pretty much happens within seconds, with visual UI cues of what is going on. In Emby it takes a lot more time and no visual reference that something is happening.

I corrected a few of those albums with missing album artist field yesterday, confirmed on the QNAP library and they are indeed corrected, but they still appear on Emby with the same problem, like 24 hours later.

 

[user24 313]

When using Scan Library Files to update embedded metadata for music files (at least with Emby Server 4.8.8.0 for Windows) this may or may not work depending upon where you initiate the scan from. Also, all I can tell you is my findings with a large music library (100k+ tracks) because I only maintain small Movie and TV libraries for which scans of my whole libraries are always fast. (Movie scanning is another subject altogether).

• A scan of my whole music library can take a few hours and usually 'sticks' at 90+% for a long time (e.g. most of the scan time) as the visual circle progress indicator on the library picture on the home page is not a linear time indicator of the scan. I don't have to wait days though for the scan to finish.
• If I initiate a scan of an individual Album from the Album itself, via the Album menu tab, the embedded metadata will NOT update in Emby (I just double checked this now with a small test to confirm).
• If I initiate a scan of an individual Album from the Folder itself, via the Folder menu tab, the embedded metadata will update in Emby (I just double checked this now with a small test to confirm).

Therefore, due to the above results, I typically just scan the parent folder when adding or changing an Album, e.g.:

• change an Album - scan the Album folder
• add an Album - scan the parent Artist folder
• add an Album from a new Artist - scan the parent folder (e.g., in your case perhaps ROCK)

Scanning only one Album is almost instantaneous, and the changes can be checked straight away.

On some occasions, depending upon what data I am changing, Scan Library Files has not worked but Refresh Metadata has.

Also, be aware that there are some special instances where Emby does not accept changes to embedded metadata:

• changing upper case characters to lower case (or vice versa)
• changing other similar special characters, e,g. bracket types () {} [], single and double quotes '' "", other?

On very rare occasions when Emby won't update the embedded metadata, using Scan or Refresh, or updating at a whole library level, I just manually update the info in Emby to match (slightly annoying, but definitely not a 'showstopper').

There is a good plugin that you may find useful: Emby Data Explorer 4.8.2.0 in the plugin catalog (if it works in your MacOS setup???). You can use this to see what detailed data Emby has assigned to your files and whether or not it matches your embedded metadata.

There are of course many more method variations of scanning and refreshing that I haven't mentioned. Others (and MacOS users) may also be able to give you more technical insights of the process that I am not really knowledgeable about.  There are also plenty of forum posts if you are interested in searching them out! Perhaps some of the info above will help? Cheers!

Edited September 21, 2024 by user24