Parental Controls: Media disappears when meta data changes

[HanSolo 21]

Hi,

Looked for this issue in the forums and apologize if it's a duplicate but I didn't see it anywhere

Having some issues with Parental Controls, using them for some time and till now they seem to have worked well. Recently I noticed that if I change meta data the media disappears from the users library (not the admins library though), The rating is gone when I go check the album metadata, I've tried everything I can think of to get it back into the user's library but nothing I do seems to work. 

More details

The way I have things set up is one user of my server has the setting "Block items with no or unrecognized rating information." This user is configured for the "Maximum allowed parental rating" of "TV-Y/APPROVED/G/E/EC/TV-G." I don't have many Movies or TV Shows but I do have some. I also have a sizeable library of CD's. The system works well for me because I have to just flip the CD or song or whatever to "APPROVED" and then is shows up in the user's library. My music library has roots in iTunes and so a lot of my compilations are in the "compilation" directory, but I also had some in the "various" directory and yet others in the "various artist" directory. The result of this is I moved all the compilations into the "Various Artists" directory then change all the ALBUM ARTIST tag to "Various Artists." this resulted all of the "APPROVED" tags being lost, which would be fine but when I went back through and changed the ratings back to APPROVED they still won't show up in the users library again. I've tried rescanning the library, rebooting the server and editing the NFO files in the album folder. Nothing that I've done seems to be working. I use ratings at the album and song level and the movie and series level, I've only seen this behavior on music so far. I'm running Emby on an ASUSTOR AS-604T, I know the thing is older than dirt and I do plan to upgrade in the future but this is what I've got right now. Any help would be much appreciated! I'm happy to provide whatever other information is required.

-HS

 

 

[HanSolo 21]

Wanted to add I'm using Emby Version 4.8.10.0 but couldn't figure out how to edit the post

-HS

[HanSolo 21]

Update:

I seem to have solved my own issue; In settings I discovered that each library has "Scan Library Files" and "Refresh Metadata" when I used these it seemed to clear things up (mostly). The albums in question are now showing up under "recently added" but not in the "albums" section, I'm hoping it will self-heal after some time & maintenance tasks have run. 

Previously I'd use the "Scan Library Files" and "Refresh Metadata" from the main interface (not settings), I'd tried them from the album level and the song level and they didn't seem to have any effect. 

Apricate everyone taking time to read this. 

-HL

[Luke 42077]

HI, I don't fully understand your issue, but I'm glad to hear it is resolved now.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

The albums in question are now showing up under "recently added" but not in the "albums" section, I'm hoping it will self-heal after some time & maintenance tasks have run. 

You might just be seeing audio files in the recently added section. In order for an album to be created, they need to be tagged with album and albumartist values.

Music Naming

[HanSolo 21]

Hello, sorry I've been very busy. I'm still having issues with these albums not showing up in the library under "Albums." Some of them seem to show up under "Songs" and in "Recently Added." Also, it's only this one user, the users with full access work fine.

In the course of troubleshooting, I happened to look at the raw encoding of one of the tracks, I noticed that there were seemingly duplicate albumartist tag and an Album Artist (with an actual space in the tag name, doesn't seem to be in all the albums but I've fixed it where I found it). This wasn't showing up in the tagging software I was using called "mp3tag" so I switched to Picard as I'd seen it recommended here on the forums. I was able to see and remove the "Album Artist" tag but that didn't seem help. Next, I went through several albums with Picard and cleaned up all the other tags on these albums and rewrote them. Again, this didn't seem to help. I've also double checked the rating and everything that I can think of.

I really want to get this issue fixed. Can you recommend some troubleshooting steps that I can take?

-HS

[HanSolo 21]

Some additional information, I have the setting to write .nfo files enabled, would it be helpful if I posted the .nfo file?

[Happy2Play 9780]

22 minutes ago, HanSolo said:

Some additional information, I have the setting to write .nfo files enabled, would it be helpful if I posted the .nfo file?

Don't believe reading music nfo data has been enabled again yet.

Pretty sure only in beta alpha testing here as plugin testing added in this topic.

 

32 minutes ago, HanSolo said:

I'm still having issues with these albums not showing up in the library under "Albums." Some of them seem to show up under "Songs" and in "Recently Added." Also, it's only this one user, the users with full access work fine.

This issue sort of sounds familiar as an issue in 4.8 but corrected in 4.9 but will have to look.  As there are a few Parental controls issues that are only corrected in 4.9.  

[Happy2Play 9780]

Actually testing in 4.9 see the same @Luke

Tagged Album

Restricted user to tag

log in with user item shows in Latest Albums

Does not show in Albums

Tag shows but empty

Tracks show in Songs

And could not get to work at all in 4.8.

Tag show empty

Just realize OP is using rating not tags but will say I get the same results.

4.8 shows nothing

4.9 shows in Latest Album, not in Album, Artist show with only songs

Removing Parental controls all media visible.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2024 by Happy2Play

[HanSolo 21]

15 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Don't believe reading music nfo data has been enabled again yet.

Pretty sure only in beta alpha testing here as plugin testing added in this topic.

That makes sense, I can confirm nfo's are at least partially written as I don't manually create them, and I see them, but sometimes they are missing information when I look at the contents.

Is there anything I can help to troubleshoot or work the issue with the parental ratings?

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 hour ago, HanSolo said:

That makes sense, I can confirm nfo's are at least partially written as I don't manually create them, and I see them, but sometimes they are missing information when I look at the contents.

Is there anything I can help to troubleshoot or work the issue with the parental ratings?

Just exact steps to show the issue.  But there are still a few Parental Controls completely broken in 4.8 the have been improved in 4.9 but looks like this one still needs some work if I replicated it properly.

[HanSolo 21]

Been pretty busy today but I've managed to spend a couple of hours trying to reproduce this. It is still absolutely a problem; I have a bunch of albums that arn't showing in the library under "Albums." I also see at least some of them no showing under "Genre." 

Will keep trying to repro. 

-HS

Edited December 11, 2024 by HanSolo

[HanSolo 21]

I decided to disable the NFO metadata reader that I found to be enabled in my music library. I'll see if that does anything tomorrow. Will keep you posted

[Luke 42077]

Hi, does everything show up normally with an unrestricted user?

[HanSolo 21]

Yes, everything shows up normally with an unrestricted user

[HanSolo 21]

Here are the steps that I followed this morning to reproduce the issue. 

The user (USER A) having trouble has parental ratings enabled and configured for the "Maximum allowed parental rating" of "TV-Y/APPROVED/G/E/EC/TV-G."
Change to "Super" user so everything is visible.

1. Pick an album which is showing up in the users "Albums", check "Custom rating" to insure set to "APPROVED" then save. In this the album is 21 by Adele
2. Navigate back to privileged user
3. Using Picard edit "albumartist" tag form Adele --> Various Artists (I removed the tag "album artist" with a space at the same time, did not change any other tags)
4. Navigate back to the USER A, album is gone. 
5. Navigate to privileged user 
6. Using Picard edit "albumartist" tag form Various Artists --> Adele
7. Navigate back to the USER A, album is back.

I wasn't expecting the album to come back; I still have a bunch of "Various Artists" albums that aren't showing up. The restricted user has access to around 10 albums that are "Various Artists" and only one is showing up under albums.

Another thing, I found that the artist "Various" was linked to "Various Artists" with "MusicBrainz Id" and "TheAudioDb Id" I've unlinked that 

At this point is seems like there is something going on with "Various Artists"

Also, I've had trouble with the "Custom rating" staying set to "APPROVED" when I change it. I notice it doesn't have a lock icon (see attachment)

Any advice would be helpful and welcomed. 

-HS

Edited December 11, 2024 by HanSolo
Forgot to attach file

[HanSolo 21]

Update to the last comment. from the restricted account, the Adele Album disappeared, and a bunch of the movies also disappeared. Checked one of the movies, the "Custom rating" was blank & even when I resorted it the movie in question didn't reappear for that account.

Let me know if you want me to try anything in particular.

Hopefully the next version cleans a lot of this up. I apricate both of your help, thank you.

-HS

 

[Luke 42077]

HI, please attach the emby server log. thanks.

[HanSolo 21]

Hi Luke, is there a way I can send the logs directly to you? I'd prefer not to post them publicly since I'm not sure exactly what kind of sensitive information they might have in them & do take my home network security seriously 

-HS

EDIT: I DM'd them to you

Edited December 12, 2024 by HanSolo
Update

[Luke 42077]

Quote

Also, I've had trouble with the "Custom rating" staying set to "APPROVED" when I change it. I notice it doesn't have a lock icon (see attachment)

Hey, So it sounds like this is the root issue, that this value is changing?

[HanSolo 21]

2 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hey, So it sounds like this is the root issue, that this value is changing?

I think there are two separate but maybe related issues here. 

I can say with absolute certainty that I have seen albums where I set "Custom rating" to "APPROVED and come back later to check only to find it blank and obviously when that happens it doesn't show up in the restricted users profile.

At the same time, I can point to albums where the value stays set and are not shown in the restricted user's profile.

I've seen these issues for a while, but they are intermittent, makes them hard to quantify, they aren't normally that bad. I've recently been trying to fix the meta data on about 2800 tracks so in doing that has made them really bad. The #1 issue for me here is when I can't get albums / videos to show up in the in the restricted users profile no matter what I do, which is still happening. 

I apricate all time you've put into helping me. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help

-HS

[HanSolo 21]

Hey, so this seems like a bug so me. Is there any workaround I can do in the mean time?

Thanks,

-HS

[Luke 42077]

@HanSolo

Hi, I have not been able to reproduce the custom rating getting lost. I think it's possible there are other changes on the 4.9 beta channel that may have resolved that.

[HanSolo 21]

Sorry I've been busy trying to catch up from the holidays. 

At this point I'll wait for 4.9 to come out and retest, report back. Hoping my issued will be solved with the new release. 

For the missing albums (ie. albums my user is allowed to see but they don't show up in music under albums), I found a crude workaround, I am able add the album to a playlist and share the playlist with the user in questions, user is then able to find the album. It's not ideal but it will work for the time being. So far it worked for one album, I'm planning on trying it for some more later.

Apricate all the hard work and you're getting back to me. 

-HS