Issue with 14 movies not even showing up in my Library.

[nickpeck 2]

Hello,

I always do a lot of searching before I ask a question, but this has me stumped.  I moved my Emby Server from aging hardware onto a new UGREEN DXP8800+ (linuxserver version via Docker) and it's pretty much working great, but I'm having an issue with a handful of movie files that Emby will not acknowledge they exist.  I'll put as much detail as I can below.

I have Emby on my Vol3, which is the SSD Volume, and have it pointed to Vol1 which is where my Media is.  All sharing / read/write permission's are fine and I structure my Media Folder as the following:

MEDIA/Movies, Movies 4K, TV Shows, TV Shows 4K, Music

Inside of my Movies folder, I have folders from #-A to Z, and every movie put into the corresponding folder for its name (ie: Dunkirk is in "D").  I never had any problems with it like this, but have run into this issue here n there.  What's the issue?  Emby has found 99.5% of my movies, but it simply refuses to add 14 movies.  It lists 513 total movies when I have 527.  I'll list a few examples:

A Quiet Place 2.mkv (I have tried A Quiet Place Part 2 as well), it will NOT add this to my library at all.  However, if I re-name it (the actual movie file) Terminator 3, it finds it and adds it as Terminator 3 no problem. 

Super Friends (old DC Cartoons), it will not see or add at all, but if I remove super from the folder name, it adds it as the show "Friends" no problem, I then go and re identify as Super Friends.

Quantum of Solace.mkv, same thing, it will not add this file no matter what I do. However, it finds and adds the 4K version of the movie fine, but won't add the Blu-ray mkv.  I keep my 4k and BR/DVD rips in separate folders as listed above.

The files work and play fine, but for the life of me I can't get Emby to add them so I can manually Identify them.  I know a few of the movies it won't find but I'd like not have to go through my folders to match up what it's showing to find the missing titles, so any help would be appreciated.  I came across a post mentioning something about the nfo not identifying files so it just boots them out, but I'm not sure about that as I can't find a way to identify which files it's not liking so I can manually add them.

Sorry for the book, but I know the more info the better (I'm in IT, I know lol).

Thanks for looking and have a great day.

embyserver.txt

Edited April 14, 2025 by nickpeck

[Neminem 1516]

I would start here Movie Naming

I use this format when adding movies.

Example.

Movie folder : A Quiet Place Part II (2021) {TmdbId-520763}

Movie file : A Quiet Place Part II (2021) {TmdbId-520763}.mkv

Try that and see if that helps.

Adding (yyyy) to folder and file helps a lot.

But adding Tmdbid, add an extra help for Emby.

I have see several movies with the same name and release year, pop up over the years.

[nickpeck 2]

For some movies where needed I have the year, but having the ID didn't occur to me.  For the few I know that aren't working I'll give that a shot as soon as I get home.  It's just strange that even if Emby couldn't identify something properly, it used to at least show up in the library previously. 

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it!

Edited April 14, 2025 by nickpeck

[Luke 42077]

How are your files named and organized?

[darkassassin07 652]

1 hour ago, nickpeck said:

It's just strange that even if Emby couldn't identify something properly, it used to at least show up in the library previously.

If emby incorrectly identifies a piece of media as something that you already have; it'll show up as a different version under the existing item instead of as a new item. Can be a little hard to find sometimes.

 

 

One way to check what emby thinks a file is: enable nfo writing, then go look at the nfo file emby creates to see what it was identified as.

 

As Neminem suggested though; adding the IDs to folder/file names makes the automatic matching pretty much perfect.

If you use tools like radarr/sonarr, you can edit the naming settings to include those automatically for you.

Edited April 14, 2025 by darkassassin07

[nickpeck 2]

"How are your files named and organized?"

the quote got messed up in the reply, sorry.

I have an overall folder named "/MEDIA", from there I have /Movies, /Movies 4K, /TV Shows, /TV Shows 4K, /Music.  In my /Movies folder, I have folders for every letter of the alphabet, and I place my movies into the corresponding folder by name (/MEDIA/Movies/D/Dunkirk.mkv).  That was the "cool" way to do it like a decade ago, so I just stuck with it at it's always worked :D.  

Neminem posted above that I should make sure the year and the ID# is listed in the file name, and while most of my movies have the year included, some do not, but that wasn't an issue before.  However, I wasn't aware of having the TMDB ID listed to help, so I'm going to do that moving forward.  Luckily from memory I figured out 5 of the missing movies, but I'll have to figure out the rest and try the renames.

Usually when something was wrong, it would at least show up in the frontend, and I could fix it via metadata, but that isn't happening anymore, It's just not showing up at all which is odd.

Anywho, I'll post back later when I get home and try the changes.

Edited April 14, 2025 by nickpeck

[nickpeck 2]

8 minutes ago, darkassassin07 said:

If emby incorrectly identifies a piece of media as something that you already have; it'll show up as a different version under the existing item instead of as a new item. Can be a little hard to find sometimes.

 

 

One way to check what emby thinks a file is: enable nfo writing, then go look at the nfo file emby creates to see what it was identified as.

 

As Neminem suggested though; adding the IDs to folder/file names makes the automatic matching pretty much perfect.

If you use tools like radarr/sonarr, you can edit the naming settings to include those automatically for you.

Ok, I ran across a post mention something about the NFO and being able to look at it, but wasn't really sure as I never messed with that before.  NFO is checked in all of my Library folders settings.  I did try deleting my movies folder and then relinking it, and while it was scanning the folder, it showed 527, but once it was done, it settled on 513, so what you mentioned sounds like that might be what's happening possibly.

I'll look more at that, thanks for the reply, it helps!

Edited April 14, 2025 by nickpeck

[Neminem 1516]

Tbh Emby has always preferred /movies/movie name/movie file

So each movie in it's own folder.

And since you are using something like this.

/movie/a/movie file

/movie/b/movie file 

etc.

how did you add that to you movie library ?

/movie/

Will work if you are lucky

Or did you add it like this.

/movie/a/

/movie/b/

[Happy2Play 9780]

Note Emby will reread nfo files in your library is you have them written so removing and readding library will most likely do nothing different unless you have deleted all nfo file before readding.

But as mentions if movies are getting merged ie multi-versioned it means Emby is seeing them as same movie per metadata like your example A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place 2 as the query to provide will most likely return same item first and requires secondary value of adding year per query or id tags per folder.

[nickpeck 2]

15 minutes ago, Neminem said:

Tbh Emby has always preferred /movies/movie name/movie file

So each movie in it's own folder.

And since you are using something like this.

/movie/a/movie file

/movie/b/movie file 

etc.

how did you add that to you movie library ?

/movie/

Will work if you are lucky

Or did you add it like this.

/movie/a/

/movie/b/

Basically when I started messing with servers and media centers was like a decade ago with Plex, and that's how a lot of people were saying to do it to keep it "clean".. ish.  So I have always kept it that way, but I ended up hating Plex and have been an Emby Premier member since.  I just deleted Plex and installed Emby and it all worked way back when   But again, thanks for the info, I'll have to work on cleaning things up a bit.

I'm in the Metadata window and I can now see where some of the movies are, I fixed two already so I'll just have to hunt for the others and get those names fixed.

[nickpeck 2]

15 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Note Emby will reread nfo files in your library is you have them written so removing and readding library will most likely do nothing different unless you have deleted all nfo file before readding.

But as mentions if movies are getting merged ie multi-versioned it means Emby is seeing them as same movie per metadata like your example A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place 2 as the query to provide will most likely return same item first and requires secondary value of adding year per query or id tags per folder.

Makes sense, I'll have to reorganize at some point, helpful info so thanks for that, I really appreciate it.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Expand a little as it really depends on exact naming also for this specific example of "A Quiet Place 2" vs "A Quiet Place II"

crude example but api query would be similar and Emby will take the first result unless you have secondary value of year to query.

a quiet place 2 — The Movie Database (TMDB)

a quiet place II — The Movie Database (TMDB)

 

[Lazloe 1]

On 4/14/2025 at 10:03 AM, darkassassin07 said:

If emby incorrectly identifies a piece of media as something that you already have; it'll show up as a different version under the existing item instead of as a new item. Can be a little hard to find sometimes.

BRUUUUUH

I was searching for the issue of a movie not showing up, well, it did show up before I started messing with the metadata because it wasn't showing up correctly.

I checked again and verified that, yes, this sequel was displayed as another version of the primary. So I investigated why..
It's because I placed the video in a folder with an incorrect year. Corrected that and all is well.

My aging eyes.