File Stacking and custom metadata issues

[Samkook 18]

I'm on a journey to try and make the video sections of my library that don't have scraper data display right and I'm running into some issues.

I've tried "Home videos & photos" but there's no general section listing all videos, genres don't get indexed(for some reason). Tags do, but the videos display all in one row(for some arbitrary reason which is really annoying, can this be changed?) making navigating them really hard. Folders at least does display as expected.

Using "Mixed content" does display like the movies section so that solves those problems. It wasn't adequate in the past, but that seems to be solved now so I'm happy with it.

 

The issues I'm facing are mostly relating to split video files. 

First it would seem that the convention I've been using is no longer supported according to this post, which is in line with my testing:

On 2/21/2024 at 6:18 PM, Luke said:

A/B was dropped a while ago for multi-part. It has been a source of false positives over the years. Maybe if it were explicitly part A, part B, etc, then I guess could see that, but I don't know if anyone actually does that.

But it hasn't been removed from the documentation: https://emby.media/support/articles/Movie-Naming.html#split-video-files-file-stacking

Is there any way I could enable that back manually somehow for my installation? I'd be very curious to see an example of a false positive since I can't think of one.

Having the option to choose which split videos conventions to enable per library in some advanced setting would be awesome to fix those kind of problems(and would allow to revive A/B without any problems if left disabled by default).

Having only A-D supported also seems like a very arbitrary decision and a problem for me since I have movies that go to at least F and maybe some that go even higher(VR can have a lot of parts, which I'd like to be properly sorted even if emby doesn't actually support those, assuming it doesn't) and there should be no technical reason since you only have to match an identical beginning to an incremental end(which means numbering something from 01 to 99 should also not be much of an issue to implement, but might be a little more complex since it's more than 1 character so I can see why not do it). Not that it matters since it isn't currently supported at all, but to keep in mind in case of a revival.

 

Second, if I change split video filenames to a supported format, let's say "movienamecd1.ext" and "movienamecd2.ext", which will join them properly into "moviename" like I would expect, it will not read a metadata file named "moviename.nfo", which I would expect it to and is a huge problem for me. It will apparently only retrieve the metadata if it is named after the file detected as the first part.

 

Which brings me to the Third issue, in the example I used above, "movienamecd2.ext" is detected as the first part for some reason, which makes the ability to read metadata from an nfo not named after any of the parts all the more important. And once the metadata is displayed, the parts aren't identified in any way so there is no way to know which is which, which is even more important when they're not in order.

Having the option to properly display identification for each part would be very good.

There is also the issue that I only see Media Info for what it detects as the first part, there is nothing about the additional parts and if I click on those, they play directly.

 

The fourth issue, which may not be a problem but is certainly extremely confusing, is that when in folder view, if we sort by filenames, it will list what it detects as folders first and then list what it detects as files.

The problem is that it will use the folder as the filename if there's more than one video in the folder, even if there's only one after file stacking, but it will use the video filename if there's only one.

So when you have a mix of folders with multiple videos and folders with single videos, the sorting will be split into 2, even if they're all actual folders. The sorting is even done on the folder name rather than the video file name that's inside so it makes absolutely no sense to do it this way since it doesn't actually sort on what it detects as the filename.

Sorting on titles instead seems to properly sort by folder names like I want, but that also means it doesn't actually sort on titles, which is very apparent when the folders don't match the titles, which is always my case in some libraries. So if you leave the default of only displaying titles, they're seemingly in a random order and it also means I can't sort by actual titles(which I probably don't want, but you never know).

 

Which ties into the fifth and final issue(at least that I noticed so far), Since my titles don't match my folder names, I want to select both title and filename in "Show Fields", but I can't seem to find a way to do it for the whole library or at least for all the childs of where I set it to. Doing this manually for every folder would be extremely tedious.

Having an advanced option to be able to choose the default display options for each libraries or having an option to set the selection for all child elements would be quite nice to fix this, if there is no other way to do it.

[Luke 42077]

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Which brings me to the Third issue, in the example I used above, "movienamecd2.ext" is detected as the first part for some reason, which makes the ability to read metadata from an nfo not named after any of the parts all the more important. And once the metadata is displayed, the parts aren't identified in any way so there is no way to know which is which, which is even more important when they're not in order.

Hi, this has been resolved in the 4.9 beta channel.

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The fourth issue, which may not be a problem but is certainly extremely confusing, is that when in folder view, if we sort by filenames, it will list what it detects as folders first and then list what it detects as files.

 

Hi, when sorting by files this is meant to match what a file browser would do, so that's why it does that.

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The problem is that it will use the folder as the filename if there's more than one video in the folder, even if there's only one after file stacking, but it will use the video filename if there's only one.

It makes the folder view more accurate though, no?

[Samkook 18]

I just realized the sorting of titles discrepancy is likely due to emby using "sorttitle" from the nfo to sort but still displays title, which would make sense since sorttitle is set to the folder name. Might be nice to have the option to display the sort title as well, but I can understand why not since it's likely meant to be similar to the normal title.

 

I also forgot to mention that I don't understand the need to limit the split videos conventions to all the split video files needing to be alone in the folder. This removes the ability to have multiple versions cohabiting with split videos, which I have a few of so it's a bummer.

Simply doing what I mentioned in the first issue also gets around that limitation(which I have implemented in a software of mine so I know it's not very hard to do):

1 hour ago, Samkook said:

there should be no technical reason since you only have to match an identical beginning to an incremental end

 

 

8 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, when sorting by files this is meant to match what a file browser would do, so that's why it does that.

Yes, which is what I would expect, but the issue I have with this is that it doesn't properly do that since it flattens folders with only one video file inside, which has caused me other problems in the past. I really wish you would implement a proper folder view or at least add an option to disable the flattening of folders.

 

Good to know some of it is solved, thanks.

Edited April 24, 2025 by Samkook

[Luke 42077]

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Yes, which is what I would expect, but the issue I have with this is that it doesn't properly do that since it flattens folders with only one video file inside

On new installs the server is no longer doing this.

[Samkook 18]

What do you mean by new server installs?

I updated to the latest version yesterday before doing all my tests so I would expect a library scan to produce the same result as a fresh install, unless there was a new default setting I can go change somewhere.

Unless you're talking about a dev build(beta) again, but you specified that before.

[Luke 42077]

No, a fresh install will have different behavior regarding this. There's no graceful transition so that's why existing installs are just left as they are.

[Samkook 18]

I guess I don't understand what it is you're talking about exactly because I can't picture how(or why) a display option would be locked in by saved metadata or a DB field of some kind.

So to have proper file explorer folder behavior I need to lose all of my data? That seems very weird.

[Luke 42077]

It's not a hidden option. It's just new behavior, however existing installs can't easily be changed to it.

 

[Samkook 18]

I did not think it was a hidden option, I just think we may not be talking about the same thing since it makes no sense to me that an existing installation could not use a simple display option, which should not be dependent on any user data, it's just visual formatting.

[Samkook 18]

I made a new install in a VM to see what the result would be like and to try to understand what you're talking about.

The only difference that I'm seeing is that it will flatten folders with stacked files as well. How messed up the saved data must be for this to only be possible for a new install is beyond my understanding, I just can't fathom a way I would do it where that would be a possible outcome.

 

What it doesn't do, and what I was talking about above, is be a proper file explorer that displays all folders as folders, not files if they're a folder with only one file inside.

It's causing issues here by messing up the order, it's causing issues by not displaying what emby considers reserved folders(see this still causing issues: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/120068-odd-video-file-detection-with-home-videos/ ) and it's also causing me problems with japanese or chinese folders not all being displayed for a reason I never figured out. All easily avoidable with a folder view that actually displays folders and files like a normal file explorer would.

So basically, it flattens more files now, which is the opposite of what you said hence part of my confusion.

Edited April 24, 2025 by Samkook

[Luke 42077]

It’s not a simple display option because it was being handled as part of the library scanning process, so undoing that would be a pretty destructive process for most users.

[Samkook 18]

You're talking about the file stacking and versions from what I understand, I am not for this specific thing.

 

The displaying of folders is a completely separate thing. It should simply interpret the saved file stacking and version data and display it. In this case, it would need to interpret 2 different set of data and display it in the same way.

 

From what I understand of this conversation, it sounds like migrating a database to a new installation will completely break stuff once again, like it did going from v3 to 4 for me.

I guess I would need to see what the 2 ways are to understand why it wouldn't be possible to convert the old data to the new data format or why a rescan of library files doesn't automatically do that since it should wipe the existing data and redo it logically.

[Luke 42077]

Removing and readding will most likely result in some things not being scanned the exact same way. It’s too much risk to try and do that on existing installs.

[Samkook 18]

In my head, that is exactly the point of doing a rescan, apply new modifications and remove things that don't exist anymore. It's a problem if old stuff remains that shouldn't be there anymore(and it might explain a lot of weird behavior I had testing other problems I've posted on here).

I do those all the time after renaming files for testing or editing metadata.

[Samkook 18]

So about the 3 other issues you didn't reply anything to, any chance something might happen for those?

 

If not, is creating a new content type a thing that would be possible with plugins or would the things required to achieve this not be accessible to the plugin system?

[Luke 42077]

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I've tried "Home videos & photos" but there's no general section listing all videos, genres don't get indexed(for some reason). Tags do, but the videos display all in one row(for some arbitrary reason which is really annoying, can this be changed?) making navigating them really hard. Folders at least does display as expected.

I would use home videos. We can always add the genre tab to that although I thought we already did.

[Luke 42077]

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Which ties into the fifth and final issue(at least that I noticed so far), Since my titles don't match my folder names, I want to select both title and filename in "Show Fields", but I can't seem to find a way to do it for the whole library or at least for all the childs of where I set it to. Doing this manually for every folder would be extremely tedious.

I think you can now in the 4.9 server. Definitely in table view but I thought this got added to poster view.

[Luke 42077]

Sorting on title sorts by the title field, not file name. But sometimes that will happen to be the file name and I think that’s what’s giving you that perception.

[Luke 42077]

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The problem is that it will use the folder as the filename if there's more than one video in the folder, even if there's only one after file stacking, but it will use the video filename if there's only one.

On a fresh install this is no longer a thing. The folder view should be more accurate now.

[Samkook 18]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

On a fresh install this is no longer a thing.

And how would I migrate to something that would give me the same result as a fresh install for the views?

99% of the reason I use emby is to simply keep track of what I watched, there is no way in hell I'm ever resetting that and saving and restoring with the trakt plugin was a giant pain last time, took me weeks to get that working right.

[Luke 42077]

7 hours ago, Samkook said:

And how would I migrate to something that would give me the same result as a fresh install for the views?

99% of the reason I use emby is to simply keep track of what I watched, there is no way in hell I'm ever resetting that and saving and restoring with the trakt plugin was a giant pain last time, took me weeks to get that working right.

Unfortunately there isn't a perfect one. One thing you could do is remove the library and then add it back again, but that's not too far off from a fresh install either. And even if you wanted to use trakt, that's not going to help you with home videos.

[Samkook 18]

Having a manual option to simply convert a library to the new style would solve that problem and still avoid "some things not being scanned the exact same way" for those who wish to keep their library as-is.

I still don't understand how files being scanned differently somehow would create issues, they shouldn't be scanned so differently that they get detected as something completely different but I guess you never know.

Edited May 1, 2025 by Samkook