Emby Misinterpreting a Folder as a TV Series.

[Kev Vader 7]

Hi All,

I have a weird problem with just one folder on Emby Server.

I have a folder called 'Kids' - it contains two sub-folders 'Kids Movies' and 'Kids TV'. The folder 'Kids' is set to 'Mixed Content'.

The Sub-folder 'Kids TV' presents all the TV series perfectly. HOWEVER, the folder 'Kids Movies' is being interpreted by Emby Server as a single TV series called 'Future Kid Takara' - and each movie folder is being interpreted as a season of the TV series, with one episode in each. I cannot understand why it is doing this and would appreciate any advice on how to solve it!

Thanks!

Kevin

 

[pwhodges 2012]

The Mixed Content type is more sensitive to the folder structure, because it needs to distinguish  movies and series.  Having an extra layer of folder under the actual movie folders ( \Kids Movies\Kids Movies ), as you seem to have, is just confusing it.

However, you have a simple solution.  Instead of including in your library the \Kids Movies folder, add the folder \Kids Movies\Kids Movies - the movie folder will then be at the level that Emby expects.

This is based on my interpretation of your screen shots - however, these seem inconsistent (the \Kids Movies folder is shown as being on drive F: in one place and drive M: in another), so you may need to provide a more complete visualisation of your folder structure.

Paul

[Kev Vader 7]

Thanks for the fast reply!

The unusual thing about this issue is that the problem didn't exist a week ago - it was only in the last day or so that the entire folder of movies started being misidentified as the 'Future Kid Takara' series (which is not a series I have ever heard of or have anywhere on the media centre).

However, once the 'Kids Movies' folder started being misidentified as this, regardless of how I added the folder to the Library or where I moved the folder to across multiple drives - it always shows as 'Future Kid Takara'.

I will keep experimenting with adding the folder to the library and see if I can find a solution! 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Yes nested folder structures catch Emby all the time in Mixed content as it tries to guess what level in just a folder and where the content starts and the type of content it is supposed to be in Mixed Content type libraries.

Do you need M:\Kids Movies\Kids Movies?

But may need to breakdown your structure of overall content in M:\Kids Movies.

Or point library folder to M:\Kids Movies\Kids Movies

Not sure why one image shows F: and other shows M: for drive letter though.

[brothom 177]

Can confirm that this issue is caused by either having additional nesting and / or having empty folders on a season/show level.

Having this structure with a TV-show will make also make Emby think there's an extra Season (even if the folder is empty).

/Media/TV-Shows/Pokemon (1997)/Movies/...
/Media/TV-Shows/Pokemon (1997)/Season 01/...

In the above example, Movies will appear as a separate season within Pokemon. But this isn't an Emby problem - but an organisational one.

Solution

Other platforms also have issues distinguishing which is which or which belongs to what
That is what we have naming conventions for:

https://emby.media/support/articles/Movie-Naming.html
https://emby.media/support/articles/TV-Naming.html

Try to ALWAYS use the suggested logic above. It also makes ordering your own files insanely simple.

Separate library content

If you want to separate Kids and Adult content, it would be best to do it as such:

/Media/TV-Shows/..
/Media/Movies/..
/Media/Kids/TV-Shows/..
/Media/Kids/Movies/..

That way you can tell emby the /Media/Kids/TV-Shows(or Movies) belongs to the Kids library without interfering with the other content.

Edited July 14, 2025 by brothom
Formatting / clarification

[Kev Vader 7]

Moving the 'Kids Movies' folder into its own separate library made things get even stranger.

 

[Kev Vader 7]

The final outcome that has worked so far is renaming the folder ' Kids Movies '  to ' Kid's Movies ' (with the apostrophe) and that seemed to convince emby that I didn't have a giant 'Future Kid Takara' folder.

My folder structures are reasonably simple, and have been working pretty well since I moved over from Win 7 Media Center and Mediabrowser a couple of weeks ago. I have ~96TB of media that was working great with Mediabrowser, so was VERY happy to not have to change the formatting - other than that curious apostrophe!

Thanks for all the advice in this thread!

 

[brothom 177]

@Kev Vadercan you share your new Kid's Movies file structure? 

Looking at how everything is marked as "Future Kid Takara" makes me believe we're missing something in the hierarchy. Did you enable "Metadata readers"? I have a suspicion there's a meta file high up in the structure, making Emby flag the entire folder as that media entry.

Using the following structure you should never get the result you have:

Library TV Shows
C:/Media/TV-Shows
D:/Media/TV-Shows
E:/Media/TV-Shows

Library Movies
C:/Media/Movies
D:/Media/Movies
E:/Media/Movies

Library Kids Movies
C:/Media/Kids/Movies
D:/Media/Kids/Movies
E:/Media/Kids/Movies

Library Kids TV Shows
C:/Media/KIds/TV-Shows
D:/Media/KIds/TV-Shows
E:/Media/KIds/TV-Shows

Formatted as such and not having any `.nfo` or other identifiers in the root folders, should result in correctly identifying the items themselves. 

I suspect that in your case, something in your hierarchy is wrong and suspect that your structure actually looks like this:

Library Movies
C:/Media/Movies
C:/Media/Movies/Kids
D:/Media/Movies
D:/Media/Movies/Kids
E:/Media/Movies
E:/Media/Movies/Kids

That will cause the subfolders "Kids" to be mistaken for a media entry. 

[Kev Vader 7]

The only part of the Folder structure I changed was renaming the folder by adding the apostrophe to 'KID'S MOVIES':

 

 

 

 

I don't know why it fixed the issue but it did. I have other Libraries which are marked as 'Mixed Content' and have far more and deeper nestings which worked fine in Mediabrowser and now work fine in Emby with no modification.

I am resisting the urge to find and watch 'Future Kid Takara' in case it triggers an Emby relapse!

 

 

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

That is the thing about renaming anything is it removes/recreates everything in the database and could suggest the previous path was not removed completely from the db.  So the new path imported properly.  Just a guess though as it is hard to see everything in the scenario.

[brothom 177]

@Happy2Playagreed.

@Kev Vaderadding the apostrophe made it so that Emby didn't match the sub folder with Future Kid Takara so basically the source of the issue is unchanged because this is caused by additional nesting. 

Emby (and also other platforms) prefer the simple hierarchy of "Root:/MovieName (year)/MovieName (year).ext" for a reason.
Changing the structure makes it obvious why an entire folder is suddenly matches as one: "Root:/Sci-fi/MovieName (year)/MovieName (year).ext".

The above will probably cause anything under that folder to be matched to this "Sci-fi Harry (2000)" movie https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/127193-sci-fi-harry or maybe some other entry depending on your source settings.

Just adhere to the naming conventions and try not to make subfolders.

Making other libraries for kids or ultraviolent movies isn't a bad idea either since you can just deny kids access to all libraries except their kids library and will prevent you having to work with additional tags or genres which might also lead to censoring normal items.