Can Movie Genres be Mastered?

[Lyfesaver 133]

Is there any way to get a handle on the movie genres? I am suspecting there is not because it is all a matter of metadata sources but I thought I would ask to be sure. What exactly am I referring to? Well, it seems current providers do not understand the difference between movies that are about "Music" (8 Mile, That Thing You Do, Bohemian Rhapsody, etc) and "Musicals" where everything is sung (Hamilton, West Side Story, The Producers, etc).

Or "Sports", heck that genre is omitted completely in almost every instance... the same as "Biography". In my entire collection, under Genres, I have one movie under Biography, The Temptations (1998). Now, one could make the argument that "Documentary" covers Biography but if they did they should be told to sit down and be quiet (that was intended as humor). If you believe this then I suggest you watch Bohemian Rhapsody and then watch Queen: Days of Our Lives from 2011. They are two separate styles of presenting the content and are separate genres, but I will admit I could be yelling into the wind on the whole Docu vs Bio Pics.

Anyway, just a bit frustrated trying to keep everything tidy and as "correct" as possible.

I really doubt there is any way to fix it so I guess I am just venting, really.... so ty for reading

[Tremas 197]

For getting control of Genres you can manually edit them yourself and lock them in the metadata manager. To assist with that you can use the BULKY plugin to bulk edit items. It's in the metadata section of the plugin catalog.

You can also use the GENRE CLEANER plugin which is also in the metadata section of the catalog. I haven't ever used it personally, so I don't know if it will fix exactly what you are trying to do.

Also of note, I saw your post in the virtualTV topic. If you are looking to just add a bunch of movies to a virtualTV channel, it may be easiest to put the ones you want into a playlist or a collection and use that as the virtualTV "channel content source" for your channel instead of genres. 

Edited September 5, 2025 by Tremas

[Luke 42077]

Hi, yes the genre cleaner plugin can help you normalize them.

[Lyfesaver 133]

1 hour ago, Tremas said:

For getting control of Genres you can manually edit them yourself and lock them in the metadata manager. To assist with that you can use the BULKY plugin to bulk edit items. It's in the metadata section of the plugin catalog.

You can also use the GENRE CLEANER plugin which is also in the metadata section of the catalog. I haven't ever used it personally, so I don't know if it will fix exactly what you are trying to do.

Also of note, I saw your post in the virtualTV topic. If you are looking to just add a bunch of movies to a virtualTV channel, it may be easiest to put the ones you want into a playlist or a collection and use that as the virtualTV "channel content source" for your channel instead of genres. 

Bulky is awesome stuff but I would need a list of which ones to edit, etc.... and as I am a collector this would be a huge task, but ultimately doable with said lists. I started using the acdb.tv plugin for some collections and lists so this might be the start for a manual process (as unbearable as that may be).
My understanding about Genre Cleaner is that it did just that, cleaned up things like merging Sci-Fi, Sci Fi & Science Fiction genres all into one did not bring any new metadata to the table. However, that is still an excellent suggestion if to rule out, for no other reason and I had forgotten about it. Thank you.

Ya, that is part of this "Genre Revisit" but it is also because my parents (in their 80s) love to use genres and they like the finer, more specific genres like Film Noir, Sport, Based on a True Story (not a real genre but I make it work, lol), etc...
While I would love to try to use the "Collection" source instead of rules for that plugin, I just cant get it to work (as I stated over there... but hopefully that can get fixed.

 

[Lyfesaver 133]

25 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, yes the genre cleaner plugin can help you normalize them.

Thanks, Luke... I forgot to hit submit an hour ago on what I just posted

 

will look at Genre Cleaner

[Lyfesaver 133]

2 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, yes the genre cleaner plugin can help you normalize them.

I am still digging into Genre Cleaner but my initial run thru is that it is what I was thinking. It restructures overall genres and will not add the "Sport" genre to my my movies that are based on sports that dont have the genre. Or the same for movies based on music, etc

[Luke 42077]

Right that’s not its purpose. It’s purpose is to help clean up messy metadata.

[Lyfesaver 133]

I have made it to the mountain top!

Just a refresh, ultimate issue was genres of "Sport", Biography", "Musical", etc were not being used by Emby's current metadata providers and I wanted the more nuanced genres,  so here is what I did:

1. Add ACDb plugin's official and community driven collections (Sports Movies, Film Noir, etc) to my Emby
2. Use Bulky to select all movies in a collection and then bulk add the appropriate Genre (Sport, Film Noir, etc)
3. Make this post and revel in the fact my OCD(-ish)ness get some love via a minor accomplishment haha

Thank everyone for offering input. A little bit of insight from each you is what got me to the promised land