Save Song Metadata/Images On Disk

[HouseOfCards 95]

I think it would be helpful to write the images and metadata for song tracks to the filesystem, rather than just the server cache.  This way, a custom image for a song (CD Single artwork, etc..) would be permanently stored, much like movie posters and album art is now.  

If the song is /Bad Company/10 From 6/Bad Company.mp3

Then write...
/Bad Company/10 From 6/Bad Company.jpg
/Bad Company/10 From 6/Bad Company.nfo

[Neminem 1518]

Don't Emby already do this ?

Edited November 17, 2025 by Neminem

[Happy2Play 9780]

Yes assume proper structure is there and set on library the Album art will be saved within artist/album folder.  But if you are referring to individual track images most of the time will be the album image but can be different and only shown different if hidden library flag is changed.

"ShareEmbeddedMusicAlbumImages": false,

 

[HouseOfCards 95]

Yes, I'm referring to individual tracks.  Emby allows to edit images for a track, which you can meticulously add artwork from singles, etc...  But all that custom added artwork is wiped with a server rebuild, or god forbid, a bug where Emby overwrites images on a metadata refresh.

Imagine spending months adding art for 1000 tracks and one day realize it's gone.  Sure, there are backups, etc... but wouldn't it be better to keep a local copy of the artwork to read/write from?  That's what I'm thinking....

[HouseOfCards 95]

15 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

"ShareEmbeddedMusicAlbumImages": false,

Can you explain this more?  I'm having issues where the "Now Playing" shows a very low resolution image from the embedded art in the MP3, rather than the high resolution album images.
 

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

6 minutes ago, HouseOfCards said:

23 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

"ShareEmbeddedMusicAlbumImages": false,

Can you explain this more?  I'm having issues where the "Now Playing" shows a very low resolution image from the embedded art in the MP3, rather than the high resolution album images.

Have look over here

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

19 minutes ago, HouseOfCards said:

  Emby allows to edit images for a track, which you can meticulously add artwork from singles, etc...  But all that custom added artwork is wiped with a server rebuild, or god forbid, a bug where Emby overwrites images on a metadata refresh.

At the same time embedded images will replace any Emby edit also on a Refresh.

But the hidden switch value will be a factor on what image is used also.

Edited November 17, 2025 by Happy2Play

[HouseOfCards 95]

What this would need is a setting much like the NFO readers and savers options...

A user selects an option that says something like "Write Track Information To Disk".

1.  If the server cache has a custom image/metadata set for a track, that information will be written alongside the file in the library filesystem.
/Bad Company/10 From 6/Bad Company.mp3
/Bad Company/10 From 6/Bad Company.jpg
/Bad Company/10 From 6/Bad Company.nfo

2.  If there is nothing already specified as custom image/metadata in the server cache, then Emby writes the existing Album Art alongside each file with nothing custom already specified.  This way it doesn't overwrite what may have already been done by the user.  And it mostly fixes the problem of the low resolution in "Now Playing" for everyone, because what Emby downloads for album art is almost always going to be a higher resolution than the embedded images in an MP3.

Maybe the NFO can contain a field for "Custom Image" or something similar, so that subsequent metadata refresh with image replacement only replaces default album art written for a track, but leaves alone anything specifically set for that track...

I personally have hundreds of custom images for music tracks, so I'd hate to have an option that wipes that...  But I have backups, so I can certainly test any option that you all think up to make sure it doesn't break anything.

[nospotify 184]

2 hours ago, HouseOfCards said:

Can you explain this more?  I'm having issues where the "Now Playing" shows a very low resolution image from the embedded art in the MP3, rather than the high resolution album images.
 

 

Why aren't you just using MP3Tag to add high res image files directly to each of your individual files, which keeps them no matter what server software you use or have to reinstall?

Edited November 17, 2025 by nospotify

[HouseOfCards 95]

10 minutes ago, nospotify said:

Why aren't you just using MP3Tag to add high res image files directly to each of your individual files, which keeps them no matter what server software you use or have to reinstall?

Because I use Linux exclusively, and have thousands and thousands of music tracks.  In most cases, the album art would be just fine, but that isn't what "now playing" is using...

[nospotify 184]

Yes, that's a quirk in Emby that I and others have also been pressing them to fix.

I haven't used it but you might find this useful for Linux: https://picard.musicbrainz.org/downloads/.

[HouseOfCards 95]

1 hour ago, nospotify said:

Yes, that's a quirk in Emby that I and others have also been pressing them to fix.

I haven't used it but you might find this useful for Linux: https://picard.musicbrainz.org/downloads/.

I use MusicBrainz for everything.  Great software.  Hopefully, we can get the underlying issue resolved once and for all.  If the server stores one album image of 1 MB it can use that for all the tracks.  If I attach that image to all the tracks individually, it becomes a lot less efficient for storage.  I'd much rather see the server side take care of this, rather than tagging thousands of files.