Thumbails for offline collections

[a11an 2]

Hi all,

I’ve recently moved back to Emby from Jellyfin, mainly because I found collection management in Jellyfin a bit buggy. I’m really impressed with how well Emby picked up my library — all of my collections were detected perfectly.

For context, I don’t use any scrapers at all; everything is managed via local .nfo files.

I do have one question though:
Is Emby able to automatically pick up collection thumbnails and artwork from local files?

At the moment, it looks like I have to add the collection images manually. I’ve got around 40 collections, which I can do by hand if needed, but it would be great if there’s a setting or naming tweak that would allow Emby to pick them all up automatically.

Each movie’s movie.nfo includes the collection set information like this:

<set> <name>Some Movie Collection</name> </set> 

I also have a collection XML file set up as follows:

<Item> <ContentRating></ContentRating> <Overview>A description</Overview> <LocalTitle>Some Movie Collection</LocalTitle> </Item> 

This is the folder structure I’m using for a typical movie collection (boxset):

Some Movie Collection [boxset]
- folder.jpg        (ignored)
- fanart.jpg        (ignored)
- logo.png          (ignored)
- collection.xml    (ignored)
- Example Movie 1
  - Example Movie.mp4
  - movie.nfo
  - folder.jpg
  - fanart.jpg
- Example Movie 2
  - ...

The movies themselves are detected and grouped into collections correctly, but the collection-level artwork appears to be ignored unless I add it manually via the UI.

Sorry if this has been asked before — I’ve searched around but haven’t been able to find a clear answer.

Thanks in advance!

[Luke 42629]

@sa2000

[sa2000 784]

@a11an  I have looked into this and preset collections folders with custom images is not supported 

On 20/12/2025 at 15:15, a11an said:

Some Movie Collection [boxset]
- folder.jpg        (ignored)
- fanart.jpg        (ignored)
- logo.png          (ignored)
- collection.xml    (ignored)
- Example Movie 1
  - Example Movie.mp4
  - movie.nfo
  - folder.jpg
  - fanart.jpg
- Example Movie 2

Updated to remove what I suggested as that is not supported

 

Edited 5 hours ago by sa2000
removed earlier suggestion as it is not supported

[sa2000 784]

@a11anI am going to show you a way round the problem but I stress that it is not officially supported but should work

- As you have done, each movie's nfo file will define the collections the movie is to be included in by use of the "set" field

- For each collection, you create a folder with the name of the collection and within that folder you have your image file(s) and optionally a collection.nfo file

- Where you want to a collection to be tied to a specific tmdbid then you would have a collection.nfo that has that id. Also the movie's nfo file "set" field to include the tmdbid for the collection

- you place the collection folders you create under a "metadata\collections" folder which is below the Emby Server Data folder

- take care when editing nfo files to ensure you do not lose any utf 8 encoding during the edits

Note that if you make changes to the metadata subfolders like that, then you may need to scan the metadata folder through the scheduled tasks server settings page

I am going to show you examples here of a test I did with some collection titles I had from various users

An example of a movie with an nfo that links to a collection with a preset tmdbid of "661028"

  <set tmdbcolid="661028"> 
    <name>Pokémon Best Wishes! Collection</name>
  </set>

The collection.nfo for this collection will have these fields to identify the collection

<title>Pokémon Best Wishes! Collection</title>

<tmdbid>661028</tmdbid>

<uniqueid type="tmdb">661028</uniqueid>

The metadata collection folder name you create for this will be the collection name followed by a -tmdb-id suffix

Pokémon Best Wishes! Collection-tmdb-661028

Another example is one without a tmdb id for the collection

The folder name for the collection is

Blaxploitation Classics Vol. 1

and the movies in that collection have nfo files that have :

  <set>
    <name>Blaxploitation Classics Vol. 1</name>
  </set>

This shows the folder tree of the collections folders i created for my test with custom images and nfo files

├───Blaxploitation Classics Vol. 1
│       collection.nfo
│       poster.jpg
│
├───Pokémon Best Wishes! Collection-tmdb-661028
│       collection.nfo
│       fanart.jpg
│       poster.jpg
│
└───Tommy Gibbs Collection-tmdb-534652
        collection.nfo
        poster.jpg

These 3 folders are copied to metadata\collections and I had them in place ready before I added the movies to the server

The result was that my 3 collections had preset custom artwork