Utilizing metadata WITHOUT replacing filenames

[5dbhbPleEG 0]

I initially setup Emby server to automatically pull metadata for each of my content types.  I was instantly blown away by the aesthetics of the software but I was irritated I couldn't find a way to use my filenames instead of the titles fetched.  I have a very large library and a naming convention which I prefer for my media.  Kodi has always given me the option to use filenames vs titles and I really hope Emby can do this as well.  Through some web-searches, I found that if I disable metadata entirely it defaults to my filenames so that's what I've been doing, but the experience without metadata is underwhelming.  Furthermore, without metadata enabled it still messes up my folders and episode titles for some reason.  Movies are but TV shows do follow my directory structure and the episode names are not the exact filenames.

 

Does anybody know if it's possible to use metadata for covers, movie information, etc. but force Emby to use my filenames?

[Luke 42080]

There is no setting for this right now.

[Deathsquirrel 745]

I'm curious, can you give an example?  So I have the file \movies\The Muppets (2011)\The Muppets (2011).mp4.  In Emby, after scanning, the movie is called The Muppets.  In your naming what do you prefer it be called?

[5dbhbPleEG 0]

I like to keep movie series clumped together.  For example, "Insurgent (2015)", the sequel to the movie "Divergent (2014)", would be listed very far apart from each other under the default movie titling.  My personal preference is to have "Divergent I (2014)" and "Divergent II - Insurgent (2015)".  I know this might seem wacky to some, but this is the way I have been doing things for years and I love being able to easily understand chronology and keep film series together.

 

Emby appears to do everything I want out of a media server and coming from Subsonic, the UI is outstanding (with metadata enabled of course :-)!  I don't mean for this to sound petty, but the only thing keeping me from donating as a Lifetime member is this filenaming issue.  I appreciate the quick responses answering my question, but I hope the Emby team considers creating a setting for this.  It is incredibly important to me and from this lazy position on my couch, it doesn't seem that hard to implement!  Heck, as a web-developer myself, I'd be happy to learn your source and create a solution if the team will accept my edits!

[Luke 42080]

Well, there is an existing solution, it's just one that would take a bit of time if this applies to a large number of titles. but you can always edit the names in the metadata manager and then lock the name field for those titles to prevent it from being changed later.

[5dbhbPleEG 0]

That's good to know!  Unfortunately, I do have a rather large collection.  I suppose I could invest a good amount of time going through my list making sure everything is perfect, but my fear is someday my system would crash or a software update would come and break it all again.  Not to say I don't trust your development team, I've just had the same thing happen to me after dedicating time getting my XBMC/Kodi collection just right!  Now I just rely on the filenames and hope the automated scraper gets close enough (which it usually does).

 

In any case, as I said before I wouldn't expect this to be a complicated feature and I'd be happy to develop it myself if your team would consider adding it to the project.  I imagine the db structure already contains a column for the file path, wouldn't it just be a matter of telling the UI to read from that field instead of the scraped title?  I don't mean to make any of your lives more difficult, I would hope there are others out there who would find this feature useful.

 

Let me know if I can help any and thanks again for your prompt replies!!

[Deathsquirrel 745]

I like to keep movie series clumped together.  For example, "Insurgent (2015)", the sequel to the movie "Divergent (2014)", would be listed very far apart from each other under the default movie titling.  My personal preference is to have "Divergent I (2014)" and "Divergent II - Insurgent (2015)".  I know this might seem wacky to some, but this is the way I have been doing things for years and I love being able to easily understand chronology and keep film series together.

 

Emby appears to do everything I want out of a media server and coming from Subsonic, the UI is outstanding (with metadata enabled of course :-)!  I don't mean for this to sound petty, but the only thing keeping me from donating as a Lifetime member is this filenaming issue.  I appreciate the quick responses answering my question, but I hope the Emby team considers creating a setting for this.  It is incredibly important to me and from this lazy position on my couch, it doesn't seem that hard to implement!  Heck, as a web-developer myself, I'd be happy to learn your source and create a solution if the team will accept my edits!

 

Have you looked at boxsets?  If your example is typical they already do that and with the autoboxset plugin their creation can be automated.

[bluemonkey07 590]

I like to keep movie series clumped together. For example, "Insurgent (2015)", the sequel to the movie "Divergent (2014)", would be listed very far apart from each other under the default movie titling. My personal preference is to have "Divergent I (2014)" and "Divergent II - Insurgent (2015)". I know this might seem wacky to some, but this is the way I have been doing things for years and I love being able to easily understand chronology and keep film series together.

 

Emby appears to do everything I want out of a media server and coming from Subsonic, the UI is outstanding (with metadata enabled of course :-)! I don't mean for this to sound petty, but the only thing keeping me from donating as a Lifetime member is this filenaming issue. I appreciate the quick responses answering my question, but I hope the Emby team considers creating a setting for this. It is incredibly important to me and from this lazy position on my couch, it doesn't seem that hard to implement! Heck, as a web-developer myself, I'd be happy to learn your source and create a solution if the team will accept my edits!

Do you know titles can have a separate sort title?.. So in your scenario insurgent can still have it's proper title and in the metadata as in the sort title field call it divergent 2 and it will show in lists after divergent 1

[ebr 16185]

Vidman has the proper solution to the exact situation you presented but using box sets is also a good solution.

[5dbhbPleEG 0]

@@Deathsquirrel, I had not heard of the Auto Box Sets plugin before but I am looking into that now.  There are a great number of B-Movie series which I know won't show up on here, I'm sure there's a way to manually add them but again, I have a rather large collection.

 

@@Vidman, thanks for the tip.  This is a good workaround but I'd hate to have to do this manually for my entire collection.

 

I don't mean to be stubborn but it honestly seems to me the easiest fix is just enabling us to use our filename titles instead of the metadata ones!  I've offered my assistance and really feel like it could be a quick fix.  Think about it, Emby knows the filename in order to be able to play it, why can't the UI just default to that instead when the setting is checked?

 

I've noticed there is a feature request section of this forum.  You all have done a wonderful job of bringing me up to speed on things and offering some potential workarounds.  I will carefully consider both the boxsets plugin and the sort title field solutions, but they both seem rather daunting given the number of manual entries I'll need to provide.

 

I vote to consider this thread closed, I will provide my case over at the feature request section.

[ebr 16185]

The reason why we are trying to offer alternatives that exist is because this particular feature will probably only be wanted by a very small percentage of users.

 

When weighing in what features to add, the effort involved in creating and maintaining that feature is only part of the equation (and thanks for offering).  The other part is that each additional option or feature complicates the interface and setup process and requires support to explain why it exists and what it does when selected.  Our goal with Emby is to be as hands-off and easy to setup and use as possible and each additional option moves us further from that goal so we try to only add ones where their benefit (measured partially by the number of users who would want to use it) outweighs that additional complication.

 

So, posting in the feature request forum is the proper thing to do at this point because that offers you the opportunity to prove my first statement as incorrect.

 

Thanks.

[Deathsquirrel 745]

@@Deathsquirrel, I had not heard of the Auto Box Sets plugin before but I am looking into that now.  There are a great number of B-Movie series which I know won't show up on here, I'm sure there's a way to manually add them but again, I have a rather large collection.

 

Correct, if a boxset doesn't exist in TMDB for the titles in question a boxset won't be created.  You can create them by hand however.  As an example TMDB doesn't have a boxset for Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies.  I do.  It only took a few seconds to create, other than my feeling compelled to make a folder image for it instead of using an automatically created one.

[ebr 16185]

Also, one more comment - if all you are really concerned about is sorting, then there already kind of is a feature request for a sort by file name option - but it hasn't really gotten much traction.

[5dbhbPleEG 0]

@@ebr, that makes a lot of sense, thank you for that detailed explanation.  In regards to that other feature request you linked, if I could sort by filename that would be a good solution for me as well!

 

Thanks to everyone for giving me some things to think about!  One option I've been considering exploring is just leaving metadata disabled and relying on Kodi's metadata scrapers.  Kodi has been my local media solution for years, I had just hoped to find a solid transcoding platform to assist me over WAN.  Thanks to the Emby team for making the Kodi plugin, it works on all of my devices (albeit a little quirky sometimes).

[RanmaCanada 496]

Would really love that batch metadata replacement option, as I am sick and tired of Emby seeing my shows as season 1920 or season 720 because the groups have put those in brackets and emby thinks this is the season number.  I have so many anime that are screwed up by it, it's not funny.  It may be more of an anime plugin thing, but it's frustrating when I have shows like Dragonball Super, and it decides to make a Season unknown, specials, season 1, season 720 folder and nothing is named right, even after I have renamed the files and refreshed.  If the only way to fix this, is to delete all my metadata files, that sucks haha.