Unable to update metadata for many albums

[punchycool 6]

Ubuntu server: Version 3.0.5871.0

 

Permissions are correct across my media - yes, I recursively checked. For some reason, many albums do not let me update the metadata using the Emby Metadata Manager. The edit form saves correctly (no errors in the log) after making an edit and hitting save, but for example, the Album Artist field is currently null, but it will not take any value. I also cannot set a Genre; it too is null, but will not persist any value I give it. All of the media plays fine. For the above example, when I navigate through Artists and get down to this artist, notice the fourth one below in red has no album artist (because I cannot edit it).

 

I have tried this from Firefox using the web client and from the iOS app - both will not save. I have alternatively tried the in-line editor from the web client, but same result. I have also used puddletag to try to battle with the fields, but it seems those values are not being used by emby plus the Album Artists field is not available in this app.

 

I have some other albums that simply will not let me update these simple fields either directly with emby. Yet, hundreds of other folders/files I am able to massage as needed.

 

For example, I have this one stored like this on disk.

      $/Queens of the Stone Age/Songs for the Deaf/No One Knows.mp3

 

Edited February 23, 2016 by punchycool

[punchycool 6]

I figured out this image upload thing and cleaned up my post ^.

[punchycool 6]

Another example of metadata I cannot change is this. Does this occur because it gets this data from musicbrainz and they would need to correct this? I tried locking the metadata set, but no good.

 

    The Beastie Boys/Hello Nasty

 

The emby UI will not let me set any of the songs' Album Artist to null for this album. If I could edit this, it would let me eliminate duplicate Artists in the emby UI.

I can edit the album.nfo file directly by removing the albumartist element.

However, the next time the library syncs, it picks up this element again and gives me duplicate albums again in the emby UI.

 

<artist>The Beastie Boys</artist>
<albumartist>Beastie Boys</albumartist>

[Luke 42077]

Hi, generally it's best to update your embedded song tags and just let Emby Server react to those updates, rather than trying to edit song metadata in Emby.

[punchycool 6]

I'm no ID3 tag expert, but apps like puddletag do not have or expose the album artist field. Is there a better Linux app gui or cli that is better to manage tags? Thx a lot Luke. Your team is simply amazing.

[punchycool 6]

I finally solved this...in my ID3 tag editor - in my case, Puddletag - I needed to add another column, albumartist, so I can edit this. This explains all kinds of issues I'm having. In summary, I understood what Luke was saying, I just couldn't find where to edit this field on the tags.

[punchycool 6]

Note: I discovered several other columns on the id3 tag that helps to organize that stubborn music data. This may help someone.

• disc                   //the disc number in a set (e.g., 1 of n)
• totaldiscs            //the total discs in a set; cannot be null if disc is not null   (e.g., n of 2)
• discnumber          //unsure what this represents, but some of my data has this set to not null which causes the item to be grouped under a section (e.g., Disc 1)