music library issue with mutiple discs and aritst folder naming

[Marv 9]

Hi,

 

I'm new to Emby and use it mostly because of the great Kodi addon. I have my music collection organized using MusicBrainz Picard and just came across some issues regarding how Emby handles specific situations.

 

Basically my folder structure looks like this:

 

Music

Artist XY

-fanart etc.

-artist.nfo

Album ABC

-tracks.mp3

-folder.jpg

-album.nfo

Album BCD

Album (CD 1)

-tracks.mp3

-folder.jpg

-album.nfo

Album (CD 2)

-...

 

This works without any issues. The problem now is when I have an artist that only has ONE album and THAT album has multiple disc

like this:

 

Music

Artist YZ

-fanart.etc.

-artist.nfo

Album DEF

Album (CD 1)

-tracks.mp3

-folder.jpg

-album.nfo

Album (CD 2)

-...

 

I this situation Emby can't find the artist.nfo and the corresponding artwork. I also tried moving the artist.nfo and artwork inside the "Album DEF" folder but this doesn't work aswell (this works for Kodi) Can this be fixed somehow?

 

 

The other problem I came across is when the artist folder does not exactly match the artist name that is specified in the nfo file. This happens for example for artists where the name ends with a dot (e.g. RUN D.M.C.)

In this case my folder would be named RUN D.M.C and Emby would not be able to read the nfo information. This also happens with AC/DC where my folder is named ACDC. Shouldn't Emby be able to just search for the artist nfo regardless of the folder name? Kodi alone doesn't have a problem with this second problem.

 

Can someone look into this please? I would really like to use Emby for music aswell!

Edited March 1, 2016 by Marv

[Luke 42079]

hi, in your folder structure example, could you perhaps show screenshot examples of the one that isn't working? i would like to see the files because the scenario you're outlining should be fine. So I think the issue might actually be something else. Thanks.

[Marv 9]

Hi,

 

thanks for your reply. I'm not at home atm but I will post some screenshots later.

 

What's with the second issue? Does the actual artst name specified in the nfo file indeed needs to match the artist folder? Because when I just use the local Kodi library there is no problem

[Marv 9]

Hi,

 

after checking the Kodi forums I decided to change my folder structure to:

 

• Artist ABC
  • Album X (CD 1)
  • Album X (CD 2)
  • Album Y
  • Album Z (CD 1)
  • Album Z (CD 2)

As I described above Kodi had problems aswell scraping artwork and information when using an additional album subfolder for multiple discs.

The problem was that Kodi (I think Emby aswell) always searches one folder level upwards from the music files for artist information. So with only one multiple disc album and additional disc subfolders (Album DEF example in my first post) it wasn't able to find anything.

So now everything works fine I think.

Will test this in Emby (hopefully this evening) and post a screenshot.

[Deathsquirrel 745]

Hi,

 

after checking the Kodi forums I decided to change my folder structure to:

 

• Artist ABC
  • Album X (CD 1)
  • Album X (CD 2)
  • Album Y
  • Album Z (CD 1)
  • Album Z (CD 2)

As I described above Kodi had problems aswell scraping artwork and information when using an additional album subfolder for multiple discs.

The problem was that Kodi (I think Emby aswell) always searches one folder level upwards from the music files for artist information. So with only one multiple disc album and additional disc subfolders (Album DEF example in my first post) it wasn't able to find anything.

So now everything works fine I think.

Will test this in Emby (hopefully this evening) and post a screenshot.

 

I can't speak to kodi but what works best for this in Emby is all the tracks from a multi-disc album in the same folder with the disc number and track numbers set correctly in ID3 tags.

[Marv 9]

So I tried out the structure I descirbed above. Finding the artist information is no issue anymore.

 

Basically it looks like this now (disc and tracknumbers all tagged with picard):

 

 

Only thing I don't like that much is that Emby doesn't stack multiple discs from the same album. Is this the normal behavior?

 

Another thing I recognized is that when scanning the library Emby overwrites the music nfo files with new information (I turned off everything metadata related in the options). Why is this happening?

 

 

Regarding my second issue: 

 

 

 

For example the above artist isn't recognized correctly as its name doesn't match the folder name which is K.I.Z (without the last dot). Is this a bug?

Edited March 3, 2016 by Marv

[CFC 25]

Folders can't end in period - at least in Windows system

That being said, I don't get that behavior for artists whose name end with a "."

 

 

CFC

 

 

[Marv 9]

Yes I know, that's why my folder doesn't end with a dot, but the artist of course is tagged with a dot at the end.

So I think Emby should find the folder regardless.

Same goes with AC/DC

Don't get why its shown correctly in your library 

Edited March 3, 2016 by Marv

[CFC 25]

Yes I know, that's why my folder doesn't end with a dot, but the artist of course is tagged with a dot at the end.

So I think Emby should find the folder regardless.

Same goes with AC/DC

Don't get why its shown correctly in your library 

Confirm where Emby is grabbing metada.

For my example above, it is getting it from --> C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\metadata\artists\T.I

not the actual music folder in library.

As to why it did that? I don't know

CFC

Edited March 3, 2016 by CFC

[Marv 9]

mine is appdata/emby/metadata/artists/K.I.Z.

but the actual path is /mnt/user/Media/Music/K.I.Z

 

I don't understand why it is doing this

Edited March 3, 2016 by Marv

[Deathsquirrel 745]

@@Marv you will not see two separate discs if all the tracks for the album are in the same folder, at least not in the web ui or any of the clients I've used.

[Marv 9]

maybe I'll switch to this solution then. The reason I always had individual disc folders was that I used different cdarts for each disc. But that's not important actually.

 

What I still don't understand is my second issue. Can someone clear this up please?

[Luke 42079]

I think for the second problem that is just something we need to improve. we still have a few parts of our system that are tied to the folders and it needs to become fully tag driven.

[Marv 9]

Is there any work in progress on the AC/DC issue or generally when there are artist folders that can't be named as the actual artist (e.g. Run-D.M.C >> Run-D.M.C.)

Emby is not able to find artwork and nfo-files located in artist folders in such cases.

[dcook 299]

You can open it in metadata manager and set correctly regardless of what the folder name is.

[Marv 9]

Paths in the metadata manager are all correct.

The problem only occurs in the library view. See here:

 

 

Regarding my second issue: 

 

 

 

For example the above artist isn't recognized correctly as its name doesn't match the folder name which is K.I.Z (without the last dot). Is this a bug?

[Luke 42079]

If you installed Emby Server fresh within the last 60-90 days, this should be handled perfectly now. if your installation is older than that, there may still be an issue. thanks.

[Marv 9]

I just tried with a clean install. Unfortunately, I still have the same problem.

When the artist folder name differs from the artist name tag no artwork and no information is shown in the artist view.

Somehow the album view shows the artist artwork. See below:

 

 

 

 

 

[Deathsquirrel 745]

I was about to say I don't have the same issue with that same artist, and I don't, but I note one difference.  My AC/DC music is in the path \\Server\Music\MB3\AC-DC rather than your \AC DC config.  Don't know if that's significant, but it's a difference.  The tags in the actual music files are all still AC/DC and I've never had a problem with Emby recognizing them without error.

[Luke 42079]

In those screenshots I see AC/DC everywhere except for the last one. Where is there an issue?

[Marv 9]

The issue is that there is no thumb (first picture) and the second picture should show the folder.jpg and fanart.jpg aswell. Also the artist info from my nfo-file is missing here.

As you can see in the third picture (on album level) the fanart.jpg is shown in the background eventhough it is located in the artist folder.

I just posted the last two pictures to show how Emby handles my paths.

[Marv 9]

As a side note: I know that I could just retag the corresponding artist and albumartist ID3 tags so that they match the artist directories or vice versa but I think Emby should be able to handle this on its own.

The problem is I have also other AC/DC songs for example on different compilations and I don't want to retag all of them manually aswell.

As I have a very large music collection and everything tagged automatically with MusicBrainz Picard this is not the solution for me.

 

Because of this I use the Kodi music database on its own at the moment and don't have it synced with my Emby Server.

Kodi itself does not have an issue with artists like AC/DC, R.E.M., Run-D.M.C. etc. where the directory is named ACDC, R.E.M or Run-D.M.C (without the ending dot).

Even when playing the same artists from compilation albums the correct artwork from my local artist folders is shown regardless if it matches the naming exactly.

 

I would really like to sync my music between Emby and Kodi aswell like I do with movies and tvshows without any issues but this last step still keeps me away from doing so.

 

Please, please take a look at this.