New to Emby, Long-Time Kodi User issues...

[Powerhouse 0]

So I setup a new Server (48TB FreeNas server, over 3000 Movies and 700 TV Series, 4k Music Videos, and a huge Music library), which is working great.

Decided to give Emby a go, as I've read about some of its features that Plex lacks (mostly any Skin should work in Kodi with Emby), among other things (pause and resume in another room, etc).

 

Installed the Emby Server Jail in FreeNAS, had some issues at first with my shares, but got them sorted and now Emby Server can see all my data, and everything seems to work. Kodi version 16.1 on a Shield TV with the easy install of Emby worked (almost too easy).

 

Now, on to the issues...

 

1. Setting up the initial scan of my Movies into the Emby server took over 13 hours to complete. I thought this was strange as all my Movies (and TV, Music, and Music Videos) all have .NFO and artwork in the folders (tagged and have been working in Kodi for several years now, using the MediaElch program to download all the images and create the .NFO file). Using SMB shares from the FreeNAS server into Kodi (before trying Emby), took about 1-2 hours. I read this might be caused by a setting in the Emby Server that add's image URL's to the .NFO files regarding Posters, Banners, etc. So I check and guess what, now all my .NFO files have these URL's in them. So whats the point of having all these local files, if Emby is going to by-pass them and go to these URL's to download the files. And Emby is by-passing my local files, and I've noticed that lots of the Artwork I have for Movies is now Animated, and previously, I haven't downloaded any Animated Posters (as I was on Kodi 15.2 which doesn't support that feature).

 

- How to fix this: Have a check box, when you add your Movies (or TV Shows, etc), that asks, do you currently have Artwork (Posters, Banners, Fanart, etc). If 'Yes' remove the checkbox that will add URL's to your .NFO files. If 'N', carry on and add those URL's (or better yet, download the artwork into the folder the Movie is located in, so you only will use that services bandwidth once, not each time you setup a new Kodi box with Emby).

 

2. So after the 13+ hours (went to bed, got up, when to work, got home), Kodi 16.1 on my Shield TV, is giving me an error, that Emby can't see my data. So what I needed to do, was add Path Substitution for Movies first, in the Emby Server, before actually adding my Movies into the Library. So to fix this error, I had to re-sync the Library, which took a couple more hours. Needless to say, I forgot this part while adding my TV Series, and that added even more time to get that fixed as well.

 

-Another fix, perhaps a friendly reminder, before adding your Media to Emby Server, that a Box pops up, stating that you need to make sure your Path Substitution is setup correctly first, before adding your Media to Emby.

 

Finally...

 

3. So Now that all my .NFO files have URL's in them, how do I remove said URL's, is there an automated way in Emby Server? I would hate to have to re-create 3000+ .NFO files to fix this issue. I have local images and .NFO files for a reason, they are faster than going to a URL to retrieve that info (plus that puts a lot of strain on these hosting servers). Also, because of these URL's, Emby is bypassing all my already downloaded artwork, which I would like to get working again.

 

Thanks for listening, and for anyone who can give me help with issue number 3. 

[pünktchen 1409]

3. So Now that all my .NFO files have URL's in them, how do I remove said URL's, is there an automated way in Emby Server? I would hate to have to re-create 3000+ .NFO files to fix this issue. I have local images and .NFO files for a reason, they are faster than going to a URL to retrieve that info (plus that puts a lot of strain on these hosting servers). Also, because of these URL's, Emby is bypassing all my already downloaded artwork, which I would like to get working again.

 

Thanks for listening, and for anyone who can give me help with issue number 3. 

 

You could use TextCrawler and a RegEx like this <thumb>[\s\S]*?<\/thumb>

But please don't make the same mistake one more time - you should always test before anything touches your media library!

[Powerhouse 0]

So I think I have kinda figured out the issue to number 3 (and wasn't even aware that this was the case). But in the metadata downloader I use (MediaElch) it puts in URL as well. So I'm not really sure, if they are different or not from the ones used by Emby.

 

However, this brings up a few more questions.

 

4. The Posters, Background/Fanart, etc that I have in each Movie folder are static. Yet in Kodi 16.1, I now have lots of animated Posters and Backgrounds/Fanart. Is this something that Emby is pulling from the URL's in the .NFO files?

 

5. If it does pull these Posters and Backgrounds/Fanarts, from the URL's, this is a change in the way Kodi is supposed to work. As has been stated in numerous places on the kodi Wiki and within forum posts, Kodi will read all .NFO's and artwork in the folder first, then scrap for anything that may be missing. So even if you setup the data source to use a scraper, it will still default to the local files first, then search for additional artwork if you are missing any.

 

6. If I remove all the .NFO and Fanart in the Movie folder (so just the Movie file is left). How do I re-scrap this using Emby Server, and put these files back into the Movie folder. I just tried to do this for one of my Movies, and although I could see all the Info and Artwork in the Emby Server, every time I clicked Save, it didn't actually save anything to the Movie folder.

 

Again, thanks for any and all help.

[pünktchen 1409]

4. Have you changed your Kodi skin with update to Jarvis? Many skin do install additional addons they download additional artwork.

 

5. Emby does the same as Kodi. It uses local metadata and artwork and depending on your settings downloads missing artwork. But not by urls from nfos as far as i know.

 

6. Dashboard -> Metadata -> Store metadata and artwork into media folders

[Powerhouse 0]

The Skin is the default Confluence.

 

So I do have the setting checked 'Store Metadata and Artwork into media folders'.

 

So I wonder if its a permissions issue. I will have to check in FreeNAS.

[Luke 42080]

Hi, welcome. I'll try to answer all of these.

 

Starting with #1 - Emby does use your NFO but will also supplement with internet metadata. In order to help speed up the library scan, we don't always download images immediately and we just save the urls. So here is how you could have prevented #1:

 

- Enable the setting to download all images in advance. Then Emby would have written image paths in your NFO's instead of image URLs

 

- And/Or go into the Metadata settings section and disable features that you don't care about. This can dramatically speed up the process of importing new content and would have prevented the image retrieval from ever happening.

[Luke 42080]

For #2, Path Substitution is not related to the library scan in anyway at all. @@Angelblue05 do you know about this error message? Is it possible the wording of the message can be improved?

 

By not related to the library scan, I mean to say that you can setup Path Substitution before, after or during the process of importing content and it doesn't matter as far Emby Server is concerned. It only matters when you try to play content, and is strictly optional and designed to be an optimization to help ensure playback is happening in the most efficient way possible.

 

On wait - the add-on probably needs to record the path substitution config values, and do a resync whenever they change.

[Luke 42080]

For #3, there is no function within Emby to do this, you'll need to use some kind of bulk text editor. Having said that, if you have local images, these are always given priority, at least as far as Emby is concerned.

[Angelblue05 4132]

The add-on needs to know the Emby path substitution before importing the files in Kodi, if Native playback (direct paths) is selected. There's a verification while we import files, in the event Kodi cannot locate the file, the following message displays:

You may need to verify your network credentials in the add-on settings or use the Emby path substitution to format your path correctly (Emby dashboard > library). Stop syncing?

I'll add a mention of it during the initial setup, however the pop up should happen as soon as the path is detected to be incorrect. The user already has the option to stop syncing and try again, after making adjustments server side.

[Luke 42080]

Suppose everything is already synced and the path substitution values change. does the add-on handle that and resync?

[Angelblue05 4132]

No, in this case, the user would have to reset and let the add-on resync the content. There's no websocket message for this, right? There's no way the add-on can know a path substitution was applied.

 

If the user is using add-on playback, then the real-time path is retrieved, so it's not a problem.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Angelblue05

[Luke 42080]

No, in this case, the user would have to reset and let the add-on resync the content. There's no websocket message for this, right?

 

Actually wait, in this scenario, it's better to handle at the item level. So for example, during the sync process you get an item with an Id that you already have, except the Path has changed. That should be easy to handle. I wouldn't be surprised if you already are.

[Angelblue05 4132]

Yeah, it already does that and updates the path if it changed. But if we are talking about needing to update all the items, then it's just faster to do a reset/resync since it will skip any existance verification against the Kodi database. Technically, a reset would start with a clean slate, the user also has the option to repair their database, which will force refresh all items already in database, which would update paths with the latest path substitution.

[Powerhouse 0]

So to answer some of my own questions (and bring up a few more).

 

#3 The URL's are actually put in by my media manager MediaElch (don't know when this started, but it wasn't always like that). So no worries with that issue (I guess).

 

#6 I've checked all the permissions in FreeNAS and they are all correct, but Emby Server will not create any .NFO or Posters, Banners, Fanart, etc in a Movie Folder (for example) that I delete all the metadata in. However, in the Emby Server, It does (after a bit) grab all the info that would normally be written to an NFO and has all the artwork. But, clicking on Save, doesn't happen to do anything with regards to copying this into into the Movie folder.

 

And to answer the question above, yes I have Dashboard -> Metadata -> Store metadata and artwork into media folders selected.

 

So a couple of other issues I've noticed.

 

#7 I have lots of Movie Sets, that are recorded in the .NFO file, but Emby doesn't pick this up (I've read that you don't support this yet). Is there an ETA on when this might be implemented?

 

I even tried the Auto Boxed Sets plug-in, but this found nothing (followed this thread http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/3898-automatic-box-sets-collections-1001/).What did happen, was I finally replaced two of my DVD movies (The Terminator, and Terminator 2), with freshly ripped BluRay versions. However, I copied just these movies to my FreeNas server (wiping out all the data in the DVD folders). So with just the Movies in the folders, Emby Server picked up these two Movies, and created a Set for them (it's currently the only Movie Set on my Emby Server). Which is weird, as I have all the Terminator Movies, yet it only picked up the two that didn't have any metadata in the folders.

 

I've also followed AngelBlue05's info to clear out Emby from Kodi ("Emby integrates into the Kodi database, therefore the proper way to remove it is to launch the add-on > reset local database > Yes to all prompts. Kodi will shut down"), and start it again (taking many more hours to add all my data back into Kodi). I will see if this fixed the issue when I would manually run a Emby Sync on my Kodi system, that eventually it would give me the error "Emby for Kodi - Library sync thread has exited! You should restart Kodi now. Please report this on the forum." Will check this out when I get home from Work.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Powerhouse

[ebr 16185]

Which is weird, as I have all the Terminator Movies, yet it only picked up the two that didn't have any metadata in the folders.

 

That's because, as is indicated on the plug-in description page of that plug-in, it relies on information that is gathered by Emby's metadata gathering.  If your metadata doesn't have this information, then Auto Box Sets won't work.

 

So, if you have local metadata from some other source, we read that and the box set info isn't there.  But, if you didn't have existing metadata, Emby would go out and get it and then it would have the information Auto Box Sets requires.

[Angelblue05 4132]

@@Powerhouse I don't recall you mentioning you were crashing? Next time, post your Kodi log. There's a few things that are fixed in beta, but if you don't post - there's no way to know what the issue can be.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Powerhouse 0]

@@ebr I understand why the add-on did what it did, I just find it funny, that it would only list a set, if there was no metadata in the folder.

 

Also, why doesn't Emby read the sets tag in .NFO files (http://kodi.wiki/view/NFO_files/movies#Movie_sets)?

 

@@Angelblue05 This error happened initially, and I believe it was caused by the missing path substitution (initially for Movies, then again for TV Shows). This was fixed, after wiping out Kodi on the Shield TV, and doing a complete reinstall of Kodi and them Emby.

[Luke 42080]

Reading the set tag is something we'd like to do in the future.

[ebr 16185]

Yes, reading the set tag is something we'd like to support but that doesn't give us the same ability to provide rich metadata for the set itself as our method does.