Movie and TV show posters and banners missing from UI after update to 3.1.4

[alchemi183 2]

This morning I updated to Emby Server 3.1.4, and immediately afterwards I noticed that all of the movie and TV show images (posters and banners) had vanished when browsing via the web. I checked the metadata manager and the images are missing from there too. Also, on each of those "entries" via the web interface you can "edit images" and typically I will see the posters there, but now they are all gone.

 

The JPG images files themselves, as well as the NFO files, are still saved with the media on the hard drive. I double-checked the library settings and the Movies and TV libraries are both set to save metadata alongside the media directly on the disk (I set it like that initially upon installing and configuring Emby the first time, and that setting is still set).

 

After I noticed this problem, I came here to see if it was a common problem. I'm not seeing other reports of it, so I guess not. I saw that there was already a 3.1.5 version, so I updated to that thinking that maybe it contained a fix for this issue, but the problem remains. I'm wondering if it may be related to the SQLite update mentioned in the 3.1.4 release notes.

 

My environment is fairly typical--Windows 10, 64-bit. The only non-default thing I can think of that I've done, is that I run Emby Server as a service, which really ought to be the default anyway. The service runs as my normal Windows user, so that it has complete access to my user directory and my NAS shares. When I run the installer to update to a newer version, I always just run the standard Windows installer which installs, in my case, to C:\Users\steve\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server. The service can run it fine from there. I've double-checked that the cache and metadata directories Emby is using are the ones inside C:\Users\steve\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server, and they are.

 

The procedure I always follow when I upgrade is to first, shut down the service. Then I run the installer. Then, because the installer automatically starts the program (but not the service) I shut that down by right clicking on the icon in the task bar and choosing the option to exit Emby, then I run it as a service again.

 

I suppose it's possible that after an upgrade, when the program first runs it could start some sort of process to convert something from an older format to newer, and that I interrupt that when I stop that instance of Emby and then start it again as a service. Maybe something like that caused this image issue?

 

Ultimately, I just want to get the images back in Emby. As I said, they're already on the hard drive alongside the video files themselves, so I don't want to re-download the images from the internet, I just want Emby to use the files that are already there. I'm thinking that I could click on each library node and choose "Refresh metadata", but I'm concerned that may trigger a mass re-download of all metadata and images from the internet, when I don't really need that. (I have around 2,000 movies and about 60 TV shows averaging about 20 episodes per TV show, I'd guess, so redownloading all of the images and metadata again could run into API limits.) Could someone give me some guidance about how to get it to recognize the images already on disk? I'm guessing that maybe I could temporarily turn off the metadata downloaders that go to the internet, and then do a "refresh", and then turn the auto-metadata-downloaders back on? Would that work? I might have a log file, but thought I'd start by finding out if others have seen this issue, and if there is a straightforward way to get Emby server to recognize the images already on disk. Thanks for your help.

[alchemi183 2]

And one thing I didn't mention in the original post is that, curiously, although all movie and TV show images are missing, the movie "Collections" tab still has images. Also, the three custom images that I had previously set on my Movies, TV, and Collections root library entries were not lost.

Edited January 28, 2017 by alchemi183

[Happy2Play 9785]

Haven't noticed any image issue in new Release.  Have you tried a library scan?

 

As for running as a service and updates there are dozens of topic on it.  Have you tried this?

[alchemi183 2]

I figured out from the logs that something about updating today made Emby lose access to the media files on my NAS. It's odd, because I could still get at them fine from a file explorer, and as I've already mentioned, the Emby service runs under my same user account, so it's hard to imagine it was a permissions problem either. Rebooting the computer and then running another library scan solved it. This hadn't happened in any of the dozens of updates I'd done previously, but I'm glad to have it resolved.

 

 

Haven't noticed any image issue in new Release.  Have you tried a library scan?

 

As for running as a service and updates there are dozens of topic on it.  Have you tried this?

 

Yeah, I'd run a library scan twice after the update, and it didn't help, until I rebooted the whole computer and then ran a library scan again.

 

Thanks for the pointer to that update script. After reading quite a bit of that thread, and the script itself, it looks to do more or less exactly what I do when I do it manually, including stopping the process that the installer starts, and then starting the service. it will help to not have to do that manually anymore and to be able to put the check for a new version as a scheduled task within Emby.