Continuing Coverart Problems

[saj 14]

I know there has been a lot of discussion around Coverart issues, but I'm not sure if there is still a known/open problem. Anyway, Coverart problems seem to arise very frequently with updated releases. It seems to fail most frequently displaying collections. At the moment, if I uninstall Coverart, everything display properly and quickly. If I reinstall Coverart, the images for the first two rows of my collections display properly, but none of the others. I have about 120 movie oollections. If is not uncommon for any Emby app to be very slow or seem to hang trying to display covers with Coverart active. Then eventually it will start working again, probably because you guys fix something. I usually try to just wait it out, but it happens so frequently, I wonder if there is a way to fix it more permanently, other than just uninstalling. I think it does a very nice job when it works, but, at least to me, it seems to be the number one cause of recurring problems. Thanks.

[GhostRider 49]

Couple of things worth trying before deleting Coverart:

 

1) Delete your browser cache, restart the browser. If this does not help try:

 

2) Delete Emby Browser cache:

 

1. Stop Emby
2. On Windows Navigate to the hidden folder C:\users\User ID\AppData\Roaming\MediaBrowser-Server
3. Rename cache to cache.old
4. Restart Emby
5. When you first launch the web client wait a while as it takes the server time to rebuild the art work

Edited April 2, 2017 by GhostRider

[ebr 16187]

Hi.  On what hardware is your server?

[saj 14]

It runs on a desktop I custom built. It has an AMD A8 7600 Processor (4 Compute Cores + 6 Graphics Cores), and 8 Gb memory running Windows 10 Pro. It runs fast and flawlessly without Coverart. And often it does the same with Coverart. However, there have been numerous times, like now, when Coverart is obviously interfering. The symptom is always that some cover images just don't display or take practically forever to display. Right now if I turn on Coverart, the collections display shows all the collections, but only the first two rows have cover images. I uninstall Coverart and all the covers appear immediately (without the Coverart treatments, of course). I have no performances issues with the machine at all, except with Coverart. It is dedicated to running emby server.

[saj 14]

I should also have said the processors run at 3.10 GHz.

[ebr 16187]

Do you have a server log demonstrating the issue?

 

How to Report a Problem

[pgriffith 88]

I've had many issues with Coverart in the past, and its ALWAYS been treatments on collections/boxsets.

 

Occasionally it just stops working, to the point where I need to restart the server to get it to respond again.

 

Turn off processing for collections and it works fine. And this is the weird bit, if I give it a day or two then turn collection processing back on it will generally work fine for up to months at a time.

 

Tis a fickle beast!

[saj 14]

I just recreated the problem a couple times. I am attaching two server logs that should cover the two recreations. The second time, Emby hung when I tried to display movies. The collection display still looked as I described before. I stress again, that uninstalling Coverart always eliminates these types of problems. Every time I have had Emby performance issues, Coverart has been implicated.

Log1.txt

Log2.txt

[ebr 16187]

Neither of those logs contain any processing of images by CoverArt (in the first one it wasn't installed yet).

 

So, I'm not sure what we're dealing with in your case.

[saj 14]

OK, so can you describe the Coverart processing? After it is installed, does it wait for an item to  be accessed before it changes the primary image? And likewise, after it is uninstalled, when do the primary images get replaced with the vanilla versions? I can't say exactly what is happening, but the problem is with displaying the Coverart processed primary images. After I install Coverart in the current version, I consistently see just the first couple rows of collection images displayed. All the other collections just have blank images. It appears that if I look at the individual metadata for a collection showing a blank image, the primary image will first show as blank, but after a bit it will fill in with the Coverart image. It's not just that the image creation is slow though, because it seems to sometimes just sit with most of the collection images blank for a very long time. I have tried rescanning the library, and the images stay the same (mostly blank). But if I uninstall Coverart and restart the server then all the vanilla images display, seemingly instantaneously. Since I don't seem to be the only one experiencing these issues, I really think there is a continuing problem with Coverart. I can run for a very long time without it and never see any of these problems. I have to agree that it is a fickle beast.

[ebr 16187]

I'm not doubting there is an issue (or maybe more than one) but, if the log you provided matched up with when you had the problems, then the issue is not the time it takes to create the treated images because none were created in the lifetime of that log.  It would have to be something else.

 

To answer your questions, the images are never replaced.  They are generated and stored in a cache.  If you uninstall CA, then the images are retrieved from a different cache.  It is almost as if the cached CA images are somehow corrupted or something...

[saj 14]

Thanks, that's helpful. I will do a more robust test and try to send you enough logs to cover whatever is going wrong. For clarification, when I uninstall Coverart, is the cache with the Coverart treated images retained or flushed? I'm wondering if reinstalling Coverart requires recreating all those images or if it reuses the cache it had before.

 

Thanks

[ShoutingMan 101]

I can't say exactly what is happening, but the problem is with displaying the Coverart processed primary images. After I install Coverart in the current version, I consistently see just the first couple rows of collection images displayed. All the other collections just have blank images.

I've got a thread on the same problem, where we're trying to understand the behavior on my system, too.

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/user/136972-shoutingman/

[saj 14]

Sorry I haven't had time to follow up again, but it looks like there is another active thread on this or a similar issue. I have been thinking more about this, and when I see problems arise, it is not when Coverart should be doing a lot of processing. My database doesn't change that frequently, and changes are always small (like adding a movie or two). Since the Coverart images are cached and shouldn't be changing very much, it seems the problem is more likely with the processing/management of the Coverart image cache. This is why I asked whether the Coverart cache is retained across an uninstall, reinstall cycle. It looks like it must be, because when I reinstall it, I don't see a big delay while Coverart recreates all the images. It's just that whatever display issue was there before is still there. This time it's displaying only a small number of the collection cover images, as discussed above. Unless something about a new server release is triggering a recreation of the Coverart image cache, the cache should still be intact and not require any major Coverart activity. Obviously, I know very little about the details of your processes, but I'm thinking the problem may not be with the actual creation of the images. It would be interesting to see if the images are in the cache when they're not being dispayed. And if not, why did they disappear.