All my audio dramas disappeared in latest upgrade

[steamhead 10]

Just upgraded from 3.5.3 to 4.0.2 on Ubuntu 18.04.01 LTS, everything appeared to work OK until I checked my Audio Dramas, which are all gone in the web client and other clients (still on the server).

 

The directory structure is still there, along with all the images, just no episodes.

 

The library type is defined as Books, I can't remember exactly why I picked on that style, but it was something to do with the directory structure I needed, so Music didn't help as it tried to organise by Album and Artist, Audiobook never found anything (not even directory structure) so I settled on Books, which up until the upgrade worked a treat.  I've also tried mixed content, and that does the same, shows the folders, but no content :-(

[Luke 42077]

Hi, what you'll need to do is remove the books library, then add it back using the Audio Books content type. It's important to make sure the books library has been removed. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[steamhead 10]

Audio Books, whilst technically "working", is no use for Audio Drama, as it organises the collection like music, basically spliiting things up by album and artist.  Whereas audio drama's are closer to TV series in that they are spilt into "Shows" and within each show are "Seasons" (typically box sets, but sometimes individual releases in a specific sequence) and then within that Episodes.  So audio books doesn't present the content in a way that is easy to consume.  I had found, after trying many variants, that Books was the best one for presenting audio dramas.  I used the Album mp3 attribute to indicate seasons, and everything worked surprisingly well.

 

Having removed the old library and re-added it as Mixed Content, this did get closer, in that as well as adding the directory structures it also loaded the individual episodes, so thanks for that tip.

 

However, there are a couple of problems that I've found so far (there may be more to follow as I review what has loaded).

1. There is a show called Crackanory, which is the audio version of a TV show.  That directory listed the individual albums, but not the episodes.  The albums had the > icon to indicate they were playable, but when you clicked on it, got "no compatible streams".  Originally at my first attempt this had identified itself as the TV series, so I deleted the library and readded it with all of the meta-data sources removed (no .nfo files visible either). On the re-add it didn't load any meta-data for the show, but still has the albums without the episodes.  I also squashed the directory structure, so all episodes were in a single directory, regardless of album, and now it seems to think it's a TV show again, with a sub-header of "Seasons", but nothing listed.  Not sure why it still thinks it's a TV show, having cut-off connection to meta data sources, but I have many other "Shows" that also have TV equivalents, and they worked fine.

 

2. Under the content type of "Books", though organised under album, each episode had it's own image, picked up from the Album art of each mp3 file.  Under "Mixed content" the image for each episode is only picked up from the first track in the album, so the whole series ends up with the same image.  Manually setting each image through the client is a non-starter with around 3000+ episodes, so is there a way to get "Mixed content" to display the individual image, rather than 1 per album?  This difference in behaviour is probably what swayed my from "Mixed content" to "Books" in the first place (it was a long time ago, so I can't remember).

 

Have you thought of a new content type for "Audio Dramas" as they are quite a different beast to organise from Music/Audiobooks, more like TV. Whilst there probably isn't a good meta-data provider for them, most of what's needed can be picked up from the MP3 tags, and many publishers also use a delimited list of the actors in the Artist tag, so they could even have actor links like TV shows and movies.

 

Having said all that "Books" worked perfectly for as long as I've been using Emby, albeit without the actor feature.  Why did it stop working at 4.x, and can it be fixed?

[Luke 42077]

Hi there, if you select the folders tab under your audio books library, it will appear the same way as before. You can even make the default tab in home screen settings if you wish. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[steamhead 10]

The Audio Books Folder view doesn't work either. When you reach the folder level containing the content, the folder picks up the name of one of the albums within the folder, rather than the folder name, so you lose the name of the show.  Then once within the folder it shows 1 image for the whole folder and then lists the tracks with no images, and no indication of what album they belong to, so you lose the Boxset/Series view, and the individual episode images.

 

So, now Books has stopped working the Mixed Content view seems closest, but that has still got the problem of images by album rather than by episode. 

 

The Books view was better, before this release when it worked

[steamhead 10]

Also I couldn't swear to it, because I've been through so many permutations over the last few days, but I think the Books used to list Title and Album under each entry, whereas Mixed Content is listing Title and Artist under each item.  This means I can't see which series or box set the episodes belong to, which I thought I could see before the upgrade, unfortunately I can't go back and look.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions for alternatives, but I'm still puzzled why Books is no longer working.  When I try and add a library using that type it still says it is for Text and Audio, and the Books naming guide states that music files are acceptable, so I can't see why its showing all my folders, but no longer showing any of the mp3 files.

[Luke 42077]

Books is intended for text books. Apologies for the confusion. We will update the help text.

[steamhead 10]

The confusion is that at version 3.5.3 it was documented as for Text and Audio, both in the User Interface and Help pages, and it worked for Text and Audio (well audio at least I hadn't tried text yet) and I can't see why you would take away a feature that was working, when I can't see an advantage for taking it away.  It made great sense to me to be able to include both in a single library, so you can have all your books in one place regardless of medium.  This is also useful for Audio Dramas, as many come with scripts as extras in pdf form.

 

Just to show you what's been lost by removing the feature, I've spun up a new machine with the old version of Emby on, to show you how perfect it was for Audio Dramas.

 

First you could organise your content in many levels of folders to separate different types of dramas, and then within that break it up into "shows", some shows have various ranges and spin-offs within, so folder level organisation is great for being able to find exactly what you need, and the books type supported that perfectly.

 

Then when you get to Show level, you get something like this -

You get to see each episode layed out using track sequence number, you can see the Album title which groups each episode into it's overall box-set or series, with the episode title beneath, and you get to see the artwork for each individual episode. Any sub-folders, such as extras, are shown at the beginning, allowing navigation to them if needed.  The caption for the page retains the name of the folder itself, which is the Range, Spin-off or Show being viewed.

 

Verdict - Almost perfect. There are some things that could make it even better, but for now I'd take just being able to use it again.

So then when that broke when I moved to 4.0.2 I tried Audiobooks as you suggested.  The default view was really unsuitable, as it treated everything like music albums, so there was no way to organise based on content.  I tried the folder view, which gave organisation up to the point that you reach content, but then it became useless for audio drama, as you get this -

The folder name is gone, replaced by, as far as I can guess the name of the album with the highest track number.  The folder image seems to be picking up from the last file in alphabetical order.  All the indivual episode images are now gone, as is the album name, so you can no longer see the Box-set or series that the episode was part of.  Worse still, having reached content it appears to have collapsed the sub-directories into this one, interleaving the extras and the episodes by sequence number.

So the verdict on Audiobooks is that it's not suitable for audio drama.

Then I tried mixed content.  Which starts you off in folder structure just like books, and preserves the folder names even when content is reached, when you get this -

 

You get the sub folder for extras like before, you get each episode by track number like before, but the individual images have been lost, replaced instead with the image for the first episode in the album, which can be quite confusing.  The album name has also gone, so you can't see which box-set/season you are in, some times you are lucky if the first episode image also includes an overall title, but not always.

Verdict - Almost, but not quite.  If mixed content had options like "Caption by Album and Title" and "Use individual artwork" the I'd be back to where I was with books, but until then, or you reinstate Books to its full function, it looks like I'm stuck running an old Emby for my audio dramas.

Like I say, the confusing thing here is you had a great option for audio dramas (even if you've never considered them as a form of media), and I can't see what you gain by turning it off.

[Luke 42077]

Thanks for the feedback. We are working on improving the audio books experience.

[steamhead 10]

That's great, just bear in mind that Audio Dramas are different beasts to Audio Books.  Where an Audio book is most often a self contained work, with a single actor narrating, audio dramas are episodic, often each with their own artwork and organised in series more like TV.

 

You had quite a good Audio Drama experience with Books until you turned off audio in the latest version.  Any chance you can turn that back on until you improve the Audio Books feature?

 

Alternatively would it help for me to raise some new feature requests on to of "Mixed content" as that is "Almost but not quite" there?

[Luke 42077]

That's great, just bear in mind that Audio Dramas are different beasts to Audio Books.  Where an Audio book is most often a self contained work, with a single actor narrating, audio dramas are episodic, often each with their own artwork and organised in series more like TV.

 

You had quite a good Audio Drama experience with Books until you turned off audio in the latest version.  Any chance you can turn that back on until you improve the Audio Books feature?

 

Alternatively would it help for me to raise some new feature requests on to of "Mixed content" as that is "Almost but not quite" there?

 

The thing is that the Folders tab in the audio books library actually gives you the same layout that you had before when it was a books library.

[steamhead 10]

Sadly it doesn't, unless I'm missing a setting or two somewhere, I've got an old instance of Emby 3.5.3 running now with Books working properly, so I can compare and contrast - and they are quite different, to the point where Audiobooks in folder view is not a useable option for audio drama series.

At folder level they are the same UNTIL you reach the level before content, at which point the folder name is ignored, and it picks one of the album names contained within that folder (seemingly at random) as the folder name, which makes it look like it contains only one story, or box set, rather than the name of the range that the folder had indicated.

 

But once you get to the level in which the content is found they really diverge.

In the v3.5.3 Books format (first picture in the preceding posts) you first get any sub-folders at the begining (where you can put all the extras), and then for each audio file you get individual pictures per file (episode) so you get to see all the individual episode's artwork. Then for each episode you get the Album and the Title, which lets you see the box set/series each belongs to and the individual episode title. You can either play the episode directly from this view, or you can click on the file to view the episode synopsis (Overview in meta data).

 

In the v4.0.2 audiobooks format (second picture in the preceding posts), once you reach the folder with content in it, it is completely different. Gone is the individual episode artwork, with just one piece of artwork for the whole folder (again seemingly at random, and not necessarily from the Album selected for the folder title), so all the wonderful episode artwork is lost. Then it collapses and combines all sub-folders, so you get all the content from each folder interleaved by track number at the one level. So in my case the extras appear in between the first few individual episodes. Each episode no longer shows you the album title, so you don't know what season or box set it belongs to, instead listing the artist name which is effectively the lead actor, charactor or content producer, which doesn't really help. You can also only play each title from this view, so there is no option to view the synopsis of each individual episode.

And oddly (and I've noticed this happens in music too sometimes) you sometimes get odd episodes listed out of order, using filename instead of title. If you look in the first picture (books) you will see The Dead Shoes #2 listed afterThe Dead Shoes #1,  in the second picture (audiobooks) you have DW4DAG-01_04 The Dead Shoes - Part 2 at the top of the list (file name). This is despite both views pointing at copies of the same sets of files, and the two files have consecutive track numbers and were created by the same process.

The mixed content view is much closer to the old Books behaviour than Audiobooks, but lacks the album title in the individual episode caption, and selects one piece of artwork per album, instead of showing each file's individual artwork.

[Luke 42077]

Ok thanks for the feedback. We will continue to work on improving it.