Plex to Emby

[rdstevens79 2]

@@cayars

@@Happy2Play

Setup:

Emby 4.2.1.0

Running on Windows 10 Pro

Content stored on Synology Rackstation

Movie/TV Formats: MKV, AVI, M4V

Metadata: NFO/XML

 

Like others, I am finally pulling away from Plex for multiple reasons. So far everything is working great, but I'm struggling with a few concepts that I'm trying to understand, and can't find the answers for.

 

First off, I tag all my media manually using Media Center Master. I have the option in MCM selected to create an NFO (Kodi/XBMC style). Media Center Master is storing all Album artwork directly with the Movie/TV Show, and Cast & Crew artwork is being stored at C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\ImagesByName\People\<LETTER>\<ACTORNAME>\folder.jpg. The additional to that, is that MCM decided awhile back that they would put direct TMDB references in the NFO instead of linking to the local actor art. For example:

<actor>

<name>Kevin Costner</name>

<role>Ethan Renner</role>

<thumb>https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300_and_h450_bestv2/ePo87kGyyY8JZ3z7Zm7Z2GYdmJ8.jpg</thumb>

</actor>

 

So even though MCM is still downloading Actor artwork locally, the NFO doesn't use it all as a reference.

 

Plex worked with that and had no issues with it.

 

Secondly, my folder structures is:

\\NAS\Movies\<Genre>\<NameOfMovie\<Movie.MKV>

 

I pulled in a folder at the <Genre> level, Horror for example, and Emby pulled in all of the titles in that folder. It took some time, but it finally pulled in the Album artwork for each of the titles as well. What it did NOT do, is pull in any Cast & Crew artwork. If I select Refresh Metadata on an actor then it will find artwork for that actor. Though I'm not sure where it's pulling it from...but more importantly, I don't want to sit there and select Refresh Metadata on every single actor for every single Movie/Show I have.

 

Plex had an option of "Get Info" on a title or artwork so you could actually see where it was pulling the content from. This was helpful because then I could see if Plex was pulling content from a scraper or from my local metadata (which I prefer as I'm a control freak).

 

My questions are this:

1. With my current configuration outlined above, is there a way to get Emby to display Cast & Crew artwork - without having to go in and refresh each one, one by one?

2. When Emby pulls in artwork that is not pulled from a local source where does it store it?

I looked in "C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server", but the only two folders I have in there are "programdata" and "system". I see under "programdata" there is a "metadata" folder that has "library", "livetv", "temp", and "views". Everything gets cryptic at that point.

3. If I just have a folder with the Movie title, and inside that folder the movie itself with no metadata, Emby can do nothing with that?

As an example, I put 5 movies each in their own folder with no metadata at all. Just the movie in the folder. I put these into a new folder (temp), then made a new Library in Emby for Movies. It pulled in the Titles but never found any artwork for anything, never went out and got any data about the Movies. I was expecting it to go out and scrape for these Movies. TheMovieDB is selected as a Metadata downloader, Metadata savers has Nfo checked, Movie Image Fetchers has The MovieDb, FanArt and Screen Grabber selected, I have it set to Save artwork into media folders and I also selected Download images in advance to try to force it. I also turned on Thumbnail image creation, but it never grabbed anything. These Movies are not obscure titles either. So it never scraped, and it never put anything into each of the Movies folders except for a BIF file.

4. Does "Identify" not work. Based on the above (#3), I attempt to "pull" metadata using the Identify feature. I used the IMDB number as that's what I have in my NFO, but it never found anything. Then I just tried searching on the Name of the Movie and the Year, and it again found nothing. The name of the movie is Arthur Christmas, the year 2011. No results found.

5. I read that Emby will write back to your NFO. Testing this, I modified the Genre of one of my Movies. It correctly rendered in Emby with the new Genre, but I didn't see it update my NFO. On the next Library refresh the Genre had been overwritten in Emby

 

All the above being said, loving Emby so far. My whole family loves it already (only been using it 2 days), LiveTV is brilliant! Just want to get these display options resolved so that I can better manage how things are viewed.

 

Please know that I have already thoroughly looked at this Wiki

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Wiki/wiki

 

I have looked around at everything on that, to include what I could find on this community forum.

 

Lastly, what are you using to tag your content if you do it yourself and don't let Emby handle auto tagging (although that doesn't seem to work for me), if not MCM already?

 

Thanks!

[Carlo 4561]

I believe your problem at heart is the NFO files being generated by MCM.

I too used to use MCM back when I ran Plex and also used Kodi.

 

What I found that made the whole process much easier was to stop using MCM but instead use Emby to create the NFO files (option setting) in the directory with the media.  I could then verify as media is added that it's correct and change covers at will and just get perfect meta-data and matching.

 

The other programs I use that will work with NFO files work great with the Emby generated files and they seem to be much more compatible across the board.

 

As far as fixing current items that have missing meta-data have you tried getting Emby to update these using the proper update option when scanning the library?

 

I'm typing this post from mobile so I can't easily post pics or links but can follow up with you if needed.

 

Carlo

[rdstevens79 2]

Carlo,

 

Thank you for the response. I had meant to come back and update this, but this is exactly what I ended up doing. Allowing Emby to scrape and create the NFO has worked out perfect, and it pulls in all of the Cast & Crew as well. Identify now also seems to be working, and so does "on the fly" metadata editing back to the NFO. Not sure what changed there, but it's working now.

 

It just kind of sucks because I have TB's of movies that I have already taken the time to properly tag with what should have been a "universal" method, and now I have to go back and do it all over again.....on TB's of movies Hopefully, like you said, if I ever switch from Emby my efforts here will play into the next solution if there ever is one.

 

I wrote some PowerShell scripts to automate most of this, but I still have to do the manual review which sucks.

 

Thanks, again.

[Luke 42083]

If editing doesn't update the nfo then it means you either haven't enabled nfo saving or the server is being denied write access to the file.

[rdstevens79 2]

Hey Luke,

 

Thanks for joining the party.

 

See above, it's all been sorted. If I allow Emby to scrape the data (and save the NFO locally), then it works perfect. If I am using a NFO that MCM created, Emby doesn't seem to like to update it or use that NFO as well.

 

This topic can be closed. The answer is basically allow Emby to scrape the media and everything should work fine.

[Luke 42083]

 

 

If I am using a NFO that MCM created, Emby doesn't seem to like to update it or use that NFO as well.

 

We'd have to look at an example as that's not true. A lot of people here use nfo files created by other software.

@@Happy2Play

[moviefan 187]

MCM has become broken in many ways.  And it's terrible with NFOs.  Plex isn't using those NFOs at all which is why it works fine.

 

One thing that MCM was doing consistently over the past few years (until I gave up on it and started using TinyMediaManager to rename my files/folders and download trailers) was ALWAYS putting the TMDB in for the IMDB field.  

 

I am guessing this is likely the issue the issue the user is running into here.  Emby cant update info because it has an invalid IMDB reference and doesnt know which movie to scrape.

 

I fixed this issue while I was still using MCM by simply deleting the nfos it would create and letting Emby recreate them (I realize that was the same fix here).

 

Outside of that you can manually fix the IMDB entry within Emby (or manually in the XML before moving) and all will be fine.

 

Otherwise you can go raise an issue on the MCM forums and be ignored indefinitely.  I complained so much Pete eventually banned me even though I have a lifetime license.

 

TinyMediaManager works WAY better for renaming and trailer downloading.  I dont need any of the other features cuz Emby does the rest.

[rdstevens79 2]

We'd have to look at an example as that's not true. A lot of people here use nfo files created by other software.

@@Happy2Play

It's definitely true, but for the sake of troubleshooting we'll just chalk it up to user error as I'm just going to have Emby rescrape it all and move on with life (already started).

 

@@moviefan

This wasn't my use case with MCM and Plex. I had an add-on with Plex that would make it look for local NFOs first. Worked great, and had been working great even up until a week ago when I decided to cut over to Emby. Looking at some of my remaining NFOs that were tagged by MCM, and it has the IMDB ID for the ones I spot checked. Though I won't say that's true for all of my movies/shows. I definitely won't be raising anything with MCM. I know that forum is pretty silent from personal experience. And I'll take a look at TinyMediaManager. One of the things I liked with MCM was TV Show episode renaming, and I haven't figured out how I was going to handle that with Emby alone, so that might do the trick. Thanks for sharing!

[moviefan 187]

One of the things I liked with MCM was TV Show episode renaming, and I haven't figured out how I was going to handle that with Emby alone, so that might do the trick. Thanks for sharing!

 

Emby can do this for you using the Auto Organize plugin.

 

There are currently issues with it right now due to the TVDB update that broke API integrations, but besides the last few days it is normally rock solid.

 

TMM can also do this for you too though if you prefer.