Emby updated itself and I just lost 5 playlists

[silkz 3]

Emby updated itself and it did something to playlists. It reverted 3 playlists to much older versions. That is bad enough, but it straight deleted 2 playlists one of which I cannot recreate as the user who created it recently passed away. 

 

See https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/74717-have-hundreds-of-entries-to-remove-how-to-export-playlists-edit-them-and-then-reimport-it/, there was no way to export playlists and Emby was not creating XMLs for all my playlists.

 

How the do I get these playlists back please? They are not in XML format (see my linked thread above). I have no idea how Emby was storing them. Can anyone tell me? I have automatic backups, I am a lifetime subscriber.

 

I am just got home a few days ago and I am all messed up with jet lag and everything. I really need this playlist back, I really want the rest of my playlists to go back to where they were but I *need* that playlist back. Can I install a previous version of Emby and my old Emby auto-backed up data? Assuming that even works, how do I then export those playlists, its the same problem I had previously? Because once Emby updates I will be back to square 1 again.

Edited July 10, 2021 by Abobader
Shorting the title

[Luke 42078]

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/79604-new-update-no-playlists/?view=getnewpost&fromsearch=1

[ebr 16184]

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/79604-new-update-no-playlists/?view=getnewpost&fromsearch=1

 

This user appears to be saying individual playlist have been lost - not access to the "Playlists" folder.

 

silkz - is that correct?

[silkz 3]

Sorry, I feel asleep on my couch. I've got a bad case of jetlag and I am pretty torn up by my uncle's passing.

 

@@ebr that is correct. Though my playlist folder, if you see my old thread, doesn't get updated with new content.

 

Edit: reading that other thread, my problem is different, though possibly related. We have several dozen playlists, we used them a lot. I can access all the playlists except the 2 that the update deleted and 3 playlists that are so old Emby might as well have deleted them too.

 

Look, I do not need a fix right now, but I desperately need to get my uncle's playlist back. I just got back form his funeral a few days ago and I got dozens of calls asking me to fix this. My aunt is already so lost and sad, what Emby has done here is  , I do not understand how such a bug could get into a stable channel update but I just need help getting this playlist back.

 

Can you answer my question: 

 

How the do I get these playlists back please? They are not in XML format (see my linked thread above). I have no idea how Emby was storing them. Can anyone tell me?

...

Can I install a previous version of Emby and my old Emby auto-backed up data? Assuming that even works, how do I then export those playlists, its the same problem I had previously? Because once Emby updates I will be back to square 1 again.

Edited November 24, 2019 by silkz

[JasonG 16]

Do you have any backups of the server?

[silkz 3]

Yes and Emby's own auto backup. However, the problem is:

 

Can I install a previous version of Emby and my old Emby auto-backed up data? Assuming that even works, how do I then export those playlists, its the same problem I had previously? Because once Emby updates I will be back to square 1 again.

 

 

I mean I cannot just never update Emby, can I? If I do this will there be issues with clients, especially mobile ones, which are getting updated? My parents and a couple others rely on the iOS and Android clients exclusively.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Are your missing Playlists in any of the backup folders?

Edited November 24, 2019 by Happy2Play

[Luke 42078]

Please check user library access for each user and makes sure it is correct. Please also run a library scan. Thanks.

[amarok 0]

I have the same problem with my server, but I think the problem was with previous stable builds, but I can not say this for sure. Some users on my server were complaining as well to me after the last update because the playlists they created with emby (xml types not manually m3u) were incomplete. I looked at my backups and the newest version of these playlists, and in these playlists the last changes were from several month ago. At this time I had trouble to import some playlists to a fresh install of emby (https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/67043-cant-delete-video-playlist/?p=735451). These particular playlists are now the problem, because it seems that the old emby version stored the new content which was added to these playlists, but did not saved them to the xml file, so all backups files are useless as well. The new update writes newly added songs to the list (I have tested this now) but the songs which were added in the time between are missing. Maybe @@Luke can correct me whether this is bullshit or maybe this is a technical possible explanation

Edited November 24, 2019 by amarok

[Luke 42078]

I have the same problem with my server, but I think the problem was with previous stable builds, but I can not say this for sure. Some users on my server were complaining as well to me after the last update because the playlists they created with emby (xml types not manually m3u) were incomplete. I looked at my backups and the newest version of these playlists, and in these playlists the last changes were from several month ago. At this time I had trouble to import some playlists to a fresh install of emby (https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/67043-cant-delete-video-playlist/?p=735451). These particular playlists are now the problem, because it seems that the old emby version stored the new content which was added to these playlists, but did not saved them to the xml file, so all backups files are useless as well. The new update writes newly added songs to the list (I have tested this now) but the songs which were added in the time between are missing. Maybe @@Luke can correct me whether this is bullshit or maybe this is a technical possible explanation

 

I'll have to look through the history, but there was a defect in either 4.1 or 4.2 where playlist changes were not always saved to the playlist xml.

 

So now in 4.3, in some cases the server might be reloading the contents of the playlist, in which case those changes aren't there to be loaded. So yes unfortunately that sounds like a situation of a defect in an older version coming back to bite us later.

[brennanthl 0]

Wasn't this issue fixed a long time ago? Because it just happened to me and it is infuriating. All of my playlists that I've been building and cultivating over the last year are now empty, and I can add new tracks to them, but the old tracks are all gone. My Emby just recently updated and I'm on 4.6.0.50, however I only started using Emby in January so I was not using any versions older than that. Is there no way to at least view what used to be included on the playlist so I can manually add the songs again? In the playlist thumbnail it still shows some album covers that used to be in the playlist, but that's the only trace of it.

*Edit*

I found the playlists in this folder:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\data\playlists

The actual playlist.xml files contain music tracks in them. However Emby won't show any of this data, all of the playlists just show as empty.

Edited May 22, 2021 by brennanthl

[ebr 16184]

8 minutes ago, brennanthl said:

Wasn't this issue fixed a long time ago? Because it just happened to me and it is infuriating. All of my playlists that I've been building and cultivating over the last year are now empty, and I can add new tracks to them, but the old tracks are all gone. My Emby just recently updated and I'm on 4.6.0.50, however I only started using Emby in January so I was not using any versions older than that. Is there no way to at least view what used to be included on the playlist so I can manually add the songs again? In the playlist thumbnail it still shows some album covers that used to be in the playlist, but that's the only trace of it.

Hi.  Please be sure a library scan has completed after the upgrade.

[brennanthl 0]

Please see my above edit - it appears the playlists are there but only the new tracks that I add are shown in Emby. I have already done a library scan of my music folder. Are you saying I need to scan the the entire library?

[brennanthl 0]

Full library scan is complete. All playlists still show as nothing in Emby. And I think the playlist that I tried to add new music to has gotten completely overridden thanks to this.

[Carlo 4561]

Ouch, you didn't back them up?
Do you have the server config plugin installed and working?  If so that would have backed up your playlists.

[brennanthl 0]

I have the actual xml playlists, as I said above they are there in the AppData directory and they show the songs as they should, but Emby does not display any of the content in the interface, they all show as empty, even after the full rescan. Before the last update they showed up fine. Now any tracks that I add to an existing playlist will basically wipe out the old playlist and replace with the new songs.

Edited May 22, 2021 by brennanthl

[koopa8840 24]

I am currently dealing with this problem. I am messing around with playlists, so anything I loose isn't really a lost to me. On the 18th, I made a playlist and all worked. On the 20th, Emby updated. Yesterday, I went back to messing with playlists, since I had some time, and no tracks are listed. Even the one Smart Playlist I have shows nothing. I have copied my backups over to the playlist folder and still no tracks are shown.

[Carlo 4561]

22 minutes ago, brennanthl said:

I have the actual xml playlists, as I said above they are there in the AppData directory and they show the songs as they should, but Emby does not display any of the content in the interface, they all show as empty, even after the full rescan. Before the last update they showed up fine. Now any tracks that I add to an existing playlist will basically wipe out the old playlist and replace with the new songs.

So before doing anything else make a copy of your playlist folder.  This is just a safe guide so you could always refer back to it.

[brennanthl 0]

I was able to fix the playlist by manually fixing the XML file. Your parsing is broken, or there is something wonky with permissions here. My old playlists had this section at the bottom that the new ones didn't:

<Shares>
    <Share>
      <UserId>1</UserId>
      <CanEdit>true</CanEdit>
    </Share>
  </Shares>
  <PlaylistMediaType>Audio</PlaylistMediaType>

 

When I delete those sections and refresh the metadata of the playlist, now all my tracks show up successfully. The question is what changed here, because I have not updated user permissions or done anything different with restricting playlists to different users or anything like that. Emby updated and suddenly all of these playlists were broken, and if I attempted to add music to a playlist in the old/broken format, it would completely delete the playlist and rewrite it from scratch.

Edited May 22, 2021 by brennanthl

[Luke 42078]

Thanks for the feedback and apologies for the disruption. We plan to revamp playlist permissions in an upcoming update.

[brennanthl 0]

This continues to be an issue for me still. It is very frustrating.  I keep running into the problem where Emby shows an empty playlist, despite the XML file containing valid playlist data. If I rescan the metadata from the Emby interface it picks up the songs again. However if I don't scan and I try to add a song to the playlist while it is in this "songs missing" state, it basically erases the entire playlist and replaces it with a new one that only contains the song I just added. I keep having to delete the playlist and restore it with a backup, then refresh the metadata, then add my new song, then create a backup. It's a huge waste of time, and then I will come back to the Emby interface tomorrow and the playlist will be blank again. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

[Carlo 4561]

Hi, just curious but if this is an XML based playlist, why aren't you editing the xml file to add the new tacks?

[Luke 42078]

16 hours ago, brennanthl said:

This continues to be an issue for me still. It is very frustrating.  I keep running into the problem where Emby shows an empty playlist, despite the XML file containing valid playlist data. If I rescan the metadata from the Emby interface it picks up the songs again. However if I don't scan and I try to add a song to the playlist while it is in this "songs missing" state, it basically erases the entire playlist and replaces it with a new one that only contains the song I just added. I keep having to delete the playlist and restore it with a backup, then refresh the metadata, then add my new song, then create a backup. It's a huge waste of time, and then I will come back to the Emby interface tomorrow and the playlist will be blank again. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

Hi, I don't quite follow that fully, but @cayars can jump on with you and take a look. Thanks !

[Carlo 4561]

@brennanthl Do you have some time available so I can remote in with you and take a first hand look at this with you?

[brentrad 1]

I'm having the same issue apparently. Hadn't updated Emby server for a while (couple months probably), just upgraded it to 4.6.2.0 because it was asking to restart, and now all my playlists show up as empty - but opening the xml playlist files in an editor shows that the data about the tracks in the playlist are still in there. However, before I discovered this playlists issue, I added one more track to my Favorite Tracks playlist - which wiped out the entire playlist so that now there's only the one new track listed in there. Previously that playlist had over 500 tracks that I've been adding over the last 6 months or so. And since I had that playlist synced to my phone, once the playlist got overwritten, it also deleted all these music tracks from my phone - grrrr!

And no, I did NOT back up these playlists or have the Server Config Backup plugin installed - strange that this plugin wouldn't be in a standard install, since it added a bunch of other essential plugins by default. Yes my bad, but yikes, maybe have the upgrade process back them up first, or make the Server Config Backup plugin a standard part of a new Emby server install?

Am I out of luck getting back my one super important playlist that got overwritten? I'm afraid to make any changes in Emby until I figure out if my playlist is gone for good, or if I will need to just start from scratch and recreate it.  And I also need to make sure that this issue is resolved moving forward - I don't want to recreate my playlist if it's just going to get overwritten again.

I'm definitely going to install that Backup plugin though (although I'm not making ANY changes until I get an answer to my above questions.)