Music Library Scanning Confusion

[jbaggs 2]

Testing out Emby (currently using plex) and everything is great except for my music library.   First attempt there were multiple duplicate artists & album artist (sometime 4-5 of each).  Albums not being identified correctly, incorrect art, etc etc. I've dealt with it all.  I have tried all the fixes: disabling\uninstalling plugins, removing library, restart server, add library, restart server, scan, restart. It's worse than the Plex dance. 

If it matters I tried multiple tests adding a music library, using only one metadata plugin, deleting it then trying again with the other. I don't know the inner workings of the database so there could have been left over data contributing the my problem. 

All week I've been searching and reading so it's not like I haven't done some due diligence.  My albums tags are 99% correct. I know which files need to be fixed. Files that were tagged correctly, checked and triple checked, were still showing up wrong.  

I read one thread about a possible fix: remove library, restart server, disable metadata providers (or uninstall the plugins),  restart server, add a new library,  scan. As long as your tags are good you should not have duplicate artists. Maybe Artist artwork will need to be manually added. So I decided to test with just one artist. I deleted library.db in an attempt to get a fresh start. 

The Artist I used for this test the tags are 99% correct (one album does not have album art - and I left it that way to see what would happen). Folder structure is Music\Artist\Album. The artist is Nirvana. There is a mix of .mp3 and .flac files. Band picture in artists top level folder titled folder.jpg

Added new music library pointing to the specific directory with the Nirvana folder. I waited for the scan to finish. Restarted the server. The dashboard said there was a media scan in progress so again I waited for it to finish. I actually walked away for an hour or so to do something else.  When I came back I think half the albums were correctly identified with correct artist, artist only listed one, and with album art. The other half without album art.  I artist image was not the same as what I have as folder.jpg.  I decided that was enough testing for one night! 

Here is the weird thing: Today when I started to work on the server I noticed there were some albums or artists that were "fixed". Some were showing up as multi-thumbnail type images. Others the correct size. The correct artist image picture was displayed. The one album with no album art in the tag (2 meter sessions) had a random band picture added.  The first music library I created and thought I deleted also returned. 

What is going on here? If I have no metadata providers installed where is the random images coming from? What happened over-night that caused things to be some-what fixed?  Why did an old library reappear?  Did all my testing by adding\removing plugins and libraries etc cause some confusion somewhere? 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2020 by jbaggs

[Luke 42078]

Hi there, can we please go over a specific example? Thanks.

[jbaggs 2]

What type of example besides what I already gave would you like? 

[jbaggs 2]

Update. Haven't touched anything in the music library and now all the cover art is gone AND it says there are no files. This is extremely frustrating

[jbaggs 2]

Update 2: songs are back. but can only select one at a time to play. 

[Carlo 4561]

Hi,

Where does this media reside?  Is it on a local disk?

[jbaggs 2]

32 minutes ago, cayars said:

Hi,

Where does this media reside?  Is it on a local disk?

External usb drive connected to the laptop that Emby server runs on. Why would that have anything to do with it not reading tags correctly or downloading the correct metadata?

Also - no issues with the drive. 

[Carlo 4561]

Because if the USB drive goes off line then it causes issues like this.  Same if you were using Google Drive to host media mounted as a local drive.

 

Have you tried doing a full scan and possibly a metarefresh with graphic saving?

[jbaggs 2]

3 minutes ago, cayars said:

Because if the USB drive goes off line then it causes issues like this.  Same if you were using Google Drive to host media mounted as a local drive.

 

Have you tried doing a full scan and possibly a metarefresh with graphic saving?

the usb drive is definitely NOT going off line.

 

i have done multiple scans. did you see my recent post where i said i didn't touch anything yet all the album info and track listings disappeared? 

how hard can this be to get correct? is there a simple to enable options somewhere that says: "Read local ID3 tag info from music files. do not go online for metadata. do not go online for images". 

[Carlo 4561]

Can you upload the emby server log file for the period of time when the images disappeared?

Thanks

[jbaggs 2]

embyserver.txt

[Carlo 4561]

I don't see any music directories in your log.  This is all Emby is watching:

2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\TV
2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\Docuseries
2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\Movies

[jbaggs 2]

1 minute ago, cayars said:

I don't see any music directories in your log.  This is all Emby is watching:

2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\TV
2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\Docuseries
2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\Movies

how about this log file

embyserver-63733796207.txt

[Carlo 4561]

Nope no d:\music2 in that log either.

[jbaggs 2]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

Nope no d:\music2 in that log either.

Well, according to Emby I have 212 logs. Which would you like? 
 

You do see the screen shot with my libraries that clearly states they are there, correct? 

Any other advice you can offer? Any other Emby support staff here? 

Is there any possible way I can tell Emby USE ONLY MY TAGS FROM MY FILES DO NOT GO ON THE INTERNET. This is part of the reason I planned to dump Plex. I was led to believe I could easily add my music files to the library and have it read my local tags.  

I don't need any fancy artist info lookups from the internet. I don't need bios or on tour info. I want something that is going to read MY TAGS. If I wanted the internet to do it I would not have spent the time doing it myself. 

 

 

 

[jbaggs 2]

3 hours ago, cayars said:

I don't see any music directories in your log.  This is all Emby is watching:

2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\TV
2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\Docuseries
2020-08-23 16:17:01.749 Info LibraryMonitor: Watching directory D:\video\Movies

I just thought of something - what does real time monitoring have to do with the tags not being read properly, album art disappearing\reappearing, track listing disappearing\reappearing? 

[Happy2Play 9780]

3 hours ago, jbaggs said:

how about this log file

embyserver-63733796207.txt 198.21 kB · 2 downloads

This log shows the music2 being processed, but look at the image.  Music can not be Mixed Content.  All of your libraries are Mixed content so my first question would be did you Restore your libraries?  If so this is a bug in the 4.4.3.0 that has been resolved in the beta server.  But you will have to redo all of your libraries do to this bug.  There is a work around in another topic I can point you to but will still require rebuilding your database.

Just like Collection library is broken also as it should be Collections content type auto generated by the server, but some libraries can be Mixed Content.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Happy2Play

[jbaggs 2]

Just now, Happy2Play said:

This log shows the music2 being processed, but look at the image.  Music can not be Mix Content.  All of your libraries are Mixed content so my first question would be did you Restore your libraries?  If so this is a but in the 4.4.3.0 that has been resolved in the beta server.  But you will have to redo all of your libraries do to this bug.  There is a work around in another topic I can point you to but will still require rebuilding your database.

Good timing - I was just coming back to mention the mixed content. I was testing with a new library and noticed that it was labeled Music but all the others said Mixed Content. 

I deleted the library.db at one point - based on another thread in this forum. Maybe that broke something?

I don't mind rebuilding my libraries -  what should my next step be? Would installing the beta be a better idea than the work around?  OR - 

Uninstall and just start over? I don't mind doing that either. 

I am calling it quits for the night - I'll check in tomorrow for any advice. Thanks! 

[Happy2Play 9780]

27 minutes ago, jbaggs said:

I deleted the library.db at one point - based on another thread in this forum. Maybe that broke something?

This caused it as there is a bug that is no reading content type from the options.xml. 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/80502-backup-plugin-not-restoring-library-properly/&do=findComment&comment=884434

Shut down server 

delete current library.db

add the .collection file to each library in \programdata\root\default

start server and do a library scan

or

remove all libraries and re-add them.

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Happy2Play

[jbaggs 2]

13 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

This caused it as there is a bug that is no reading content type from the options.xml. 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/80502-backup-plugin-not-restoring-library-properly/&do=findComment&comment=884434

Shut down server 

delete current library.db

add the .collection file to each library in \programdata\root\default

start server and do a library scan

 

 

Followed the steps and Libraries seem back to normal and I can play the music in the library.

But the album art except one album is wrong. And I don't even know where it gets the band picture from since that it is not in any of the music folders. 

embyserver (1).txt embyserver-63733861987.txt

[Carlo 4561]

Hi,

I believe artists & people are always pulled from meta data providers.

[jbaggs 2]

Just now, cayars said:

Hi,

I believe artists & people are always pulled from meta data providers.

But I removed the plugins that would download meta data ?

[Carlo 4561]

@Happy2Play Can you elaborate on this?

[skidmarks 199]

I suffered the same problem after doing a full restore from backup.  Multiple folders, due to the already mentioned glitch, came back as mixed content folders. I did not notice this for the 3 days it took the library to rebuild.  So i deleted the libraries and put them back manually.  I do not know how the inner workings of emby does it thing.

Not positive, but is it possible that fanart is grabbing images for the music library? (question for the developers)

This is kind of a standard thing, the artist poster on albums until the metadata is read and added to the db in your server

Depending on how big the library scan is, this could take moments or days for the album art to appear.  I personally make sure the "save artwork to folders" in enabled for the library.  Its a easy way to visually see what is being added to artists folders.

Just a reminder. i got this knowledge from sleeping at a holiday inn express and as such can only hope this helps in some way...

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by skidmarks

[jbaggs 2]

33 minutes ago, skidmarks said:

Depending on how big the library scan is, this could take moments or days for the album art to appear. 

 

This library only contains what you see in the picture. But I did notice that when I added my whole collection when I first set-up Emby. The next morning the majority of the artwork and other metadata appeared. But that was also using Musicbrainz and AudioDB plugins. Both have been uninstalled