how to organize media folders in a structured manner?

[justinrh 260]

In my music media folder I have a folder "NIV Bible" that is a container for a bunch of related grouped audio files in 66 folders, e.g., "01_Genesis", "02_Exodus", etc.  In Emby, I browse to the Music library and see 66 of the same album cover with no way to distinguish one from another and in seemingly random order.  How can I arrange the media files to something usable or otherwise correct this?

[PenkethBoy 2068]

do you have any songs that are not in their own folder?

[Carlo 4561]

Hi,

What library type is this setup in?

What audio format are these in?

Edited November 15, 2020 by cayars

[justinrh 260]

There are MP3s in each subfolder.  Music library.

media
    + music
           + Bible
                   + 01_Genesis
                            - 1_001_Gen.mp3
                            - 1_002_Gen.mp3
                   + 02_Exodus
                            - 1_001_Ex.mp3
                            - 1_002_Ex.mp3
. . .

 

[Luke 42078]

What album cover do you see everywhere?

[justinrh 260]

11 hours ago, Luke said:

What album cover do you see everywhere?

It is a picture of a Bible, which may have come from the MP3 album art.  Do you need to see the picture?

[Happy2Play 9780]

9 minutes ago, justinrh said:

Do you need to see the picture?

It would provide better insight of the issue.

[justinrh 260]

Okay, another detail.  It looks like each subfolder is being marked as its own album, even w/o unique display names.  This is no good.

 

[PenkethBoy 2068]

any folder which contains a music file in is considered an album

so 01_Genesis and 02_Exodus are considered as two albums - Bible is ignored unless there is a music file in the folder

As for why they all have the same image and name - that will be down to your metadata within the files and/or what emby gets from online providers depending on your library settings

[justinrh 260]

I understand the same images, and that's not a problem.  I was hoping to have some kind of structure to mimic the folder structure, and to have different text so I'd know what the heck I'm selecting.  I guess I'll have to manually edit 66 album names!

[Happy2Play 9780]

Are you actually viewing via the Folders tab?

[justinrh 260]

Even in folders view, all the titles/names are the same, just as they are in album or any other view.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Without the entire context of this layout we are just guessing.  But in the end a single track and any level will absorb all sub folder formatting.

There are only two folder levels in Music.

Artist folder that can not contain any tracks or it becomes a Album and parent subfolders which are albums.  You can not really have further nested folder media.

 

Edited November 19, 2020 by Happy2Play

[pwhodges 2012]

38 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

You can not really have further nested folder media.

So long as you use folder view, sure you can.  My entire music library relies on nested folders to about four levels, with distinct folder images for each one..

Paul

Edited November 20, 2020 by pwhodges

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 minute ago, pwhodges said:

So long as you use folder view, sure you can.  My entire music library relies on nested folders to about four levels.

Paul

Context is needed as a track absorbs every folder below it.

[pwhodges 2012]

It was easy to learn not to put tracks in the intermediate folders.  If there seems to be a "need" for that, then it can go in its own subfolder and the problem is solved.

Paul

[Happy2Play 9780]

On 11/16/2020 at 5:15 PM, justinrh said:

There are MP3s in each subfolder.  Music library.

media
    + music
           + Bible
                   + 01_Genesis
                            - 1_001_Gen.mp3
                            - 1_002_Gen.mp3
                   + 02_Exodus
                            - 1_001_Ex.mp3
                            - 1_002_Ex.mp3
. . .

 

This is exactly what Emby shows in Music or Audiobooks.

Bible is Artist/AlbumArtist (tagged that way)

  Each subfolder is a album

Folder View

66 sub folder albums always group all tracks within that folder

Edited November 20, 2020 by Happy2Play

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 hour ago, justinrh said:

I understand the same images, and that's not a problem.  I was hoping to have some kind of structure to mimic the folder structure, and to have different text so I'd know what the heck I'm selecting.  I guess I'll have to manually edit 66 album names!

My guess here would be you need to tag the track as everything in my example has embedded tags.

 

[justinrh 260]

40 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

My guess here would be you need to tag the track as everything in my example has embedded tags.

 

@Happy2Play are you saying the folder names are tags?  I about the 'albums' being unique, not the tracks.  How did you do the below?

 

What more can I give for context that would give you more context?

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 minute ago, justinrh said:

@Happy2Play are you saying the folder names are tags?  I about the 'albums' being unique, not the tracks.  How did you do the below?

 

What more can I give for context that would give you more context?

Each one of those folder are collapsed into a Album because they contain tracks.  So that is the correct view.  What are you expecting to see?  It would be the exact same entering that folder and seeing every track.  So I guess I am confused on what you want to see.

[justinrh 260]

I'd like to see what your library shows - each album has the folder name (which gives the uniqueness and idea of content).  Mine just shows the same title/name text for each album.  My folder structure (on disk appears to be the same as yours) but I got different (bad) results.

[Happy2Play 9780]

6 minutes ago, justinrh said:

I'd like to see what your library shows - each album has the folder name (which gives the uniqueness and idea of content).  Mine just shows the same title/name text for each album.  My folder structure (on disk appears to be the same as yours) but I got different (bad) results.

each album appears like this

Entering a album appears like this

What do you see in MP3TAG?

[Carlo 4561]

Nicely shown Happe2Play.

[dapper 13]

As someone with thousands of audiobooks in my library, I'd personally recommend using Musicbrainz Picard for dealing with audiobooks before adding them to an Emby library -- I find it much more functional than the other tools https://picard.musicbrainz.org/downloads/

Even moreso than folder structure, the most important tags to get right are:

title

artist

album

date

tracknumber

totaltracks

discnumber

totaldiscs

genre

 

[justinrh 260]

@Happy2Play  I'm getting lost here.  Can you just tell me what I need to do to make this work?  It looks like I have they same situation as you, yet it is not working.  Does this need to be an audio book instead of music?