Well, Emby Failed Me AGAIN!!

[WeerdMunkee1978 3]

I was on here recently because Emby had arbitrarily deleted my entire library out of the blue, through absolutely no doing of my own. Unfortunately, I was never provided with a sufficient answer, so I ended up having to rescan all of my files using the Emby settings page. This almost solved the problem, but it re-categorized all of my libraries as "Mixed Content", leaving the libraries a bit discombobulated. I left it alone as it was, and wasn't about to get into tweaking it out again, because I decided to purchase Synology, start all over, and reinstall the server from scratch on that instead of my computer.  

That being said, several days after the recanning with my Macbook, everything's definitely been good enough for me to get by until my Synology comes and I can set it up. However, just moments ago, I was moving some files around and scanning some new episodes into my TV shows, when the scan stalled and wouldn't run anymore. This has happened before, so I did what I had to do multiple times without issue, and that is restart my browser. When I went back into Emby, not only is my entire library gone AGAIN, but now it's acting like I just downloaded the program and wants me to go through the entire set up process from scratch!! How in the HELL did that happen!?? I did absolutely NOTHING wrong!! Restarting the browser after a stalled scan is something I have done, many, many, many times without even so much as a whimper! Can someone please provide me with a straightforward answer that isn't bogged down with all the unnecessary technical jargon that usually accompanies it?

I'm really starting to get fed up. Fed up to the point that if it does happen again after I install it on the Synology NAS I'm getting here in a week or less and start over from scratch with the Emby server on that thing instead of my computer itself, I'll be glad I held off on that lifetime account, and saying my fond farewells. I have 3500 movies and 30K+ TV episodes and always growing, and I'll be damned if I go through the headache of setting up and spending months tweaking it out again!!! Grrrr!!! Sorry, but the frustration is STRONG with this one!!

Edited December 6, 2020 by WeerdMunkee1978

[jachin99 88]

I'm not sure how it works with mac but if emby is trying to start again from scratch then maybe a file or folder is being marked as bad or corrupt.  If that were the case I would guess it's a config file for emby. 

[Aevaris 8]

Sorry to hear about the trouble. The emby installer has little impact on your metadata generally. Does the metadata still exist in the metadata directory even though the application wants to be re-installed?

[RanmaCanada 495]

This is why I personally use the option to save metadata with the media files (all pictures and nfo files) and have all movies in their own directory.  I would suggest in the future that you do so as well as it makes rescanning easy.

[Aevaris 8]

I don't know that that makes it easier to rescan tbh. I keep my media Read Only on my NAS and Emby is a VM with local metadata. Since Emby is open to the internet, it ensures my internal network is kept safe regardless of what happens to my Emby server. I take regular checkpoints so if anything happens to the server in any way, I can easily roll back. But yes, regardless of your method, regular back ups is the way.

[Carlo 4561]

Hi,

Emby won't delete your files "out of the blue" if they are available.  I almost guarantee when Emby tried to scan them they were not available for some reason.
It the files aren't available then Emby did the correct thing by removing them.

If you're getting mixed content vs a specific library type then it sounds like you did a restore  and not giving us the whole picture of what took place. I'm surely not saying this is the specific case here but it's usually the problem from what I've seen first hand.

Did you do any restore at any point?

If you're scanning and do specific library scans while other scans are taking place it's a mixed bag of what is actually being scanned as you've got multiple different scans going on.  Be patient and do a complete system scan.

I stopped reading your entry because I'm a bit confused.

Where are your files stored?
What platform is running Emby?

Can you give us clear information on your setup, where files are stored, where Emby Server is running and what specific things you've done?

 

[rbjtech 5284]

6 hours ago, Aevaris said:

I don't know that that makes it easier to rescan tbh. I keep my media Read Only on my NAS and Emby is a VM with local metadata. Since Emby is open to the internet, it ensures my internal network is kept safe regardless of what happens to my Emby server. I take regular checkpoints so if anything happens to the server in any way, I can easily roll back. But yes, regardless of your method, regular back ups is the way.

It's a shame you cannot make an exception per media item.  As for 99.9% of my collection, I will just use whatever the providers have used - so rebuilding the library is a click of a button and it does it in the background.    However, for the other .1% which is custom or not picked up by Emby and thus manually added - it's a pain to have that data local as well - as you cannot easily find it and that data would be better stored with the media.

There is also the performance gain by having it local (on the SSD) as well as the drive wear/spin up/down on physical platters if you keen the metadata with the media. 

Edited December 6, 2020 by rbjtech

[ebr 16184]

8 hours ago, Aevaris said:

I don't know that that makes it easier to rescan tbh

It absolutely will.  It is the difference between reading local files and downloading a ton of information from the internet for your entire library.

[Aevaris 8]

25 minutes ago, ebr said:

It absolutely will.  It is the difference between reading local files and downloading a ton of information from the internet for your entire library.

But isn't it local regardless and just a difference of being in /var/lib/emby/metadata folder instead of /my/media/path?

Edited December 6, 2020 by Aevaris

[Luke 42079]

1 minute ago, Aevaris said:

But isn't it local regardless and just a difference of being in /var/lib/emby/metadata folder instead of /my/media/path?

For images yes, but metadata goes in the database only, unless you save to local nfo files.

[ebr 16184]

2 minutes ago, Aevaris said:

But isn't it local regardless and just a difference of being in /var/lib/emby/metadata folder instead of /my/media/path?

Not if your media is removed and re-added.

[Aevaris 8]

4 minutes ago, Luke said:

For images yes, but metadata goes in the database only, unless you save to local nfo files.

 

4 minutes ago, ebr said:

Not if your media is removed and re-added.

Ah, fair point. I wish there was a middle-ground. "Save .nfo to metadata" or something like that. I'll think about my setup and see if there is a better way for me to safeguard my data while opening write permissions or maybe I can find something else to use the .nfo for to make it worth the while. But I'm starting to distract from the thread, so I'll think on my musings separately.

@WeerdMunkee1978, how can we help? Have you had a chance to review Cayars questions? Having come from other solutions (Plex, Jellyfin, Synology's offerings, among others), Emby really is the best out there so it'd be a shame to move away from it.