genre help

[miniliQuid 94]

Just got a complaint from my mother that she cannot find enough christmas movies.
This is due to the fact she simply types christmas in the search bar to have them show up (and only a few have the word christmas in the title).

I checked some topics and the best solution seems to be working with a Christmas genre.
Before I start doing this I was wondering how this works exactly.

My guess is that by adding it in emby itself, whenever the library get's removed/renewed, those tags are all gone and need to be set up again?
That would be a bit too much of an hassle to start doing honestly.

Does emby only grab the data from metadata sites, or also what is on the movie file?
And if it only takes it from sites, are there any sites that actually have the christmas/holiday genre added to movies?

 

Thanks for any help you guys can give on this

[Carlo 4561]

Hi, Collections, playlists or a separate Library you can use for different Holidays is the way to go.

I've got 680 Christmas movies and growing at present (a lot recorded from Hallmark and Lifetime channels) so I use a Library.  I use a setup similar to this on disc:

\Holiday\Christmas
\Holiday\New Years
\Holiday\Valentines
\Holiday\Easter
\Holiday\Patriotic ( I use this for Labor Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day)
\Holiday\Halloween
\Holiday\Thanksgiving

I then mount \Holiday as a Holiday Library.  Then using Folder access security I can pretty easily switch this library security wise to control what's shown.  I prefer this over multiple Libraries for each "Holiday" as it takes up less homepage space.

Here's a knowledge base article on Folder Access:
https://emby.media/support/articles/Folder-based-Access-Control.html

 

Edited November 6, 2025 by GrimReaper
KB article link updated

[Happy2Play 9783]

8 hours ago, miniliQuid said:

My guess is that by adding it in emby itself, whenever the library get's removed/renewed, those tags are all gone and need to be set up again?

Only if you do not write metadata/nfo with media.

 

8 hours ago, miniliQuid said:

And if it only takes it from sites, are there any sites that actually have the christmas/holiday genre added to movies?

No there are not any providers for these genres that I know of.

[ebr 16194]

Hi.  If you save your metadata to NFO files with your media then your genre changes will persist.

[blixt99 1]

ebr, I disagree. I've always saved metadata to NFO's in the individual media folders, as shown

below, and I still get the generic default ugly Genre thumbnail.

 

Edited December 27, 2020 by blixt99

[PenkethBoy 2068]

apples vs bananas - genre images nothing to do with genres in nfo's

[Luke 42085]

What images would you prefer to have?

[miniliQuid 94]

Haha, thanks for all the info, got what I need.
Will just take a look at saving the metadata to NFO and add the genre to the movies.

Thanks Cayars. I doubt I will need something that extensive.
My mother cares little about pretty much any holiday, except for when Christmas (and therefor Christmas movies) comes around
Perhaps some day in the future, but I hope not haha

[Happy2Play 9783]

But folder base would be the least amount of work, but either way you have to touch each movie.

[Luke 42085]

Custom genre images being replaced will be resolved in Emby Server 4.6. Thanks.

[miniliQuid 94]

Started working on this but I just realised I have one more question.
Do custom tags like these, and other changes in metadata get erased on a refresh?
I think I have "refresh metadata every 30 days" on for all my libraries.

I only just now realised that this setting may be counterproductive.
What do all of you have this setting on for most of your libraries?

[BillOatman 596]

On 12/25/2020 at 12:21 PM, cayars said:

Hi, Collections, playlists or a separate Library you can use for different Holidays is the way to go.

This is exactly what I did.  If my wife isn't confused by it, your mother won't be!