music tags for featured artists (server 4.6)

[spon 26]

Hi guys,

I have had issues for a very long time figuring out how to get Emby to display artists featured on a song correctly. If I'm able to find the song/album on musicbrainz, the artists display correctly. If the song is tagged via other software, I can never get the artists to show correctly. I have one song, with 2 different screenshots of the metadata. There is no hidden metadata - this is everything. Can someone please tell me specifically which of the tags are being used to list the artist? Not the album artist, but the artist as showed in the screenshot. 

I thought I had read that it will pull from the Artist tag, but the Artist tag is identical in both scenarios. The only difference I can see is Artists, which is missing from the problem files. If Emby is using Artists it could be problematic b/c none of the mainstream tagging softwares seem to use Artists. Musicbee, Media Monkey, etc won't write to Artists tag, only Artist.

Thanks!

 

 

 

[Luke 42077]

HI, if you use the metadata editor, what does it list for an artist?

[spon 26]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

HI, if you use the metadata editor, what does it list for an artist?

Hi Luke. The correct version shows all the artists, separated with semicolons, matching what it shows in the Artist tags. The incorrect version only shows one artist, which is the first artist listed in the Artists tag, as well as the Album artist. It's just weird because for both files the Artist tag is identical. 

 

[Luke 42077]

Right so because the Artist is the same as the album artist, that's why you're not seeing it. It could be that ffprobe did not pick up any artist tag, and so the server took the value from album artist and applied it to artist. it could also be that its' just tagged with Russ.

Try refreshing the metadata on the track. Then the server log will have the ffprobe command line. You could run that from a command prompt to see what ffprobe picks up.

Bottom line, it's not tagged how you think it is. You'll want to use tag writing software that writes to all versions of id3 tags.

[spon 26]

On 3/4/2021 at 4:53 PM, Happy2Play said:

Okay there may be a issue as your folder name and file names actually does not conform to multi-version requirements.  Sure the would with the plug but don't know about extras in this overall situation. @spon

Multi-version movies
Multiple versions of the same content can be stored in a single movie folder.

/Movies
  /300 (2006)
  /300 (2006)/300 (2006) - 1080p.mkv
  /300 (2006)/300 (2006) - 1080p-trailer.mp4
  /300 (2006)/300 (2006) - 4K.mkv
  /300 (2006)/300 (2006) - 720p.mp4
  /300 (2006)/300 (2006) - extended edition.mp4
  /300 (2006)/300 (2006) - directors cut.mp4
  /300 (2006)/300 (2006) - 3D.hsbs.mp4
Each version must begin with the folder name, followed by " - ".

Not sure this will work at all with your current naming scheme.

Good point. I'll pull another example instead. I thought it might be easier to trouble shoot if I had the same file, but I can understand it may cause an issue. I did rename the album to something else, so that Emby would think it was 2 different albums. 

[spon 26]

5 minutes ago, Luke said:

Right so because the Artist is the same as the album artist, that's why you're not seeing it. It could be that ffprobe did not pick up any artist tag, and so the server took the value from album artist and applied it to artist. it could also be that its' just tagged with Russ.

Try refreshing the metadata on the track. Then the server log will have the ffprobe command line. You could run that from a command prompt to see what ffprobe picks up.

Bottom line, it's not tagged how you think it is. You'll want to use tag writing software that writes to all versions of id3 tags.

So for these files, I wanted to make sure everything was clean so I created 2 copies and then used 3 different tag softwares to ensure that all tags had been removed (TagScanner, Mp3Tag & MusicBrainz Picard). All of which confirmed no tags at all. I then added the tags, exactly as you see them in the screenshots. I'll go through the process again, just to be 100% sure and report back. 

Assuming what I'm saying is true, am I correct is saying that Emby should only look at the tags and then use the Artist tag to populate the Artist info in Emby metadata. And that multiple artists separated by ; is the correct format to use in the tags?

[Luke 42077]

That should be fine. You can try refreshing the metadata on the track, then the server log will show the ffprobe command line that was used to probe it for media info.

Then if you take that and run it from a command prompt, you can see what ffprobe got from the track. 

[spon 26]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

That should be fine. You can try refreshing the metadata on the track, then the server log will show the ffprobe command line that was used to probe it for media info.

Then if you take that and run it from a command prompt, you can see what ffprobe got from the track. 

The plot thickens. The results from ffprobe seem to support that something is off with the tags themselves or at least with how ffprobe is reading the tags. You can see that both the correct and incorrect tracks show only "Russ" as the Artist. The main difference between the two tracks tags, as far as I can tell, is that correctly displayed track has all three performers in Artists tag. 

A non-Emby question that I now have is why ffprobe is only showing a single value in the Artist tag despite every mp3 tagging software that I've tried (Mp3tag, MusicBee, TagScanner, MediaMonkey) all showing multiple Artists in that tag. For this test I create the mp3s myself so that I could have control over exactly which tags were being added so I don't understand why Artist is showing a single value.

Correctly displayed track

 

Incorrectly displayed track

Edited May 27, 2021 by spon

[Luke 42077]

We'd have to look through the ffprobe source code to answer that, which we can if necessary, but when there are mulitple I would suggest using the plural Artists tag. That doesn't actually answer the question so I realize that is more of a workaround.

I can think of two things:

• Your file is embedded with multiple versions of id3 tags, and the one ffprobe is reading is not the one your tagging software is writing. That's why I suggested using Picard and enabling the option to write to all versions (which i think is on by default).
• Or, perhaps ffprobe is artificially discarding entries after the first one because it thinks the artist tag should only have one value. I'm just throwing that out there but i think it's unlikely because we would have seen that before.

[Luke 42077]

It it by chance writing id3v2.4?

[spon 26]

Thanks Luke. Good news - I figured out the issue. It looks like Emby/ffprobe requires that the tags be written in Unicode. There is a setting in one of the apps I've been trying (TagScanner) that reads "Always save ID3V2 tags in Unicode". What I did was load up any problem file into TagScanner and then simply hit save. I can then see that the tag version changes from ID3v2.3 to ID3v2.3@utf16. Then I refreshed metadata in Emby and all the artists are shown. I checked ffprobe too and it also shows the semi colon separated artist list. 

So, I'm glad we figured it out. I suspect some of the other threads I've seen with similar issues can be explained in the same way. 

As always, thanks for your help. I'm always impressed by your willingness to help out.

Edited May 27, 2021 by spon

[Luke 42077]

Hi, yes it's a requirement of ffprobe. Thanks for the feedback.

[spon 26]

deleted

Edited May 27, 2021 by spon

[Luke 42077]

Has this answered your questions?

[spon 26]

9 hours ago, Luke said:

Has this answered your questions?

yes, it has. I'm still having a ton of issues getting the artists to display correctly, but each time I dig into the issue it does seem to be a problem with the tags themselves. It is a bit frustrating that it's only Emby that has an problem displaying the artists - all the music organizing softwares that I've tried show the artists fine, including even Windows explorer - but when I trace the issue back to it's source, it is the tags themselves that are ultimately to blame, so it's not fair to be mad at Emby. I do wish Emby could "hide the issue with the tags" using whatever mechanism the other apps do, rather than ffprobe, but that's just a wish. I have a few thousand albums and don't have the time to manually correct the individual tags.

Thanks for your help man. It's good to finally know what the issue is and how I can correct it, if given the time to do so. 

[spon 26]

sorry going to bump this for one last question? Does anyone know of an app that will completely remove all tags from music files? I've spent about 2 hours now trying to get one song to be imported to Emby correctly and it's just not working. So far I've tried the usual suspects: Picard, Mp3tag, Tag Scanner, Musicbee & Media Monkey. I remove all tags (via both Picard and Tag Scanner) so the file is completely clean. Re-add tags via Picard, MusicBee or Media Monkey, re-add to Emby but the results never show all the artists. I'm assuming there is some sort of stuck tag that the 5 apps I've tried are not cleaning. 

Screenshots of the current file showing each app (including ffprobe) read the tags. Notice how ffprobe doesn't even list 2Pac as the artist at all and is also missing Dr. Dre. It's as if it's only catching the last Artist listed or something. 

TagScanner

 

Mp3tag

 

MusicBee

 

Picard

 

ffprobe

Edited May 28, 2021 by spon

[PenkethBoy 2068]

mp3tag - select the tags and hit the X on the right in the extended tag dialog

[spon 26]

Hi @Luke is it possible for me to give an additional donation in exchange for some dedicated help on the music issue as it relates to ffprobe and Artist in Emby? If that's not appropriate, I understand and will just move on to something else. I'm a decade+ Emby premium user and really really don't want to move to start over somewhere else, but my music collection is important to me. At this point I've spent at least 30+ hours on this issue, using every piece of music tagging software I can get my hands. Literally tagging or music collection app shows the same tags with multiple artist with multiple artists displaying correctly, except for ffprobe. I've tried clearing all tags (verified with both mp3tag extended tags, picard & tagcanner) then re-scrapped the tags, but the problem remains.

I've noticed there is some sort of app called Jellyfish that uses ffprobe and there are a lot of users reporting the same issue over there, so I suspect the problem is with ffprobe itself. I do see a ton of google results regarding ffprobe incorrectly reading multiple artist tags, but most of them are older and I can't tell for sure if it's an unresolved issue or not. I'm happy to send someone an actual mp3 file to test or anything else I can do to help, but at this point I've exhausted what I can do on my own. 

 

[Carlo 4560]

@spon Any change you could provide this complete album to let us take a look at what you're seeing?

[spon 26]

22 minutes ago, cayars said:

@spon Any change you could provide this complete album to let us take a look at what you're seeing?

sure, no problem at all. is there a preferred method of sharing the files?

[Carlo 4560]

You can use any upload server on the net.  Just post the link.

[spon 26]

9 hours ago, cayars said:

You can use any upload server on the net.  Just post the link.

Here is an example album for troubleshooting. https://wetransfer.com/downloads/e96d37d29d7c18e60f0b5c751585922920210602145019/9105cffd450f12eb5ff1f5424a7ad1ef20210602145135/5986bc

Album details can be found here: https://www.discogs.com/Mick-Boogie-Excursions/release/9786308

Thanks again!!

[Luke 42077]

@cayars will try that one out. Thanks.

[Carlo 4560]

If I load the album as is I only get 1 track with multiple artist listed "Wild Hot".

If I fix the tags I then get this

[Luke 42077]

@spon does this answer your question?