Goodbye Plex, hello Emby?

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Hi music fans

Since I have reinstalled PMS from scratch end of June, I can’t get PMS to make use of the embedded MP3 tags
https://forums.plex.tv/t/no-metadata-shown/613594

I tried to read, re-read and re-re-read the instructions again and again… still no luck
My post from 14/07 did also not get any answer

Now that I have become thoroughly p… off of this situation, the time comes to seriously consider dropping PMS
That would real PITA because I really enjoyed using PMS (especially the Android app), but as I’m not getting the functionality I paid for (and which is advertised) I’m ready to move on to another media server

Emby seems to be an interesting alternative
https://emby.media/

So, the question is: has anyone any useful feedback on Emby??

Thanks!

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2

You’d REALLY need to have a deep hate for Plex to use Emby.

Plex Music has probably done quite a bit to bolster Emby Ranks tho…

Had I not taken Plex completely out of the Music Equation - by relying completely on local metadata - I might be doing more than testing Emby now and then, but here I am…

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3

Been there a few years ago when I was just interested in all the hype. A very fast u turn was the result, it’s definitely not a polished option. But by all means check it out, the green machine may have you intrigued at present, lets see if the smile will remain. You can run them side by side and that’s what i would recommend during your evaluation. Good luck.

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4

Hi,

I do not DEEPLY hate PMS
I’m DEEPLY frustrated by PMS preventing me to do what I used to do with its previous version
I’m DEEPLY frustrated by the lack of professional PMS support (and yes, I’m definitely willing to pay a significant amount of money for an efficient support)
I would by far prefer keep using PMS rather than switching to anything else

PMS has tons of bells and whistles which Emby lacks indeed, but PMS lacks the basic, essential functionality I want: that is the proper handling of mp3 tags

I have properly filled-in 6 fields on 75K albums and without that, any media server is just simply useless

  • Album artist
  • Year
  • Album title
  • Track#
  • Artist
  • Track title

Now, frustration let aside, if you have some magic to solve my issue, please feel free to share!
BTW: NO, I will not change my current directory structure of my library because that would be just too much work

\A\Artist - Year - Album\Track# - Title
\B\Artist - Year - Album\Track# - Title
…
\Z\Artist - Year - Album\Track# - Title

Thanks!

5

I see, any music I have is Flac. So good luck and you can only hope Jellyfish in the near future sorts out it device support

6

What do you mean with “Jellyfish”??

7

Jellyfin is a branch/fork off Emby

https://jellyfin.org/posts/jellyfin-in-2019/

8

At the very least, Plex requires this:

Tip! : Even if your music content has complete and perfect embedded tags, we strongly encourage you to continue organizing tracks into albums. Using a flat file list of tracks can result in failures or a poor experience.

/Music
   /Pink Floyd
      /Wish You Were Here
         01 - Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V).m4a
         02 - Welcome to the Machine.mp3
         03 - Have a Cigar.mp3
   /Foo Fighters
      /One By One
      /There is Nothing Left to Lose
   /U2
      /Joshua Tree

I have Plex under a court-order not to come within 500 feet of my music, but I MUST name and structure so Plex at least knows it’s music - so it knows to Keep Off The Grass!

If that’s not what you have in mind - enjoy Emby.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention here that Filebot is Magical - for music as well:
https://www.filebot.net/
… it can make short work of any naming/structuring issue…:

image
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I like to sometimes enjoy the media - instead of futzing with it - so I fall in line fairly quickly in the “following of the instructions area” for naming and structuring and that is something Filebot doesn’t even have to think about… and so neither do I.

I’ll also mention that I am using an older structure suggested by Plex, not the more streamlined current suggestion (make no mistake - those aren’t ‘suggestions’). Filebot is mindless efficiency either way - and if I ever want to undertake the ‘fixing’ of it - it’ll be over almost as soon as it started…lol

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9

This can be done largely automated, on hundreds or even thousands of tracks in one rush.
(Although I recommend to do it in smaller batches. For the results to be easier verifiable.)
For instance, if you use mp3tag’s feature “Convert: Tag → Filename”, you use this format string to achieve the desired result:
M:\music\$Left(%albumartist%,1)\%albumartist%\(%year%) - %album%\$num(%track%,2) - %title%
grafik

The only thing you need to make sure of beforehand, is that

  • all files do indeed have an AlbumArtist tagged
  • the AlbumArtist and AlbumTitle tags of each track within one particular album are identical to all the other tracks of that album

You might want to verify if the results are as expected, when the artistname begins with a special character.

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@SE56
I will have a look at Jellyfish, thanks for the pointer

@JuiceWSA
Yes, I know that KB article (almost by heart…)
The thing is that I have never organised my music that way, but PMS managed to find and use the existing tags properly
It seems that, since a version upgrade a while ago, that functionality has been dropped
I did not notice until I reinstalled the server and let it fail on media identification

@OttoKerner
I’m using mp3tag for tagging & MediaMonkey as lib manager. Those 2 could indeed be used to automate the organisation

But I feel very reluctant to change the directory structure because

  • the recommended structure does not enable you to see at a glance what albums you have
  • it also does not provide chronology of albums (no ‘year’ info in the dir structure)
  • I have set up a test lib a while ago with a few albums organised according to the “Holy Bible”. That did not help… my tags were still ignored

That is much more user friendly (basics of ergonomy: put all relevant information immediately in sight)

2020-08-14 15_50_39-S
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The crucial point is that my media, in this current directory structure used to be digested properly by PMS and THAT is exactly what I want back

Just consider this very basic point of view:
I pay for a functionality I want and I prove it works --> me happy
That very specific functionality stops working --> me unhappy (to be polite)

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11

That’s what Plex is for :wink:

Look at my example. It includes the (year) in the folder name. There is no issue to use that kind of folder name with Plex – particularly when you have complete and accurate meta tags.

12

Actually no: PMS is excellent at streaming and has lots of bells & whistles like artist bio, album art, concerts etc…
These are the eye attracting marketing bits

If I want to do anything else that streaming music (like finding what I have from a specific artist, when I have entered it in the collection, if I have already listened to it etc… ), I’m checking MediaMonkey or (even much faster) simply the file manager

Here you score only half a point because you still have to expand the artist subdir to find out what’s in there

Anyway, I keep hammering on this key point: a few months back, my tags used to be found perfectly in the current directory structure
The question is: will that functionality be back, or shall I look at another media server?

13

Welcome, join the club!

You are just one of the many many folks who hate the new rigidity of plex music naming requirements.

Just want to confirm, that you do have the music library set to use prefer local metadata ?

image

if so, and it still isn’t working to your satisfaction, the only real work around is to find a folder organization that is closer to plex’s requirements.

It’s not exactly correct, but plex mostly works with my organization of

/media/audio/MP3/A/Alanis Morissette/2020 - Such Pretty Forks in the Road/01 - Alanis Morissette - Smiling.mp3
/media/audio/AR Verified/0-9/65daysofstatic/2016 - No Man's Sky- Music for an Infinite Universe (disc 1- No Man's Sky- Music for an Infinite Universe)/01 - 65daysofstatic - Monolith.flac
/media/audio/MP3/_Various/2006 - Accession Records, Volume 3 [MP3]/12 - Lights of Euphoria - Emptyness (Accession to Eurphoria mix).mp3

I use mediamonkey too!

here is my (super complex) auto-org template, customize to suit your needs

$left(\\servername\sharename-media\audio\$if(<Quality>,<Quality>\,$upper(<Extension>)\)$if(<Grouping>,_<Grouping>\,$if(<Album Artist>=various artists,_Various\,$if(<Album Artist>,<Album Artist@1>\,<Artist@1>\)$if(<Album Artist>,<Album Artist>\,<Artist>\)))$if(<Album>,$if(<Year>,<Year> - )<Album>\)$if(<Track#>,<Track#:2> - )<Artist> - <Title>,200)

Do note, I use the full Various Artists album artist tag where applicable, but the folder is shortened to _Various

I also use the mediamonkey quality and grouping tags to sort certain collections into their own dedicated folder.

if you have stuff with random quality and grouping tags, you may want to avoid the above template.

14

Yes sir
Ok, it is in French, but you should be able to translate that

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Concerning MM, thanks for the templaye, but that is way beyond my capacity of understanding
My last experience in development was with COBOL in the mid 80ies
So I’m not willing to take the risk of messing up my collection if I don’t understand exactly what I’m doing

I think I have undersrtood the message about compliance with recommended directory structure (actually, imposed would be more accurate), but that is not the point

The key point is the loss of a KEY functionality without any form of warning: THAT is absolutely unfair
As already expressed: tags used to be perfectly found a few months back before that very specific bit of functionality disappeared

Basically, if the DEVs (or their management) do not show any form of understanding for us, the customers who pay their salaries, I will simply dump PMS and move on to something else

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15

unfortunately, they do not seem very receptive to making the organization/naming more flexible, I and others have been complaining about it since the new music system was introduced.

it has improved somewhat since then, but unfortunately the core /music/artist/album requirement has not changed.

it’s a shame, that plex is the only music app (that I have used) that requires such rigid organization, and while most people may not care, the people that DO care, care VERY MUCH about it.

see @ https://www.plex.tv/blog/find-that-tune/ and other related music posts

16

Did you try the new scanner as well? On your other thread you still have old one enabled. Just to make sure, since I have almost the same folder structure as you and no problem so far. (Worked with the old scanner as well though, mostly flac though)

17

New scanner? Old scanner??
What?? How?? where???

All I know is the version: 1.19.5.3112

18

In the properties of your music library, on the ‘Advanced’ tab.
Scanner: ‘Plex Music’: new scanner
Scanner: ‘Plex Music Scanner’: old scanner

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19

Thanks for yhe pointer…

I’m currently scanning a small part of the lib and that seems to make a difference
I’ll wait until it finishes, analyse the quality and eventually scan the whole stuff
A complete scan takes usually 1 to 2 weeks…

20

I had heard so much about Emby on another site’s forum for cord cutters so I thought I’d give it a try. I used all the recommended settings and didn’t change anything. It loaded my films and TV shows without issue but seemed to be taking an awfully long time to fully show up on the menu screen. I then tried to play a movie and it took literally 5 minutes to start playing and then hung up every 10 seconds for a few seconds before starting to play again. I then opened the same movie on Plex and it opened immediately or within a few seconds, and played flawlessly without any stopping, buffering or bit-mapping. I decided to stick with Plex and deleted Emby and then found out all of the files where it had loaded my videos, it placed a small .jpg file within that folder with my videos instead of keeping everything stored in a system file like Plex does. I also didn’t like how they force you to pay to check out many options with no free trial period so I was unable to test my live TV. My opinion is Plex is leaps and bounds ahead of where Emby is but you can feel free to give them a try as well to see what your thoughts are. My thoughts are it’s not a good option, or at least not a good option for me.

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