The Emby server install
Your server’s in place, so it’s time to get it acquainted with your media and prepare to stream movies, music and more.
Before jumping in to configure your media server for the first time, take a brief detour to put your media in order. For Emby to locate and identify your media files, you need to make sure they’re named a certain way and stored within a logical set of folders and sub-folders.
Start by creating a parent ‘media’ folder, then create subfolders inside here for each type of media you have: Music, Movies, TV Shows, Photos, Music Video and so on. If you plan to delineate your libraries further – for example, separate movie libraries for kids and grown-ups – then create subfolders inside these, too.
From here, your structure depends on the type of library you’re creating. It also affects how media is named – see the table for examples of good naming conventions to apply to your media to help Emby identify them.
If you’ve not already been naming your media in this way, then renaming it all by hand is going to be awkward. Thankfully there’s a free tool that speed things up for you called Filebot, which can be installed through the Software
Centre. Simply drag batches of incorrectly named media into the program window according to type (we recommend splitting TV shows into seasons, music into albums or artists, and so on). Once done, use the appropriate online database to create a match and finally rename all the files with a single click. You can customise the naming convention if you wish too – for example, we recommend the following for TV shows where you’d also like to include the episode name within the filename for easy identification: {n} - {s00e00} - {t} Visit www.filebot.net for a guide to using it.
Set up your media server
With your media correctly named and organised, it’s time to introduce it to Emby as part of the media server setup procedure. Open your web browser and type one of localhost:8096, your server name (QNAP:8096) or IP address ( 192.168.35.2:8096) into the Address bar. Emby will launch its setup wizard – start by choosing your location, then set up your primary account. You’ll be prompted to connect to an Emby account – this is cloud-hosted and simplifies sign-in from other Emby apps, but for now skip this step by leaving ‘admin’ selected (or substituting it with your name) and clicking Next.
Click Add Media Library to add your first folder. Click the blank Content type drop-down menu to choose the type of media (such as Music, TV, Movies and so on). Confirm its display name before clicking the + Add button to select the folder containing your content. Now work through the Library settings option – unless metadata is embedded into your files, you want to keep the option to download it and artwork from the internet ticked, but you can leave the metadata and country information blank (you’ll configure a universal setting spanning all your libraries shortly).
You’ll be given the option to save artwork and metadata into the media folders themselves, making it easy for you to edit later. Tick this box along with the ‘Download images in advance’ box if you’re running Emby on a high-end server (in other words, not the Raspberry Pi 3). Choose whether or not to refresh metadata automatically (Never is probably best left selected here) and tick ‘Prefer embedded titles over filenames’ should they become necessary. Again, don’t choose Enable real-time monitoring on low-end systems where you’ll be regularly adding content to your library.
If you’re adding films, you’ll get options to extract chapter images for graphical scene selection menus – if you do enable this, we advise leaving ‘Extract chapter images during the library scan’ unticked for now to speed up the initial library scan. TV show options include including details about missing episodes in seasons and merging series spread across multiple folders – this latter option shouldn’t be an issue if you’ve organised your media as per our earlier tips.
Finally, click OK, then repeat for any other media libraries you wish to add. Note, if you make a mistake with your library selections, click the vertical ellipsis symbol next to the library name to remove it or make changes. When you’re done adding libraries – for now – click Next. Now’s the time to select your chosen language and country for metadata retrieval, click Next, read and agree to the T&Cs and then click Next followed by Finish.
At the dashboard
You’ll now be whisked to your server dashboard (if you signed up for an Emby account you’ll be prompted to log in here) – before wandering off to leave the library scan to its own devices, take the time for a quick tour. Start by clicking the Take a tour link for a whistle-stop tour of the Emby server interface to see what you can do.
Places to focus your tweaks: the Dashboard itself, where you can give your media server a friendlier name (it’s given the same name as your PC or NAS by default). Select Users
to password-protect your own account and add other users in your household. This enables you to not just lock them out of the administration tools, but also restrict which libraries they can access as well as apply parental controls to limit access to your media.
The Library folder is where you go to add, remove or manage libraries. The Transcoding section is important too – transcoding occurs when streaming over the internet or when your client device doesn’t support the file format or codecs used for your media. Emby transcodes media into MP4/H.264 for video and MP3 or AC3 for audio, which should work on most devices, but you can save your server a lot of work by converting your media into these formats using a tool like
Handbrake ( www.handbrake.fr), particularly if you’re running Emby on a low-spec machine such as a Raspberry Pi 3.
Transcoding options
The transcoding section includes some experimental hardware acceleration features, and enables you to apply a limit to the number of processor threads devoted to transcoding if your server is being overwhelmed. If you’re getting choppy results when transcoding on lower-end machines, try changing the H.264 encoding preset from Auto to Superfast, which should improve matters.
There’s lots more to explore too, but we’ll cover some of these bonus features – including live TV and DVR – later on in this month’s feature.
As things stand, you can now access your media through any web browser on any other device. Simply enter the server IP address as before, and if necessary click the Home button. You can browse by library, and in addition you’ll see how
Emby starts to stack up content to watch, such as the next episode of a TV show you’ve been watching. But while this is functional, it’s not exactly practical. Turn the page to find out different – and better – ways in which you can stream media around your home.