Symfonium Not Listing Emby Media in Correct Date Order

Support
1

Issue description:

Hi,

In order to get to the bottom of this problem, I set up a test using Emby Server 4.8.10.0 on Windows 10 Pro 22H2 with a single library holding 20x mp4 audio files (downloads from BBC Radio). Emby has “Date added behaviour for new content” set to “Use file creation date” (there is no option for selecting last modified date).

On my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone running Android 14, I have Symfonium 11.3.0 and Emby client 3.4.20.

For the web-based Emby library browser and for the Emby Android client I go into the test library, select the “Folders” view then sort by descending “Date Added”. They both list the 20 media files in the correct order - the same order as Windows File Explorer when sort by descending “Date created” on the actual file system folder.

So far so good.

For Symfonium I press the Library icon at bottom of screen, select “Files”, the Emby server, the test library, and then sort by descending “Last modified” (there being no “Date created” or “Date added” option). This lists the 20 media files in a very different order. Changing to sort by ascending “Last modified” simply reverses the order but does not make it match Emby client (or Windows File Explorer) when they are set to ascending.

I have done a manual library sync from the Source Filter popup on Symfonium while debug logging was enabled. This shows that Emby is sending the correct “DateCreated” attribute for each file (matches exactly the “Date created” field in Windows File Explorer after BST to GMT time zone correction).

I have screenshots and the log file to share with you.

Logs:

Upload description: Dom23 - Symfonium Not Listing Emby Media in Correct Date Order

Additional information:

 

 

Reproduction steps:

 

 

Media provider:

Emby

Screenshots:

 

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2

File mode is bad don’t use file mode :stuck_out_tongue:

And for the record file mode is direct from the server so unrelated to sync at all.

Anyway if you look closely they are sorted by the date :stuck_out_tongue: It’s just that I used the readable value that is locale specific and not the actual datetime value for that.

Will be fixed in next release.

3

Thanks Tolriq.

Why is file mode bad? I find it rather useful because I have a well organised folder structure for non-music audio which can be easier to browse than long lists of Albums, Songs or Artists.

4

Because it’s online only and no proper offline caching of the media.

Proper tags or smart filters are most of the time better usage for Symfonium.

5

I’ll investigate smart filters, but tbh offline is not so important to me as I have a very fat Internet pipe and VPN access to the LAN for direct Emby access. I prefer to use Symfonium over the Emby clients because it has a richer UI and provides better access to metadata, and I do listen to some stuff I manually add to the phone so it’s great to have a single player for both.

6

Also, of course, Symfonium is Android only so I’d still probably be using folders/files mode when listening from a laptop.