Editing "Cast & Crew"

[the-dumb1 121]

I have some videos in my library; for discussion purposes, the type these videos are set to is "Movies."

 

I've been playing with these videos by adding "Cast & Crew" information manually (because such information is not available for these particular videos).  This works without issue for the majority of these videos, but there are a few where I have observed a problem.  No matter what I do, the "Cast & Crew" information I add does not save.  When I pull up the item details, I don't see "Cast & Crew" and when I go to try and add the information in through the Metadata Manager, the information that I previously added is no longer there (though other information such as "Studio" is still there).

 

Here is more information:

 

1.  There are no special characters in the movie name or the path (no parenthesis, commas, apostrophes, dashes, etc.)  Similarly, there are no special characters in the Cast & Crew.

2.  All filenames, pathnames, and information I plug into "Cast & Crew" are short (less than 20 characters).

3.  I am running the latest patched version of Windows 8.1 as well as the latest version of MediaBrowser Server.

4.  I am making my observations/changes via the web client.

5.  I have deleted the NFO file that mediabrowser creates, but the problem with missing information (even though I add it and click "Save") still recurs.

 

Any ideas?

[the-dumb1 121]

Just updating with another thread that seems to have the same problem...

 

http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/7151-meta-info-keeps-disappearing/?hl=cast

 

And there might be another near the top of this forum too.

[Luke 37066]

what steps exactly are you doing?

[the-dumb1 121]

I did wind up fixing my problem but for the sake of everyone else....

 

Pre-condition:  the library has already been created and contents scanned.    There are about 600 videos in the library but I've only touched the metadata for 100 of them. 

 

As far as steps,

 

Let's assume I start from the "itemdetails.html" page for a given movie.  I click on "options" then "edit" and am then presented with the Metadata Manager screen showing all of the metadata for said video.  I scroll down to "People" and then add the actor.  Actor's name is now listed along with the other meta data (I am still looking at edititemmetadata.html).  Still within the same screen, I scroll up and click "Save".  And again, within the same screen, I click on the title of the video (which takes me back to itemdetails.html).  The actors name that I added in the previous screen does not appear.  AND when I go back to edit the metadata, the actor's name that I previously entered is not present.

 

Upon further investigation, what I found was that MediaBrowser assumed that the actor I entered was really someone else.  I found this out by looking at "People" and finding actors whose names I did not recognize--along with the fact that MediaBrowser did not associate them with ANY movie in my collection.   Editing that actor, I found that the IMDB field was populated.  Even after deleting this information  and changing the actor name to the correct name (FYI, the PATH for the actor name was CORRECT, but the actual Name was not), it still reverted to the incorrect name.

 

LONG STORY SHORT, how I fixed my problem .... I changed the actor name to the correct one and then deleted the external ID's.  THEN under Metadata settings, I checked "lock this item to prevent future changes".  Then saved.  Then moved on.

 

I still think this is an anomaly though I am not sure how I'd "fix" it -- because I don't know why MediaBrowser assumed it knew the actor information better than I would.

Edited January 2, 2015 by timid1

[Happy2Play 8282]

Can you provide a specific example?

 

[the-dumb1 121]

I'll PM you the example as I'd rather not share it in public.

[PeteMB 12]

I can confirm this problem, it happens when the name field of a person is different as the ImagesByName folder name. If in the example of Happy2Play you go to the profile of test actor 1 and edit then change the name in the metadata editor to test actor one, this person will disappear from the profile. The ImagesByName folder is ..\ImagesByName\People\T\test actor 1 but the name field in the person.xml file will be test actor one.

 

I have got the same problem in the past, that's why I disabled the refresh people task, because when I person is misidentified by the metadata scraper the name will be changed and the person will disappear from profiles.

[Happy2Play 8282]

This makes since.  Actor folder and name have to match.  From the example test actor 1 if you edit the person to test actor one that is someone else in test actor 1's folder and no longer matches the actor in the movie.xml.