Actors disappearing after an edit?

[MrAudio 5]

So, I'm running Emby server 3.2.0 on QNAP, but I'm not sure that this is QNAP-specific at all.

 

I had some movies where the actor was either not linked with their TMDB/IMDB profile or were linked to the wrong one (same name, or a mononym that got linked to the wrong profile). No big deal - just edit it and link it to the right person, right?

 

So, when I tried that, I would first click on the actor, which takes me to their profile page in Emby, then click on the overflow/hamburger menu, and go to Edit Info. After making the corrections, that actor would be completely gone from that movie entry, and I'm not able to add it back no matter what I do. I've gone so far as removing the movie from my server, ran all of the Scheduled Tasks (including Disc Cleanup and People), then added the movie back, and still, they don't reappear, and I can't manually add them back.

 

I also figured out that, if I don't click on the actor first, but rather, hover over the actor's picture until the black overlay "rolls up" and gives me the hamburger menu, I can edit there and everything is fine - the profiles get correctly linked and the person is still listed as an actor in that movie.

 

Also, the missing actors are still listed in the movie.xml file that's in the movie's folder - they just don't show up in Emby and can't be re-added manually from within Emby. When I add the actor, their name goes on the list in the edit screen, but when I click SAVE to save the changes and exit back out to the movie, the actor is gone, and going back into the movie's Edit Info screen shows the actor has disappeared again.

 

Clearly, there's something different in the editing mechanism if I try to edit from the actor's profile page vs. if I edit from the movie's cast listing page - the latter works just as you'd expect, but the former causes actors to be nuked permanently.

[Luke 37050]

We need to review the workflow for this, but actors are linked to media files by name. So if you click on a movie, then see actor A, then click on Actor A and rename actor A to B, the movie is still looking for Actor A which is now gone.

 

So what you instead need to do is edit the cast list for the movie.

[MrAudio 5]

Yes, I figured that part out (because editing from the actor's screen broke the link). But I can't even add them back by editing the cast list - when I do, the name shows up in the list in the edit screen, but when I "save" and go back to the movie, the actor isn't there and when I go back into the edit screen they're not in the list anymore there either.

[Luke 37050]

@@Happy2Play have you seen that? thanks.

[Happy2Play 8278]

@@Happy2Play have you seen that? thanks.

 

Yes, I figured that part out (because editing from the actor's screen broke the link). But I can't even add them back by editing the cast list - when I do, the name shows up in the list in the edit screen, but when I "save" and go back to the movie, the actor isn't there and when I go back into the edit screen they're not in the list anymore there either.

 

@@Luke once a actor has a mismatch you can try to add them as many times as you like to any media and they will never appear until you fix the People record mismatch folder name vs Title.  This mismatch blocks the actor from appearing in anything.

 

 

@@MrAudio fields did you edit on the actor?

[Abobader 2942]

@@Happy2Play have you seen that? thanks.

 

This is indeed funny question here, I can not say anymore.

[Abobader 2942]

Yes, I figured that part out (because editing from the actor's screen broke the link). But I can't even add them back by editing the cast list - when I do, the name shows up in the list in the edit screen, but when I "save" and go back to the movie, the actor isn't there and when I go back into the edit screen they're not in the list anymore there either.

 

Good day,

 

The only steps to fix this, to go search from the web client on that actors, try more than one spelling till you find it, then edit that name, the spelling to search for must be "english" name.

 

These name by the way coming from the source emby get the metadata from, like themoviedb site.

 

My best

[MrAudio 5]

All of my movies have a "movie.xml" file that I normally edit via MetaBrowser (which I've used for years and years), but after my media server was down for over a year (long, boring story), I recently got a Qnap NAS and re-created it with the current version of everything. And what I was actually trying to do was link the actor to their TMDb or IMDB profiles manually, since they weren't being linked automatically. That's what prompted the editing in the first place.

 

All of my "actors" have a "person.xml" in their folder also, but it looks like Emby doesn't read those, as they already contained the IMDB and TMDb numbers. (It would be terrific if Emby actually parsed those files...)

 

Anyway, I attempted to find the missing actors via a search from the web interface and wasn't able to find them - even just searching for their first or last name only.

[Luke 37050]

This whole workflow of editing cast members is something that needs review for a future update, thanks.

[MrAudio 5]

Thank you for noting the issue. I look forward to future releases!