Emby loses (most) custom titles added by movie.nfo after update

[Shepard 2]

Hello!

Version: 4.8.8.0
QNAP NAS: TS-653D

This is something I have observed during the last 2-3 updates of Emby:
Each movie folder contains a movie.nfo with the tmdb ID and the title, see the attached file.

For some movies I set custom titles like "Speed (Remastered)" or "Dances with Wolves (Director's Cut)".
When I add the movies to the database the titles are added correctly.

After the last Emby server updates most titles were reset to their default names, so "Speed (Remastered)" became "Speed" again.
I mention "most" because it seems the recently added titles are unaffected by this.

Worth adding though that I keep the most recently added titles on a different share/folder.
This folder is part of the same library.
To make it more clear:
Library "Movies" contains:
From NAS1: movies/HD (This is where emby is installed)
From NAS2: new/HD (Other NAS in the local network)
There are in total 7 mounts in the library from which 3 are local and 4 remote on the other NAS.
I can't confirm that all files in the remote folders are not affected by this, I'll have to see with the next update.

In the library configuration I have enabled nfo-reading and it has the hightest priority.

If I select the refresh option and "Replace all Metadata" for these titles does nothing, I would expect the title to be reread
from the nfo file.

Unfortunately I don't have a log from the restart after the latest update, I'd have to take one for the next update.
I also performed the db vaccum function before one of the last updates, thinking the db might be in need of some cleanup.

The log attached is from doing a manual metadata refresh of one title as explained above.
It shows no indication of accessing the nfo file.
Attached is also the corresponding movie.nfo

The only way to fix this is to move the movie folder somewhere else, do a database rescan, move it back, do another rescan, and then it
gets added again with the proper title.

Thanks and best regards

movie.nfo embyserver (2).txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, your nfo contains both nfo and a url at the end. Putting both together is not supported. Try just putting this in your nfo file:

https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1637/

 

[Shepard 2]

Hi Luke,

thanks for the quick reply, this fixes it.
If I do a database scan now it adds the correct title!.

Best regards

[Shepard 2]

Hi, sorry to reopen this but it happened again.
I rebooted my NAS after a long time, which of course then also restarted Emby, and the majority (not all) of titles fell back to the english default name.

One difference I noticed between the working/non-working is that the non-working I checked has Windows Linebreaks.
I converted one to Unix, did a rescan of that particular entry, but it did not pick up on the name from the NFO.
Is something else wrong with my NFO files?

movie_not_working.nfo movie_working.nfo embyserver.txt

Edited July 27, 2024 by Shepard

[Luke 42077]

2 hours ago, Shepard said:

Hi, sorry to reopen this but it happened again.
I rebooted my NAS after a long time, which of course then also restarted Emby, and the majority (not all) of titles fell back to the english default name.

One difference I noticed between the working/non-working is that the non-working I checked has Windows Linebreaks.
I converted one to Unix, did a rescan of that particular entry, but it did not pick up on the name from the NFO.
Is something else wrong with my NFO files?

movie_not_working.nfo 157 B · 1 download movie_working.nfo 161 B · 1 download embyserver.txt 229.88 kB · 0 downloads

You have a combination of xml and a url at the end. Both together are not supported, so you need to pick one or the other.

[Shepard 2]

48 minutes ago, Luke said:

You have a combination of xml and a url at the end. Both together are not supported, so you need to pick one or the other.

I see. 

Is there a way to set a custom title in an xml nfo and give the tmdb ID in that same nfo to ensure the correct metadata is fetched?

Looking at the Kodi structure https://kodi.wiki/view/NFO_files/Movies I'd think this should be it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<movie>
  <title>Gladiator (Director's Cut)</title>
  <uniqueid default="true" type="tmdb">98</uniqueid>
</movie>

But this isn't working.

I also tried Tiny Media Manager, set the nfo format to emby, wrote the nfo, which (additional tags removed) looks the same, and the title is not picked up.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!--created on 2024-07-27 20:30:42 - tinyMediaManager 4.3.14-->
<movie>
  <title>Willkommen bei den Korsen / L'enquete Corse</title>
  <uniqueid default="true" type="tmdb">39386</uniqueid>
</movie>

Kodi also mentions a "Parsing NFO" https://kodi.wiki/view/NFO_files/Parsing, which is just putting the plain URL, what you suggested
in your previous answer. I misread it as removing the uniqueid from the XML and keeping the URL at the bottom, which is why my nfos look like that.
But this is then missing the option to set a custom title to be displayed.

Edited July 27, 2024 by Shepard

[Shepard 2]

I enabled nfo saving in emby to see how it looks there and created this from the output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<movie>
  <title>Aliens (Special Edition)</title>
  <tmdbid>679</tmdbid>
  <uniqueid type="tmdb">679</uniqueid>
</movie>

Upon rescan, it now shows the custom name.
Should this format be ok then?

[Luke 42077]

1 hour ago, Shepard said:

I enabled nfo saving in emby to see how it looks there and created this from the output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<movie>
  <title>Aliens (Special Edition)</title>
  <tmdbid>679</tmdbid>
  <uniqueid type="tmdb">679</uniqueid>
</movie>

Upon rescan, it now shows the custom name.
Should this format be ok then?

I believe that should be fine, yes.

[Shepard 2]

8 minutes ago, Luke said:

I believe that should be fine, yes.

Great, thanks for the help and clarifications!

[Shepard 2]

Hello!

Another entry to this topic.

It happened again that all custom titles set by the nfo files were lost, I think I can pinpoint now why this is happening.
I think it's due to the library option to refresh the metadata, it is set to 30 days.

This is the nfo File:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<movie>
  <title>Aliens (Special Edition)</title>
  <tmdbid>679</tmdbid>
  <uniqueid type="tmdb" default="true">679</uniqueid>
  <tag>remux</tag>
</movie>

The behavior can be reproduced manually selecting the "Refresh Metadata" option from the movie detail page and then selecting "Replace all Metadata".
When doing this, the custom title gets lost, the "remux" tag is kept though.
When selecting to only update missing metadata the custom movie title is kept.
So the easiest workaround for now is to disable the refresh in the library onfiguration.

Is this expected behavior?
Am I correct to assume the refresh option from the library configuration replaces all metadata as well?

[Happy2Play 9780]

41 minutes ago, Shepard said:

Hello!

Another entry to this topic.

It happened again that all custom titles set by the nfo files were lost, I think I can pinpoint now why this is happening.
I think it's due to the library option to refresh the metadata, it is set to 30 days.

This is the nfo File:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<movie>
  <title>Aliens (Special Edition)</title>
  <tmdbid>679</tmdbid>
  <uniqueid type="tmdb" default="true">679</uniqueid>
  <tag>remux</tag>
</movie>

The behavior can be reproduced manually selecting the "Refresh Metadata" option from the movie detail page and then selecting "Replace all Metadata".
When doing this, the custom title gets lost, the "remux" tag is kept though.
When selecting to only update missing metadata the custom movie title is kept.
So the easiest workaround for now is to disable the refresh in the library onfiguration.

Is this expected behavior?
Am I correct to assume the refresh option from the library configuration replaces all metadata as well?

Yes this is expected as you are telling Emby to replace all metadata.  So if your doing customization you need to ensure those fields are locked if available.  And a Refresh will not affect that field.

Edited September 26, 2024 by Happy2Play

[Shepard 2]

Thanks for the fast reply!

I first added the lockdata=true tag to my nfo, however, I got a bit confused by the mechanics.
After adding the tag and running a library rescan, all metadata but the one defined in the nfo was gone, so I guess using lockdata leads to
only considering the data from the nfo and does not fetch anything from remote.

I checked what emby exports when fields are locked with the medatata manager from your example and added this to my nfo file:

<lockedfields>Name|Tags|ProviderIds</lockedfields>

Now fields title and tags are shown as locked, and the other metadata is fetched from tmdb.
Also a rescan with "replace all metadata" nowkeeps the custom name.  

I don't see an option to lock the tmdb/imdb etc. IDs in the metadata manager, I got the fieldname ProviderIds from the DB schema and added it as well.
Does it make sense to have this, or is this field not considered for the lockedfields?

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 hour ago, Shepard said:

Does it make sense to have this, or is this field not considered for the lockedfields?

I would not think so as the only way they can be wrong is search by name identification or if a provider site has the wrong id for externalids but are a one and done field.  But to a point we have requested then so we could potentially blank out specific providerid fields so metadata could potentially only come from one source when provider sites have mismatching information for a show.

[Shepard 2]

Ok, thanks for the info!

[Luke 42077]

12 hours ago, Shepard said:

Ok, thanks for the info!

Has this answered your questions and helped resolve your issue?

[Shepard 2]

12 hours ago, Luke said:

Has this answered your questions and helped resolve your issue?

Yes. I have updated my nfo files with the lockedfields attribute and did a rescan of my library, everything looks good, also if I use the "Replace all metadata" option on an individual movie the custom names remain. I'll have another look after the 30 day automated library scan, but I'm confident adding lockedfields to the nfo resolves my issue.