Watched status not being saved, but only for some users

[joechilds 18]

I recently moved my Emby server from my old Mac to my new Mac. I used the 'Backup & Restore' plugin to import my old server's config into my new one, and everything seemed to work fine.

But once I re-scanned all my media, I found that my watched status was missing, but only for 2 of my 4 users. For 2 of the users it worked perfectly, all the watched status were remembered. But for the other 2, none of the watched status had been remembered at all, everything was marked as unwatched.

I even tried deleting my media libraries, recreating them, and rescanning everything, but it had the same outcome.

Looking at the user settings, I can't see any difference between the users that would cause this.

[Luke 42079]

Hi there, can you please provide a specific example? Thanks.

[joechilds 18]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi there, can you please provide a specific example? Thanks.

Sorry James, not sure what you mean…

When I restored my server from backup, users 1 & 2 had their watched status restored for all media. Users 3 & 4 did not have their watched status restored, everything was marked as unwatched. 
 

And the same thing happened when I deleted my media libraries, and added them again. 
 

Should I send you a log file?

Edited June 24, 2024 by joechilds

[Happy2Play 9781]

How did you backup/restore?

Which plugin?

But sounds like the backup is not correct or something else happened in the restore.

[joechilds 18]

3 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

How did you backup/restore?

Which plugin?

But sounds like the backup is not correct or something else happened in the restore.

The plugin called “Backup & Restore”. 
I moved my backup files from the old Mac to the new Mac. I went to Backup & Restore in my new Mac’s Emby server, and it was displaying the “Current backup info”, which was the backup I had done on my old Mac. I clicked “restore from backup”, and all of my settings, users, and libraries were now imported into my new Emby server. It worked perfectly, apart from the issue with watching I described. 
 

But I’m not sure it is an issue with the backup, as after I’d restored from backup and noticed the problem, I started manually marking media as Watched in one of the users that the watched statuses had not transferred. But when I deleted my media libraries and re-created them, the same thing happened - that user’s watched statuses were all forgotten again. 

[Happy2Play 9781]

That makes no sense then as you did a full backup/restore from on to the other so the databases are fully intact.  So now both servers have the exact same information.

As for deleting and readding media only media with no providersid can ever loose watched status.

Unless a server log from after the restore shows something I don't see how this is even possible.  Did any configs change from one computer to the other?

[darkassassin07 652]

If you head to the back&restore page, click 'extract data from backup' then select the effected users and restore them; does that fix your issue?

 

 

Alternatively; if you create a new user, then extract data like above, but map an old user to this newly created one; does the new user now have items marked as watched?

If that second method doesn't yield any results, I'd say your backup is incomplete for whatever reason.

[joechilds 18]

1 hour ago, Happy2Play said:

That makes no sense then as you did a full backup/restore from on to the other so the databases are fully intact.  So now both servers have the exact same information.

As for deleting and readding media only media with no providersid can ever loose watched status.

Unless a server log from after the restore shows something I don't see how this is even possible.  Did any configs change from one computer to the other?

What’s a providersid?

I should’ve said before, the content that’s losing its watched status doesn’t have TVDB / TMDB data, it’s all custom NFO personal content. The library it’s in is set to the content type “TV shows” so that it displays properly. Could that be the issue?

I didn’t think this was relevant as I have another library full of personal content (although this library has content type set to “Home Videos & Photos”) and all content in this library retained its watched data when I restored. 

[Happy2Play 9781]

10 minutes ago, joechilds said:

What’s a providersid?

I should’ve said before, the content that’s losing its watched status doesn’t have TVDB / TMDB data, it’s all custom NFO personal content. The library it’s in is set to the content type “TV shows” so that it displays properly. Could that be the issue?

I didn’t think this was relevant as I have another library full of personal content (although this library has content type set to “Home Videos & Photos”) and all content in this library retained its watched data when I restored. 

Providerids are ids gotten from metadata provider sites.

Minus you removing content or libraries and readding them all media should maintain watched status as you are just moving database.  Now if your paths change in this move you will lose all watched status do to no providerids as the tracking database itemid will change as items are removed and readded to the db.

But this should affect all users watch status not selective users.

Edited June 25, 2024 by Happy2Play

[joechilds 18]

9 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Providerids are ids gotten from metadata provider sites.

Minus you removing content or libraries and readding them all media should maintain watched status as you are just moving database.  Now if your paths change in this move you will lose all watched status do to no providerids as the tracking database itemid will change as items are removed and readded to the db.

But this should affect all users watch status not selective users.

That’s what the problem was, I changed my paths for some of the libraries but not others. Thanks, I appreciate all the help. 
 

Well that sucks that Emby can’t remember watched statuses for custom content. Is there any way to create my own custom IDs so that Emby can remember what the media is, even when I change its path?

[Happy2Play 9781]

Yes, that is a limitation here, but you can potentially manually update the database tables to possibly maintain this info.  As mentioned in other cross-platform migration topics.

Basic example of path update I did recently

UPDATE "main"."MediaItems" SET "Path" = replace( "Path", 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos', 'E:\Media' ) WHERE path LIKE 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos%';
UPDATE "main"."MediaItems" SET "Images" = replace( "Images", 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos', 'E:\Media' ) WHERE Images LIKE 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos%';
UPDATE "main"."MediaStreams2" SET "Path" = replace( "Path", 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos', 'E:\Media' ) WHERE path LIKE 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos%';
UPDATE "main"."Chapters3" SET "ImagePath" = replace( "ImagePath", 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos', 'E:\Media' ) WHERE imagepath LIKE 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos%';
UPDATE "main"."ItemExtradata" SET "Value" = replace( "Value", '"Path":"C:\\Users\\Media\\Desktop\\Videos', '"Path":"E:\\Media' ) WHERE value LIKE '%"Path":"C:\\Users\\Media\\Desktop\\Videos%';

As for customids not really unless you want to flood you server log with errors for fakeids and potentially end up reusing an id as you would have to know what you have already used.

But yes it would good if Emby could generate some sort of customid that could be maintained. @Luke

[joechilds 18]

2 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Yes, that is a limitation here, but you can potentially manually update the database tables to possibly maintain this info.  As mentioned in other cross-platform migration topics.

Basic example of path update I did recently

UPDATE "main"."MediaItems" SET "Path" = replace( "Path", 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos', 'E:\Media' ) WHERE path LIKE 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos%';
UPDATE "main"."MediaItems" SET "Images" = replace( "Images", 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos', 'E:\Media' ) WHERE Images LIKE 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos%';
UPDATE "main"."MediaStreams2" SET "Path" = replace( "Path", 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos', 'E:\Media' ) WHERE path LIKE 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos%';
UPDATE "main"."Chapters3" SET "ImagePath" = replace( "ImagePath", 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos', 'E:\Media' ) WHERE imagepath LIKE 'C:\Users\Media\Desktop\Videos%';
UPDATE "main"."ItemExtradata" SET "Value" = replace( "Value", '"Path":"C:\\Users\\Media\\Desktop\\Videos', '"Path":"E:\\Media' ) WHERE value LIKE '%"Path":"C:\\Users\\Media\\Desktop\\Videos%';

As for customids not really unless you want to flood you server log with errors for fakeids and potentially end up reusing an id as you would have to know what you have already used.

But yes it would good if Emby could generate some sort of customid that could be maintained. @Luke

Brilliant, I'll give that a try, thanks!

Edited June 25, 2024 by joechilds