"Date Added" metadata corrupted, After updating .nfo and using Trakt

[Francky 2]

I've been testing out the media player on the Zidoo and has such had enabled Trakt.

As the media scrapper on Zidoo is pretty terrible, I used tinyMediaManager to update all my .nfo files.

I don't know why or how, but this, for some reason made Emby decide to change ALL my "date added" to all my movies to the moment I used Trakt and updated the .nfo

The frustrating part, Zidoo shows them properly, only Emby is off now.

If I use Emby's Metadata Manager, I can see that each folder for each movies has the proper Added date, yet the file itself all have the same date for every single file. 

Could syncing Emby with Trakt, cause this, Force a change in "date added" to everything?   I doubt it's updating the .nfo that would cause this, as I didn't rescan my library after updating them.

Anyway to force a refresh of only this metadata, so it uses the modified date properly and not the .nfo's or Trakt date.

[Abobader 3464]

Hello Francky,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[Luke 42077]

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

[Francky 2]

Well basically, All my movies now have a Date Added of: 2024-08-21 10:36:24 pm.   But if I look the folder of each one, in Metadata Manager, the folder will show the original Added date.

(On a side note, I had never used Metadata Manager before, I was surprised to see that each movie was in a sub-folder, I expected just a list of movies.)

[Luke 42077]

10 minutes ago, Francky said:

 

(On a side note, I had never used Metadata Manager before, I was surprised to see that each movie was in a sub-folder, I expected just a list of movies.)

The metadata manager mimics folder view.

[Luke 42077]

Have you checked the contents of your nfo files?

[Francky 2]

Oh!  The nfo files did get a "dateadded" flag from tinyMediaManager!  I had looked before but hadn't seen it

But I didn't re-scan my movies, why would nfo files for movies already in the library be updated after the fact?

And wouldn't Emby's setting, of using the file creation date, supersede this?

I guess worst case, I'll write a python script that will scan all the files and update the nfo with the proper file creation date instead.

Or simpler perhaps, could I just delete the "dateadded" flag in the nfo?

Thanks!

Edited August 25, 2024 by Francky

[Happy2Play 9780]

If another program is editing the nfo the nfo will always be honor no matter what setting you have in Emby.  So editing dateadded will be seen in Emby as that is what is used.

Using file creation date writes to dateadded field.

[Francky 2]

So Emby periodically re-scans all the nfo files? 

[Luke 42077]

10 minutes ago, Francky said:

So Emby periodically re-scans all the nfo files? 

Anytime Emby realizes an nfo has changed, it will import data from it and update the database based on that.

[Francky 2]

I tried fixing some of the nfo files by changing the dateadded field to match the movies, but Emby is not updating with this new info this time around.

I've tried to force a refresh metadata and a scan library, what exactly forces it to check the nfo file?

 

[Luke 42077]

So currently date added only gets imported from nfo on initial import but not subsequent ones.

[Francky 2]

Wait what?! lol

So even though my movies where already imported, because my nfo files didn't initially contain a date added field, it took it upon itself to change ALL my movies to use this new date added field... but now there is no way for me to fix this?!   What the heck?!     That is such a strange behaviour.

Is there any way for me to revert my dates added back?

 

Edited August 26, 2024 by Francky

[Luke 42077]

Unless you know then this happened and still have the log files then all we can do is speculate about what might have caused it.

The most likely cause is something caused all of the library content to be removed from the database and then added again, thus getting new date added values.

Another possibility is that the dates were like this all along but just not noticed until now.

 And then lastly, depending on what other plugins you have installed, there could be unknown factors coming from them as well.

[Francky 2]

Well it's pretty clear that Emby updated the metadata once I updated the nfo files.  As the date added now matches exactly what is in the nfo files now.  Seeing as these values are for last Wednesday, it was obviously not like this before then

I wasn't even playing with Emby itself at all, just updated the nfo for my Zidoo... Only to realized the next day that Emby had changed everything by itself.

I guess since I did sync everything with Trakt, the simplest thing is to fix the nfo files to have the proper 'date added' and re-import everything in Emby and then use Trakt to sync up my watch status back up.

Thanks for the assist.

[Luke 42077]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[Francky 2]

Actually ran into another issue

Deleted my Movie Library and then tried to add it back, but it would not appear, so I tried again and again, refreshing the page each time. 
Only for it to finally appear, as 3 Movie Libraries, Oops!  But strangely,  Emby would not let me delete any of them no matter what I tried.

But in the end this was a good thing,  I was using the Qnap app, so I simply uninstalled it and installed Emby as a docker instead, same as all my other services. 

I had updated the nfo files to use the file creation date instead, so they where now all correct and simply re-scanned everything, was extremely fast and then used Trakt to sync up the watch status..  So 30-40 minutes and everything was back to normal. 

I've got to give Props to Emby, it Scans VERY fast.  Zidoo media player took hours even with the nfo files, Emby seemed to be done in 20-30 minutes