Update Breaking Important Metadata that Can't Be Lost

[warpedrevolutio 1]

I am a little at my wits end with this one, as the metadata being destroyed is significant amounts of manually added metadata, primarily Collections that represent many hours of work.

After updating to the new version, and restoring from backup (both manually dragging in an old programdata file and using backup and restore) Emby automatically rescans the entire library, deletes all metadata from almost every item contained in my Movie Library, and leaves the items with no posters or metadata. It has done this multiple times.

Steps taken:

1) I tried rolling back to the prior update and restoring the entire programdata file to a prior version with the metadata. The issue being that Emby will automatically update to the new version before I can turn automatic updates off, creating the same issue as before.

I also have no idea if I am doing it right because I can't find easy to understand documentation telling me how to do a rollback. If someone could explain it to me in clear and concise steps that won't lead to an automatic update I would appreciate it.

What I am doing currently is deleting the system and programdata folders in the user/appdata/roaming/emby-server folder and then replacing them with the system folder from the winx64 build of 4.8.11.0 available at https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Releases/releases/ and an archived version of my own servers programdata folder. 

 

Ultimate Objective: My ultimate objective is to preserve the metadata related to Collections for the items in the Movies Folder. I do not care how this accomplished, but it is a must. 

 

I've attached a log, which I've cut off at the point where it starts removing items, if you need to see specific actions after that let me know.

 

 

embyserver log edited.txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, do your movies have nfo files next to them?

[warpedrevolutio 1]

EDIT: Removed prior response, I will respond again tomorrow.

Edited October 3, 2025 by warpedrevolutio
Didn't understand question

[warpedrevolutio 1]

They do not have nfo files in the folders where the individual movies are kept.

[warpedrevolutio 1]

As an update, I did another replacement of programdata followed by restoring from a prior backup.

 

Just like before, initially everything is fine, Movies are still in collections, and then almost every item in my Movie library is removed from every collection it is in.

One change is that this time the rest of the metadata and images appears to be untouched (although its not clear if other manually added metadata might have been removed as well). I'm attaching a log from this most recent occurrence.

embyserver10-3.txt

[ebr 16169]

16 hours ago, warpedrevolutio said:

significant amounts of manually added metadata

 

11 hours ago, warpedrevolutio said:

They do not have nfo files in the folders where the individual movies are kept.

If you are manually editing your metadata I strongly suggest you enable NFO saving.  This will ensure your edits survive location moves, upgrades, etc.

[warpedrevolutio 1]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

 

If you are manually editing your metadata I strongly suggest you enable NFO saving.  This will ensure your edits survive location moves, upgrades, etc.

Hi, thanks for this suggestion, once I have the main issue figured out, I will be doing this, but because I will likely need to restore multiple times that is a future to do.

Do you know if its possible to take existing metadata (I'm specifically looking for categories metadata) and have that automatically written to the NFO file using NFO Metadata or any other plugin?

[warpedrevolutio 1]

On 10/2/2025 at 5:29 PM, Luke said:

Hi, do your movies have nfo files next to them?

 

On 10/3/2025 at 9:21 AM, ebr said:

 

If you are manually editing your metadata I strongly suggest you enable NFO saving.  This will ensure your edits survive location moves, upgrades, etc.

Hi following up on this, as I've asked multiple small questions in order to know how I can move forward with fixing this issue on my own and have not had a response.

[Luke 42077]

@warpedrevolutiohave you successfully rolled back at this point or are you on 4.9 ?

Quote

Do you know if its possible to take existing metadata (I'm specifically looking for categories metadata) and have that automatically written to the NFO file using NFO Metadata or any other plugin?

If you enable nfo metadata saving, then no, it won't cause nfo files to get created right away. They will get created for items the next time they are updated.

One way to do that is to refresh metadata on the entire library, but of course you might not want to do that because it might result in some edits being changed, although that shouldn't happen if the fields are locked in the metadata editor.

Another way is to open a movie in the metadata editor and just click save. 

Does this help at all?