Need help with Emby overriding my manual metadata entry.

[ElylArneseph 0]

Hoping someone can help me with this as it is driving me nuts...

I am trying to manual input an actor's name in a tv show's metadata, which I do on varying occassions and sometimes to correct bad imported data. Doesn't happen with all actors, but just some. Today, it's doing it to me again over and over so bad that I came here to find help...

Today's episode of the TV show "Landman" (S02E01) for example, my metadata is populating with the actor "James Carroll Jordan"... yet the real actor's name is "James Jordan" (no middle name). First, I checked the metadata sites (TMDB and TVDB)... they both list the actor properly as "James Jordan". So when I edit the metadata and delete "James Carroll Jordan", save it. Do a browser refresh, the entry changes back to "James Carroll Jordan" for some reason!! Where is Emby getting this from? The metadata sites I mentioned don't show that, so I am assuming that Emby is doing some sort of check/lookup and overriding me.

If I select to "Identify" and find the actor, many choices appear including both "James Carroll Jordan" and "James Jordan". When I select "James Jordan", the correct actor's thumbnail appears but the name remains as "James Carroll Jordan". If I go back into editing the metadata, click on the actor and remove the middle name and save it. I refresh the browser and it goes back to "James Carroll Jordan"! 

What the heck is going on here? Is this an issue in Emby? Am I doing something incorrect? How can I designate MY edit as authoritative so the actor entry says what I tell it to say?

As I mentioned, I do this all the time... but this behavior only occurs with some actors not all of them. I can't recall at the moment any of the others, just this one that I am currently having the issue with today.

[Abobader 3464]

Hello ElylArneseph,

** 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

[GrimReaper 4739]

What are your library preferred meta-providers enabled and in what order? 

Edit: Also, could you share a screenshot of that person External IDs section from Edit Metadata dialog? 

Edited November 16, 2025 by GrimReaper
Append

[ElylArneseph 0]

The meta-providers are TheTVDB, TheMovieDb and The Open Movie Database... in that order for each of the meta sections (Series, Season and Episode).

How do I access a person's external ID? When I edit Metadata of an episode and scroll down to the People section, it only shows the text names (same if I edit a Person). Where is their External ID show to me?

[GrimReaper 4739]

10 minutes ago, ElylArneseph said:

How do I access a person's external ID? When I edit Metadata of an episode and scroll down to the People section, it only shows the text names (same if I edit a Person). Where is their External ID show to me?

Don't edit episode metadata, just right click on person's image/poster (or left-click on three-dots on hover)>select Edit Metadata. 

Edited November 16, 2025 by GrimReaper

[ElylArneseph 0]

Okay, now we are getting somewhere... 

When edited the person metadata, everything in the metadata (Description, imdbid, tvdbid, etc) were all correct for the real "James Jordan" actor... just not the "title" and "sorttitle" fields which contained "James Jordan Carroll". So I changed those two fields to just "James Jordan", saved it, refreshed the browser and it seems to be sticking now.

So questions being...

1) why did it do that? That is, have all the proper person ids and content but mess up the name titles only?

2) is that the solution I should be doing whenever this happens in the future with mis-Identified people names? (editing the persons metadata in that way and have it stick)

*edit*:

Also, whenever adding a person and it tags it as the wrong person... when doing an "identify", it only returns a single result and it's not the right person... how do I "unsync" the existing entry... there used to be an option under "..." to unsync, but that disappeared with a recent s/w update.

Edited November 16, 2025 by ElylArneseph

[GrimReaper 4739]

Wild guess: you probably had Title/Sort Title locked (green padlock). Whatever manual changes you make for any item (Movie, TV Show, Season, Episode, Person...) will generally lock that field, against any future changes. Any changes going forward, make sure you're doing them in person's Edit Metadata dialog.

Edited November 16, 2025 by GrimReaper

[ElylArneseph 0]

Thanks Grim, much appreciated!

[GrimReaper 4739]

8 minutes ago, ElylArneseph said:

Also, whenever adding a person and it tags it as the wrong person... when doing an "identify", it only returns a single result and it's not the right person... how do I "unsync" the existing entry... there used to be an option under "..." to unsync, but that disappeared with a recent s/w update.

There was never an "unsync" nor anything similar for Persons AFAIK, there was ever only "Remove Identification" for Movies/TV Shows. In any case, you cant 'unsync' a person, if it's incorrectly linked, just Identify with proper ExternalID (check it on provider's website, it'll always be noted in the address bar), as identifying by name can be ambiguous. 

[ElylArneseph 0]

Thats right, "remove identification" is what I meant. I was just thinking that I could probably accomplish that with editing the person metadata and clearing all the external ID fields (so it doesn't link to anything). This is for the instances when a person cannot be located in any of the provider's websites like with some uncredited or extra actors.

Thanks again.