Why is Emby scan overriding settings?

[nospotify 196]

4 minutes ago, Luke said:

What about for each of the songs because you don’t really know which one was imported first.

I only posted one screenshot, but every track shows the same, correct metadata/import data of Aug 2026, while album is Dec 2025 (above)

[Lessaj 577]

Is there an album.nfo in the folder when you move it back for import?

[nospotify 196]

There wasn't - I was VERY careful to clean the slate before importing. ONLY mp3 music files and cover .jpgs. But then the created album.nfo shows incorrect date added info:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<album>
  <review />
  <outline />
  <lockdata>false</lockdata>
  <lockedfields>Genres</lockedfields>
  <dateadded>2025-12-27 10:31:27</dateadded>
  <title>Madrigals, Book 1</title>
  <sorttitle>Madrigals, Book 1</sorttitle>
  <runtime>56</runtime>
  <genre>Classical</genre>
  <genre>Medieval</genre>
  <genre>Choral</genre>
  <artist>Delitiae Musicae, Marco Longhini</artist>
  <albumartist>Carlo Gesualdo</albumartist>
</album>

Edited September 16 by nospotify

[Luke 43160]

2 hours ago, nospotify said:

I only posted one screenshot, but every track shows the same, correct metadata/import data of Aug 2026, while album is Dec 2025 (above)

OK I think if you tested on a fresh install of the server now you'd see the behavior I'm describing.

[nospotify 196]

15 minutes ago, Luke said:

OK I think if you tested on a fresh install of the server now you'd see the behavior I'm describing.

I'm sorry I don't understand what you're saying - what behavior? And I don't think this addresses my concern which is that when I importing clean, fresh files, there somehow is differential behavior in the date being assigned not to individual files but to the albums Emby "creates" from those files. Why is this happening and how can it be stopped?

[Luke 43160]

I don't know what happened with that particular album, but what you should see going forward when adding a brand new album is that the date added value of the album should match one of the tracks, whichever track gets imported first.

[Lessaj 577]

Might be worth checking in library.db if there's any trace of it after you remove it. I -think- this should work to pull something up if it is somehow still in there. I believe type 12 are albums.

select * from MediaItems where type=12 and Name='Madrigals, Book 1'

 

[nospotify 196]

17 minutes ago, Lessaj said:

Might be worth checking in library.db if there's any trace of it after you remove it. I -think- this should work to pull something up if it is somehow still in there. I believe type 12 are albums.

select * from MediaItems where type=12 and Name='Madrigals, Book 1'

 

That's what I asked Luke several times: is there a chance the db was keeping an artifact.

[Luke 43160]

It's certainly not impossible.

[nospotify 196]

5 minutes ago, Luke said:

It's certainly not impossible.

So what is to be done about this? You said I was wasting time for vacuuming the database several times because I thought that might be a tool to address this possible explanation, which was flagged by another user and that you have now confirmed is a possibility. So please tell me what exactly I should be looking for and where: which files in which locations and which code.

[Luke 43160]

On 9/16/2026 at 2:02 AM, nospotify said:

So what is to be done about this? You said I was wasting time for vacuuming the database several times because I thought that might be a tool to address this possible explanation, which was flagged by another user and that you have now confirmed is a possibility. So please tell me what exactly I should be looking for and where: which files in which locations and which code.

First we need to confirm this. Did you try what lessaj suggested?

What I said about vacuuming is correct - it does not affect the data. It just moves things around to try and shrink the database file size.

[nospotify 196]

53 minutes ago, Luke said:

First we need to confirm this. Did you try what lessaj suggested?

What I said about vacuuming is correct - it does not affect the data. It just moves things around to try and shrink the database file size.

When I open library.db in Windows Notepad it takes several minutes to open, and I see lots of weird characters, a few mentions of "madrigals" in descriptive copy in plain text (artist/album descriptions), but not the programmatic info Lessaj was saying to look for.

[Luke 43160]

You cannot open it with that. You'd have to use something like DB Browser for windows. But I would never suggest opening your running copy in another application. Always make a copy and open up the copied file.

[nospotify 196]

18 minutes ago, Luke said:

You cannot open it with that. You'd have to use something like DB Browser for windows. But I would never suggest opening your running copy in another application. Always make a copy and open up the copied file.

So this is now beyond my technical capabilities. I just want to have music files import properly. (And - unrelatedly, although this messy situation brought it to light - ask y'all to remove the year check, so we could date early music with the date of composition instead of recording, if that's what we choose.)