Person metadata failing to identify / refresh

[jmos1277 11]

I'm currently running 4.9.5.  However, this issue was also occurring in 4.9.3.
When I attempt to IDENTIFY a PERSON or REFRESH METADATA on a PERSON when using the Emby web interface the metadata update fails.  The metadata does NOT have the LOCK property set.  It fails to IDENTIFY regardless of whether I perform the search using a name or DB ID number.  Here is the output from the relevant portion of my log file: 

Quote

2026-05-20 02:46:37.840 Info ItemRefreshService-0HNLM7DVLQOP3:00000002: http/1.1 POST http://192.168.1.10:8096/emby/Items/12788/Refresh?Recursive=true&ImageRefreshMode=FullRefresh&MetadataRefreshMode=FullRefresh&ReplaceAllImages=false&ReplaceThumbnailImages=false&ReplaceAllMetadata=true&X-Emby-Client=Emby Web&X-Emby-Device-Name=Safari macOS&X-Emby-Device-Id=0aecacd8-75a7-4754-a00f-8c6fb9aefde1&X-Emby-Client-Version=4.9.5.0&X-Emby-Token=x_secret2_x&X-Emby-Language=en-us. Source Ip: host1, UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.5 Safari/605.1.15
2026-05-20 02:46:37.844 Info ItemRefreshService-0HNLM7DVLQOP3:00000002: Refresh metadata requested on 12788
2026-05-20 02:46:37.846 Info ItemRefreshService-0HNLM7DVLQOP3:00000002: http/1.1 Response 204 to host1. Time: 6ms. POST http://192.168.1.10:8096/emby/Items/12788/Refresh?Recursive=true&ImageRefreshMode=FullRefresh&MetadataRefreshMode=FullRefresh&ReplaceAllImages=false&ReplaceThumbnailImages=false&ReplaceAllMetadata=true&X-Emby-Client=Emby Web&X-Emby-Device-Name=Safari macOS&X-Emby-Device-Id=0aecacd8-75a7-4754-a00f-8c6fb9aefde1&X-Emby-Client-Version=4.9.5.0&X-Emby-Token=x_secret2_x&X-Emby-Language=en-us. 
2026-05-20 02:46:37.898 Info ProviderManager: RefreshItem Start: 12788 Person Billy Bob Thornton
2026-05-20 02:46:37.923 Info HttpClient: GET https://api.themoviedb.org/3/configuration/primary_translations?api_key=x_secret3_x
2026-05-20 02:46:43.040 Info HttpClient: Http response 200 from https://api.themoviedb.org/3/configuration/primary_translations?api_key=x_secret3_x after 5116ms
2026-05-20 02:46:43.040 Info TheMovieDb: MovieDb languages: ["af-ZA","ar-AE","ar-BH","ar-EG","ar-IQ","ar-JO","ar-LY","ar-MA","ar-QA","ar-SA","ar-TD","ar-YE","be-BY","bg-BG","bn-BD","bn-IN","br-FR","ca-AD","ca-ES","ch-GU","cs-CZ","cy-GB","da-DK","de-AT","de-CH","de-DE","el-CY","el-GR","en-AG","en-AU","en-BB","en-BZ","en-CA","en-CM","en-GB","en-GG","en-GH","en-GI","en-GY","en-IE","en-JM","en-KE","en-LC","en-MW","en-NZ","en-PG","en-TC","en-US","en-ZM","en-ZW","eo-EO","es-AR","es-CL","es-DO","es-EC","es-ES","es-GQ","es-GT","es-HN","es-MX","es-NI","es-PA","es-PE","es-PY","es-SV","es-UY","et-EE","eu-ES","fa-IR","fi-FI","fr-BF","fr-CA","fr-CD","fr-CI","fr-FR","fr-GF","fr-GP","fr-MC","fr-ML","fr-MU","fr-PF","ga-IE","gd-GB","gl-ES","he-IL","hi-IN","hr-HR","hu-HU","hy-AM","id-ID","it-IT","it-VA","ja-JP","ka-GE","kk-KZ","kn-IN","ko-KR","ku-TR","ky-KG","lt-LT","lv-LV","ml-IN","mr-IN","ms-MY","ms-SG","nb-NO","ne-NP","nl-BE","nl-NL","no-NO","oc-FR","pa-IN","pl-PL","pt-AO","pt-BR","pt-MZ","pt-PT","ro-MD","ro-RO","ru-RU","si-LK","sk-SK","sl-SI","so-SO","sq-AL","sq-XK","sr-ME","sr-RS","sv-SE","sw-TZ","ta-IN","te-IN","th-TH","tl-PH","tr-TR","uk-UA","ur-PK","uz-UZ","vi-VN","zh-CN","zh-HK","zh-SG","zh-TW","zu-ZA"]
2026-05-20 02:46:43.043 Info HttpClient: GET https://api.themoviedb.org/3/person/879?api_key=x_secret3_x&append_to_response=credits,images,external_ids&language=en-US
2026-05-20 02:46:43.089 Info HttpClient: Http response 200 from https://api.themoviedb.org/3/person/879?api_key=x_secret3_x&append_to_response=credits,images,external_ids&language=en-US after 46ms
2026-05-20 02:46:43.097 Error App: Error in TheMovieDb
    *** Error Report ***
    Version: 4.9.5.0
    Command line: /system/EmbyServer.dll -programdata /config -ffdetect /bin/ffdetect -ffmpeg /bin/ffmpeg -ffprobe /bin/ffprobe -restartexitcode 3
    Operating system: Linux version 6.12.87-Unraid (root@Develop-72) (gcc (GCC) 15.2.0, GNU ld version 2.45-slack151) #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri May  8 09:55:03 PDT 2026
    OS/Process: x64/x64
    Framework: .NET 8.0.25
    Runtime: system/System.Private.CoreLib.dll
    Processor count: 4
    Data path: /config
    Application path: /system
    System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException: System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException: Type definitions should start with a '{', expecting serialized type 'PersonResult', got string starting with: ���َ�J�6�*D�ǜ*@��.��ECK�R���'���%�;L
       at ServiceStack.Text.Common.DeserializeTypeRefJson.StringToType(ReadOnlySpan`1 strType, TypeConfig typeConfig, EmptyCtorDelegate ctorFn, KeyValuePair`2[] typeAccessors) in /home/runner/work/ServiceStack/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Text/src/ServiceStack.Text/Common/DeserializeTypeRefJson.cs:line 28
       at ServiceStack.Text.Json.JsonReader.<>c__DisplayClass3_0.<GetParseSpanFn>b__0(ReadOnlySpan`1 v) in /home/runner/work/ServiceStack/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Text/src/ServiceStack.Text/Json/JsonReader.Generic.cs:line 20
       at ServiceStack.Text.JsonSerializer.DeserializeFromSpan(Type type, ReadOnlySpan`1 value) in /home/runner/work/ServiceStack/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Text/src/ServiceStack.Text/JsonSerializer.cs:line 61
       at ServiceStack.Text.NetCoreMemory.Deserialize(MemoryStream memoryStream, Boolean fromPool, Type type, DeserializeStringSpanDelegate deserializer) in /home/runner/work/ServiceStack/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Text/src/ServiceStack.Text/NetCoreMemory.cs:line 184
       at ServiceStack.Text.NetCoreMemory.DeserializeAsync(Stream stream, Type type, DeserializeStringSpanDelegate deserializer) in /home/runner/work/ServiceStack/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Text/src/ServiceStack.Text/NetCoreMemory.cs:line 173
       at ServiceStack.Text.JsonSerializer.DeserializeFromStreamAsync[T](Stream stream) in /home/runner/work/ServiceStack/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Text/src/ServiceStack.Text/JsonSerializer.cs:line 238
       at Emby.Common.Implementations.Serialization.JsonSerializer.DeserializeFromStreamAsync[T](Stream stream)
       at MovieDb.MovieDbPersonProvider.FetchPersonResult(String id, String language, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
       at MovieDb.MovieDbPersonProvider.EnsurePersonInfo(String id, String language, IDirectoryService directoryService, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
       at MovieDb.MovieDbPersonProvider.GetMetadata(RemoteMetadataFetchOptions`1 options, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
       at Emby.Providers.Manager.MetadataService`2.ExecuteRemoteProviders(MetadataResult`1 temp, LibraryOptions libraryOptions, String logName, TIdType id, IRemoteMetadataProvider`2[] providers, MetadataRefreshOptions options, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    Source: ServiceStack.Text
    TargetSite: System.Object StringToType(System.ReadOnlySpan`1[System.Char], ServiceStack.Text.TypeConfig, ServiceStack.EmptyCtorDelegate, System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair`2[System.String,ServiceStack.Text.Common.TypeAccessor][])
    
2026-05-20 02:46:43.126 Info ProviderManager: RefreshItem Complete: 12788 Person Billy Bob Thornton

 

[fafb33 1]

I encountered a similar issue today. I clicked to refresh metadata, but Emby didn't update the information. Is it due to a problem with MovieDb.dll? Or has themoviedb.org website updated its connection method?

[jmos1277 11]

Hmm ... no Emby updates, but my Person metadata seems to be working again.

Maybe tmdb API was causing problems.

[Luke 42555]

1 hour ago, jmos1277 said:

Hmm ... no Emby updates, but my Person metadata seems to be working again.

Maybe tmdb API was causing problems.

Thanks for following up !