Intro/Credits Backup & Restore (New Plugin)

[guilty57 9]

Intro/Credits Backup & Restore - open-source replacement for the intro/credits backup plugin

Hi all,

The "Intros Backup/Restore" plugin that many of us have relied on to back up and restore intro/credits chapter markers hasn't seen an update in a while, and I know several people here have been running into issues or just waiting on fixes that haven't come.

I ended up writing an independent, open-source replacement from scratch, built purely against Emby's public plugin SDK - no code from the original plugin, just the same general idea (export markers to JSON per episode, restore them back later).

What it does:

• Backs up every TV episode's intro/credits chapter markers to one JSON file per episode
• Restores markers from those JSON backups, matching episodes by TVDB ID + season + episode number
• Before each backup run, zips up whatever was already in the backup folder into a timestamped archive first, so nothing gets silently overwritten
• Optional companion .nfo output alongside the JSON
• Both backup and restore run as normal Emby scheduled tasks - no custom in-app dialogs, just Dashboard > Scheduled Tasks like anything else

Scope: TV episodes only for now - movie intro/credits markers aren't handled.

 

Settings:

Scheduled Task:

Requirements: Built and tested against Emby Server 4.10.0.18. You'll need the .NET 8 SDK (or Docker) to build it, and you'll need to copy three DLLs from your own Emby install to build against (not redistributed in the repo for licensing reasons - the README walks through exactly where to find them on Synology/Docker/Windows/Linux installs).

It's MIT licensed, so do whatever you want with it. Source, build instructions, and a v1.0.0 release are all here:

https://github.com/guilty57/credits-intros-backup-restore

Happy to hear feedback, and PRs are welcome if anyone wants to extend it (movie support would be the obvious next step).

[crusher11 1231]

Is there a reason this isn't just being offered as a .dll I can drop into my plugins folder, as with all other Emby plugins? I don't know my way around building things or whatever.

I had the old backups plugin, so I have a section like this in the NFO file for each episode:

  <markers>
    <introstart>771144278</introstart>
    <introend>875621889</introend>
    <creditstart>0</creditstart>
  </markers>

Will this work to restore them?

[guilty57 9]

Check the repo. I’ve uploaded the .dll. But read the information about the server version.

[guilty57 9]

On restoring from your old NFO files: Honestly, no — not as-is. A few things to know:

• This plugin's restore task only reads from JSON backup files in a folder you configure (IntroBackupPath), not from NFO files sitting next to your media
• The optional NFO output this plugin writes is also a different, simpler schema (<intros><introstart>...), and it writes them into that same backup folder, not into your media folders
• There's currently no code path that reads the old plugin's per-episode <markers> NFO block from your media library at all

So your existing NFO files with <introstart>/<introend>/<creditstart> won't be picked up by either the backup or restore task right now.


Here is a simple tool for a quick migration.

 

python3 migrate_nfo_to_json.py \
  --source /path/to/old/nfo/folder \
  --output /path/to/new/json/folder \
  --map introstart=introstart,introend=introend,creditstart=creditstart \
  --emby-url http://SERVER_IP:PORT \
  --api-key YOUR_API_KEY

 

migrate_nfo_to_json.py

Edited 55 minutes ago by guilty57