Problem With Metadata Sourcing For Episodes

[RIP314 3]

So, I had to reinstall emby and start scraping metadata all over again. I prefer the movie database over the tv database for my metadata, I have only moviedb checked in library settings, it works great for movies, but for my tv library it doesn't seem to be sourcing the episode info, it won't even combine the two different format versions of some episodes I have despite following all the normal naming parameters. Is this normal? This is for a mixed library and I am running Emby v4.8 btw (I'm not updating because the new versions don't play nicely with mklinks).

Edited September 1 by RIP314
left out info

[GrimReaper 5116]

There should be no difference in behavior using TMDB only. Can you provide specific example(s)?

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[RIP314 3]

It's weird, I tried this over three days giving it plenty of time to update the data and it wasn't, after a while I would try to refresh metadata or even place a .ignore file in the folders so emby would forget them and then remove the ignore file so emby would reintegrate 'em with the same results everytime, emby just putting the files in with the file-names and adding no new metadata, and then all of a sudden it worked and now it seems to be fine. IDK why.

[RIP314 3]

Ugh, so I was just messing with one season of a show at a time so I didn't have such a bottleneck with emby trying to scrape all the metadata. l finally got that one season of a show to work and populate properly; I went to another season and am once again having the same issue. IDK what is causing the issue, or maybe it's just a massive delay and I'm not giving it enough time, it's just weird, because the first time I gave it a whole day without it populating, but it only took a matter of minutes the last time I added it back and it actually started working properly so Im not sure where the issue lies.

[Luke 43050]

HI there, can you please provide a specific example?

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Thanks !

 

[RanmaCanada 586]

In the future I would suggest you tick the options to use .nfo files, and further down tick the option to save artwork into media folders along with download images in advance.

No need to rescrape.

[RIP314 3]

On 9/4/2026 at 10:54 AM, RanmaCanada said:

In the future I would suggest you tick the options to use .nfo files, and further down tick the option to save artwork into media folders along with download images in advance.

No need to rescrape.

that's a great point and something I already did, but emby decided to delete info and try to re-scrape everything. It also decided to delete a bunch of images I already had saved.

[Luke 43050]

Hi, Emby doesn’t decide to delete info out images.

[Luke 43050]

On 9/3/2026 at 7:02 PM, Luke said:

HI there, can you please provide a specific example?

How to Report a Problem

Thanks !

 

 

[RIP314 3]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, Emby doesn’t decide to delete info out images.

 I guess there's another program replacing images with captured images.

[RIP314 3]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

 

[Luke 43050]

What makes you think it deleted information? Perhaps it was just never on your server to begin with.

[RIP314 3]

33 minutes ago, Luke said:

What makes you think it deleted information? Perhaps it was just never on your server to begin with.

i saw it on the server, that's why when I originally added the libraries back I first set it to only use the previous nfo files to pull info, it just didnt so I decided to allow it to scrape tmdb since it wasn't populating info and that's when it began altering the nfo files. I also added a bunch of photos to another library and then the next day half the images were just gone. I don't know what other program would have deleted those images considering emby is the only program I use to organize my media library. I also had another weird issue where when I was manually organizing my movie library, I was deleting folders that used to contain copies of movies that were in different formats in order to organize all the formats into one folder and emby (or something else) was recreating those deleted folders and then adding nfo files to em. 

[Luke 43050]

OK so we don't actually know for sure. The only thing that would have caused this in Emby is a manual refresh of metadata and checking the option to replace all existing images when you do that.

[Luke 43050]

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(I'm not updating because the new versions don't play nicely with mklinks).

Not that I'm aware of. What makes you think this?

[Luke 43050]

Quote

This is for a mixed library and I am running Emby v4.8 btw

OK one thing to be aware of - moviedb plugin updates target 4.8.11+. tvdb updates at one point had to start targeting 4.9+ so you're not going to be getting any fixes or improvements for it.