Movie title parser leaves dots in the TMDB search query, causing wrong matches

[frankko 2]

Server: Emby 4.10.1.0 on Synology

When a movie filename uses dots between words, Emby parses the year correctly and drops the release tags, but leaves the dots in the title it sends to TMDB. TMDB's search ranks dotted queries differently from spaced ones, so some movies get matched to the wrong film.

Example from my logs

File: Resident.Evil.2026....mkv

2026-11-02 14:27:15.870 Info TheMovieDb: MovieDbProvider: Finding id for item: Resident.Evil
2026-11-02 14:27:15.878 Info HttpClient: GET https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/movie?api_key=...&query=Resident.Evil&language=en-US&year=2026

This matched "Resident Dead" (TMDB 1712451) instead of "Resident Evil" (2026, TMDB 1423191).

To reproduce inside Emby

1. Open any movie, then Identify.
2. Name: resident.evil, Year: 2026, then Search. First result: Resident Dead.
3. Name: Resident Evil, Year: 2026, then Search. First result: Resident Evil (2026, Zach Cregger).

The only difference between the two searches is the dots. The first search is the same query Emby sends automatically during a library scan.

Other examples

These were also mismatched in my library before my current logs. The same dotted vs. spaced comparison shows the cause:

- Marie.Antoinette.2006...mkv: "Marie.Antoinette" (2006) returns Marie Antoinette (1903) first. "Marie Antoinette" (2006) returns Marie Antoinette (2006) first.
- Inside.Llewyn.Davis.2013...mkv: "Inside.Llewyn.Davis" (2013) returns Inside 'Inside Llewyn Davis' (2014) first. "Inside Llewyn Davis" (2013) returns Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) first.

On naming

I know the usual advice is to rename files to "Title (Year)". I don't think that's needed here: the parser already handles these filenames, extracting the year and removing the release tags. It just doesn't turn the dots between words into spaces. Most of my dotted files match fine. This only fails when TMDB ranks a different film higher for the dotted text, which is why it happens only sometimes. The same files in the same folder match correctly in Jellyfin, which replaces the dots with spaces before searching.

Suggested fix

Replace "." and "_" with spaces in the parsed title before sending the search to TMDB/OMDb.

[Luke 43485]

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[frankko 2]

Here you go. Thank you!

emby-resident-evil-log-excerpt.txt

[Luke 43485]

Hi there, please attach the complete emby server log file. Thanks !