Cast Members being "deleted"

[PenkethBoy 2068]

I have been experiencing a few Cast members being "deleted" when manually adding them to movies that do not have any metadata online

 

By "deleted" i mean they disappear from the cast list on the "itemdetails.html" page after a refresh or after a save from the edit info page accessed from the itemsdetail page

 

the Actor is still in the nfo file for the movie so the save is working but on refresh the Actor does not show in the itemdetail page.

 

I have restarted the server, rescanned, cleaned the database - no change - This happens on both Stable and Beta

 

If i try and add the same Actor to another movie the same thing happens - the actor is saved to the nfo but disappears after a refresh of the itemdetail page or does not show at all even with a blank coloured square.

 

I tried changing the library type from "movies" to "unset" - unset picked movies as the type - same result

 

Its like Emby is ignoring the Actor and whats in the nfo - which is odd - and appears unrelated to the type of library

 

I tried to add th Actor via Metadata manager rather than the itemdetails page> edit info same result - as i guess its the same code behind the page

 

I have deleted the library and recreated it - same result - a no show once you add the actor to a movie or another movie not added to before or any movie

 

The library is set to NOT look for metadata online in the individual library settings page (unchecked download artwork and metadata...) and in the library>Metadata >movies content type - unchecked all metadata downloaders and image fetchers apart from screen grabber . So in theory it should not look online for anything to do with Actors etc.???

 

However it is looking at The Tv Database as its creating a "info.json" file (under cache\tmdb-people\c\44542) for the actor in question or rather an Actor with a very similar name and i think this is whats part or all of the problem.

 

The "Actor" i am adding is "Francesca Le" in the json file there is a reference to "Francesca Leslie" who is an actor for a 1961 film "Eve and the Handyman" (sounds like a cracker! )so this mismatch is somehow affecting the reading/displaying of actor cast members in Emby for an unrelated movie.

 

If i change Le to LEE the actor reappears

 

This is not the only actor this happens with so its not an isolated incident "Christopher Clark" was one i had in the past although i gave up with adding him

Also i have seen in normal TV and Movie itemdetails pages an Actor disappear in the same way - they are usually "unknown" when displayed with no picture - clicking on them to go to their details can sometimes kick emby to get their pictures sometimes not but on going back to the itemdetails screen they disappear - as above - i did not report this then as usually they are obscure cast members so thought it a bit odd and ignored it. It happens rarely not every time 

 

To remove any possible database/setup issue i installed a fresh version of emby(3.2.6.1) onto another machine created a new folder with copies of a few movie files and no nfo's - so the new install started from scratch i.e. blank and the issue is exactly the same and repeatable on three different current versions of emby.

 

So why is emby looking to the TVDB when it been told not too - you can see it looking in the logs if you give it a bogus name like "fred bassett" as it comes back with an error

 

Why would a unrelated actor and the json file stop an actor being displayed?

 

Is something being added into the database that is blocking the dispaly of actors etc?

 

Can these issues be resolved please?

 

Thanks

Edited March 8, 2017 by PenkethBoy

[PeteMB 13]

This a known problem, it is been discused here.

To solve this you can try searching for "Francesca Leslie", when she is listed go to her profile and you will see that the path will point to "Francesca Le". Now change the title to "Francesca Le" and lock the name field (you can also change other fields if you like or add her themoviedb id 226821). And save the profile. After this the movies will be listed again.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

Thanks - but thats not the answer as Francesca Leslie does not exist in Emby - no results returned for the leslie or francesca leslie or variations on that

 

Nothing in people folder for "leslie" only Francesca Le and Francesca Lee

 

Issue may be the same - but i think its the json file and whats in the db somewhere thats the problem

 

And you should be able to add anybody irrespective of what TMDB returns especially if you turn off the metadata lookup

[Happy2Play 9783]

There is a mismatch somewhere that is the cause of actor being dropped.  I have tested and posted in the dev area on issues Abobader has posted with Arabic actors, and manually adding them to a movie.  Sometimes the actor name comes back from the provider different then what is in the metadata so it creates a mismatch.

Emby matches actor Title to Movie metadata actor Name.

You have to compare what is in the media metadata, the actor folder name, and the title in actor metadata.  If media metadata people name and actor metadata title are not the same it gets dropped.

[Luke 42083]

the issue is renaming a person, like happ2play says, it doesn't matter whether the person is renamed manually or whether it happens automatically due to metadata lookups. 

 

but that's once thing we will need to stop doing, and not allow you to do that. Instead you will want to just edit the person list for a media title.

[PenkethBoy 2068]

I only renamed the person to get it to show up - and i did that in the nfo - as you cant do it via the gui because the person is not shown in Emby

 

The issue is that if there is a mismatch it should not hide the person - as this causes confusion - as no error is shown or logged 

 

@@Luke - not sure i understand what you mean by this?

 

"but that's once thing we will need to stop doing, and not allow you to do that. "

 

Yes i want to edit the person list in Emby but what i dont want is a person i add to be hidden just because emby/metadata provider dont "agree"

 

Also why is Emby even looking for Metadata online when i have asked it not to?