Metadata for actors in TV Shows missing

[christian.asd 2]

Hi all,

 

my problem is that no meta data for actors of TV shows appear, _unless_ they are also an actor in a movie within my server. Only thing that shows up are the pictures of the TV show actors (more or less all of them).

 

I'm running the Server (latest version from deb-file) on Ubuntu 16.04 and when i'm cd into "/var/lib/emby/" and do

grep -rnw . -e 'Anthony Hopkins'

i find, that there are indeed entries for Anthony Hopkins under "./cache/tmdb-tv/..." and also there are the correct TMDB IDs. Like "..."id":4173,"name":"Anthony Hopkins"..." in this case. If I browse https://www.themoviedb.org/person/4173 I get the right data.

 

I already tested several library settings and also fired up another VM with a fresh Emby Server install but with the exact same result: No meta data for TV show actors.

 

Is this known behavior? Am I doing something wrong? And what parts of the source code i have to look up for the responsible functions?

 

Thanks for your help!

[Luke 42077]

Hi, try refreshing the metadata of the media that contains those actors, and then see if that pulls in images. thanks.

[christian.asd 2]

Hi, try refreshing the metadata of the media that contains those actors, and then see if that pulls in images. thanks.

 

Hi. The pictures of the TV show actors are already there. And also have i tried "Replace all metadata" several times on the whole TV Library as well as on particular Shows and also Seasons. :/

[Luke 42077]

 

 

 The pictures of the TV show actors are already there.

 

Ok sorry then I don't quite understand what the problem is because i thought they were missing?

[christian.asd 2]

Ok sorry then I don't quite understand what the problem is because i thought they were missing?

No, not the pictures but the metadata (text) are missing. An example:

 

Metadata are there because she is also in my movie library (RockNRolla):

[pic]

 

No metadata:

[pic]

Edited May 30, 2018 by christian.asd

[Luke 42077]

Right OK. This is something we'll have to consider for the future. We don't lookup actors by name for two reasons - first it hammers the metadata providers, second, the potential for incorrect matches is very high.

 

So we rely on identifiers such as the actor imdb id, movie db id, etc.

 

However, the issue is that when tvdb is the only TV series provider, we don't get these Ids. You could try enabling MovieDb as a secondary provider for TV series, and then refresh a TV series and see if that improves the situation for any of your actors. Thanks.

[christian.asd 2]

Right OK. This is something we'll have to consider for the future. We don't lookup actors by name for two reasons - first it hammers the metadata providers, second, the potential for incorrect matches is very high.

 

So we rely on identifiers such as the actor imdb id, movie db id, etc.

 

However, the issue is that when tvdb is the only TV series provider, we don't get these Ids. You could try enabling MovieDb as a secondary provider for TV series, and then refresh a TV series and see if that improves the situation for any of your actors. Thanks.

 

Yeah, but as i said, there *is* a correct TVDB ID listed somewhere under "./cache/tmdb-tv/..." Like 4173 for Anthony Hopkins. So why not use it?

 

I already have all possible providers activated - no change.

 

If i do "Identify" on an actor and search for TVDB ID, i get a hit for Anthony Hopkins but it cant be the solution to this for all of my actors.. ;P

 

Can you point me to there responisble source code please?

[PenkethBoy 2068]

I am seeing this also - good catch on the difference between movie and Tv actor metadata - it has been bugging me for a while why some would have metadata and others would not

[Luke 42077]

Yeah, but as i said, there *is* a correct TVDB ID listed somewhere under "./cache/tmdb-tv/..." Like 4173 for Anthony Hopkins. So why not use it?

 

I already have all possible providers activated - no change.

 

If i do "Identify" on an actor and search for TVDB ID, i get a hit for Anthony Hopkins but it cant be the solution to this for all of my actors.. ;P

 

Can you point me to there responisble source code please?

 

The Tmdb data would be used if you enabled Tmdb for your Series.

[Happy2Play 9780]

I wish person.xml files were still written as this would prevent additional hammering of providers. They are currently ignored if they exist as people metadata is database only these days.

[Luke 42077]

I wish person.xml files were still written as this would prevent additional hammering of providers. They are currently ignored if they exist as people metadata is database only these days.

 

With the xml plugin they are written, and read.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Sorry people have only gone to DB for quite awhile now, even with existing people.xml files and xml plugin.

 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Happy2Play

[Luke 42077]

I definitely added this back for someone, however it could just be a plugin compatibility issue. I have just not been able to allocate much time towards that plugin at this point.

[Luke 42077]

Sorry, my mistake, you are right. I guess I am remembering wrong:

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/XmlMetadata/blob/master/XmlMetadata/Savers/PersonXmlSaver.cs

 

It is all commented out and thus disabled.

[christian.asd 2]

The Tmdb data would be used if you enabled Tmdb for your Series.

 

Hmmm... I have TMDB enabled.

 

So you are saying that this should work? Do you get all your TV show actors metadata on your system? If so, i have to figure out, whats going wrong on my site... :/

 

As said i already tested with a complete fresh Server installation but wasnt able to get the Metadata (except pictures). Do i need to have some metadata inside my files?

 

Thanks!

 

[Luke 42077]

A fresh install will have tmdb off by default so you should check on this.

 

Going forward we will have it on by default.

[christian.asd 2]

A fresh install will have tmdb off by default so you should check on this.

 

I had checked this in a second run. Will try with another fresh install and check *only* TMDB there. Maybe this helps. Im running out of Ideas... :/

 

Have there been any changes lately on the way the metadata for tv shows get fetched? Maybe i try an older server version..?!

[christian.asd 2]

Everything else works fine on tv shows. All shows/seasons/episodes are recognized and have there metadata. All actor pictures are there but no metadata (text) at all for actors. Whats going wrong?

[Luke 42077]

We'll look into it, thanks.

[christian.asd 2]

We'll look into it, thanks.

Hey Luke, thanks for your help so far.

 

Since I'm thinking about purchasing a live time premium packet I'm into this topic again. Any news here?

 

Something else i discovered: If I try to manually identify a person of a Tv-show and search for a name nothing happens. Nothing shows up and also the log doesn't show any requests to external servers. Seems like this function looks only internally? But also if I search (inside "identify" window") for a person that is for sure in my database I get no hit at all. The exact same goes for searching for IMDB ID. -> Nothing shows up, no external requests. Only if I search for the TMDB ID, i get the correct person immediately. And the log is showing a request to an external server in this case.

 

I also checked my firewall logs and can't find anything blocked. But as I said, the Emby server seems not to send an external request in the first place.. :/

[Luke 42077]

When you click on a person, we get their bio information on demand. In the stable server release this is not happening. This has been corrected for the next release. Thanks.

[christian.asd 2]

When you click on a person, we get their bio information on demand. In the stable server release this is not happening. This has been corrected for the next release. Thanks.

Very nice. Thank you!!!

 

Is it already in the beta?

[Luke 42077]

Yes.

[christian.asd 2]

Yes.

Thanks!

 

So I tested beta 3.4.1.15 on a fresh install, but unfortunately the behavior is exactly the same as for the stable release -> I don't see any requests to external servers in the debug log when I click on a person inside a tv-show. All metadata providers are turned on, TMDB is on top. The only thing i see in the log is this:

2018-06-15 08:50:20.436 Debug App: Running MovieDbPersonProvider for /var/lib/emby/metadata/People/A/<person>
2018-06-15 08:50:20.436 Debug App: MovieDbPersonProvider returned no metadata for /var/lib/emby/metadata/People/A/<person>

So the server is searching for metadata within "/var/lib/emby/metadata/People/". But if I remember correctly I read in another thread that metadata (nfo files) within "/var/lib/emby/metadata/People" are deprecated?! Or at least Emby is not writing people nfo files anymore..

[Luke 42077]

Try refreshing the movie or series that the actor belongs to, then go back and click on the actor again.

 

The person needs to have a Tmdb Id in order for us to get metadata. This Id is fetched when the metadata of the media is fetched.