Title disambiguation
Title disambiguation uses type, date, people and naming context to distinguish entities that share similar or identical display titles.
A title is a presentation label. Several unrelated works can use it, while one work can have several localized or release-specific titles.
Similar wording creates different ambiguities
| Situation | Additional evidence |
|---|---|
| Original film and later remake share a name | Release context, year and creator credits |
| Film and television series share a name | Entity type and series/episode relationships |
| Two musical works share a title | Composer, artist or recording/release context |
| One film has localized titles | A known shared entity and language/region relationship |
The first cases distinguish different entities. The last case can describe alternate labels for the same entity. A title-comparison operation should not treat all of them as duplicates.
For the fictional movie candidate table in identification, a 2020 film and a 2020 series remain different even though the words and year match.
Dates are evidence with a scope
A film can have festival, theatrical, regional and later release dates. An album release group's original issue and a particular reissue can likewise have different dates.
A year mismatch may indicate another work, another edition, incomplete information or a mistaken local label. Investigate its meaning before changing every record to make the strings equal.
More precise data is useful only when it describes the same event. A file's copy date is not a more accurate version of a film's first-release year.
Search normalization does not create identity
Search can ignore case, punctuation or equivalent character encodings to find useful candidates. Removing a year suffix or punctuation can improve recall.
That normalization is not proof that the results are one work. Transliteration and translation can also change wording considerably while preserving a known relationship.
Once a match is established, a provider-scoped identifier carries a more specific reference than the displayed title. The local title can then remain localized or curated without forcing a new identity whenever the wording changes.
In Emby, a title edit and a provider-ID correction have different consequences. Metadata Manager supplies the documented editing workflow; the evidence determines whether the required change concerns presentation, matching or both.