This gave me a lot to think about.

I changed my call to go via a groovy script

filebot -script test.groovy "1.mp4" --db file


#!/usr/bin/env filebot -script

// log input parameters
log.fine("Run script [$_args.script] at [$now]")

def dateFormatted
def parentDir = args.dir.name[0]

args.files ...

I'm trying to rename some mp4 files. The new name is based on the recorded_date field from mediainfo

This is the command I use:
filebot -rename -r "1.mp4" --format "{media.Recorded_date.format('yyyy-MM-dd_HHmmss')}_{f.dir.name}_{dc.pad(5)}"

This gives me the following error:
Classify media ...