I've discovered that TMDB uses theatrical release dates to associate the year with the movie. In most cases, these match, however in others where the movie premier is later in the year and the theatrical release happens the next year. This creates a problem where the release year does not match what every other source, including the studio says the release year is. These results are the consequence of TMDB own guidelines.
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/408-sn ... 923b0b2d35
https://app.screencast.com/9YD0daGmhS3R ... SDVG2i3xv2
Is it possible to get FileBot to use the premier date instead of the theatrical release date?
TMDB release date madness. any solution?
Re: TMDB release date madness. any solution?
If you're organizing files for Plex, then you'll want to include the movie ID in the file path, that will ensure that the movie can be identified unambiguously regardless of movie name localization, local release date, etc:
The year being off-by-1 is not uncommon. FileBot will assume that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938) and vice versa.
What is your use case? Does a different source matter if you have already chosen TMDB to be your source of truth? You can't / shouldn't mix databases for all kinds of reasons because different sources will inevitably be different.
Do you really need the Premiere Date keeping in mind that there is 1 per country and not just one? 1937 in the US, 1938 in the UK, 1955 in Moscow, 2007 in Athens, etc. FileBot could certainly do a "check all release years and pick the one with the lowest numerical value" but that will probably just give different off-by-1 discrepancies.
How would you decide which year number is correct? What source would you use as the source of truth?
Code: Select all
Movies/Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938) {tmdb-408}/Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938)Re: TMDB release date madness. any solution?
My thoughts on this are evolving and I'll probably spend some time doing a study on various films and some research. Where I'm at with this is as follows.
Broadly, my use case is for accuracy when naming files, even though it does not have any effect on Plex correctly attributing the file with the correct movie. As you said, the movie ID does most of the work. I do see that a release year being off on the file name has no effect on Plex (which I'm using TMDB as a source).
I obviously disagree with TMDB concluding that the theatrical release date is the "official" release date. I think premier date should be used first then theatrical. Their order for picking the official release date does not test truthfully when you look to the studio release dates used on the movies I've ran into issues with this. Additionally, Letterboxd use of TMDB's API is somehow deriving a date that matches the widely accepted year as 1937 in this example. Plex also using TMDB as the scanner and source of truth correctly attributes the correct 1937 date. Which suggests that the logic behind these two use cases does not follow TMDB own guidelines which they use for displaying titles on their website.
How I might approach this, is for FileBot to replicate the logic that both Plex and Letterboxd use.
There are a couple of more points I'll make where I feel like an accurate date is helpful. When converting a file with a correct date and Filebot returns multiple titles it can be confusing. Not only because the year isn't matching the file, but there have been times when movies with the same name or similar names are returned. Often, they are released in the same year, but other times having the correct year returned by FileBot would help with these disambiguation cases. Especially when the movie covers are not returned.
I'm going to research this a bit more and take into consideration international releases. I do see how a change "might" be problematic. But I also do see Plex and Letterboxd using a process and TMDB as a source that returns the results I'd expect. Is that process human intervention or program logic or a test using an additional source like IMDB, which seems to get it right... I do not know.
Broadly, my use case is for accuracy when naming files, even though it does not have any effect on Plex correctly attributing the file with the correct movie. As you said, the movie ID does most of the work. I do see that a release year being off on the file name has no effect on Plex (which I'm using TMDB as a source).
I obviously disagree with TMDB concluding that the theatrical release date is the "official" release date. I think premier date should be used first then theatrical. Their order for picking the official release date does not test truthfully when you look to the studio release dates used on the movies I've ran into issues with this. Additionally, Letterboxd use of TMDB's API is somehow deriving a date that matches the widely accepted year as 1937 in this example. Plex also using TMDB as the scanner and source of truth correctly attributes the correct 1937 date. Which suggests that the logic behind these two use cases does not follow TMDB own guidelines which they use for displaying titles on their website.
How I might approach this, is for FileBot to replicate the logic that both Plex and Letterboxd use.
There are a couple of more points I'll make where I feel like an accurate date is helpful. When converting a file with a correct date and Filebot returns multiple titles it can be confusing. Not only because the year isn't matching the file, but there have been times when movies with the same name or similar names are returned. Often, they are released in the same year, but other times having the correct year returned by FileBot would help with these disambiguation cases. Especially when the movie covers are not returned.
I'm going to research this a bit more and take into consideration international releases. I do see how a change "might" be problematic. But I also do see Plex and Letterboxd using a process and TMDB as a source that returns the results I'd expect. Is that process human intervention or program logic or a test using an additional source like IMDB, which seems to get it right... I do not know.