Edit: I’m changing the subject line since I’m not the only one affected and this appears to be a genuine bug.
Server Version#: 1.26.0.5715
Player Version#: 4.78.4
I just went through a TON of video entries to change the dates. I had no reason to expect that it wouldn’t save the date correctly except I caught myself saving the wrong tag for a video. When I clicked back into the edit screen, I noticed that the date had saved as 1969-12-31. So I checked a few dozen other changes and, sure enough, they had also saved as 1969-12-31. I tried updating several of them again, making extra, extra, extra sure that I had the date format correct as YYYY-MM-DD. But each time I click back into the edit screen, it reverts back to 1969-12-31.
I wanna think this is some kind of Plex DEV team “69” prank but it would be funnier if it was… Oh, I dunno, maybe 1969-06-09 or something.
But seriously, does anyone know Plex’s significance with that date? Or more seriously, why does every update I make revert back to that date?
Right, but both my Plex server (Ubuntu) and my computer (iMac) show the same date and time. So they’re both accurate. Does Plex itself keep time separate from the system it’s running on?
I’ll also add that I just tried the same edit on 2 different machines running Windows 10, a Macbook Pro, and on the NUC running PMS directly. I used various combinations of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. All attempts to update the date revert back to 1969-12-31.
Or inspect them yourself. Take a look at the Plex Media Server.log file and seek for messages about database corrupt or malformed.
If you find these, you may have to repair your database.
It’d be interesting to know what exactly you used to “[go] through a TON of video entries to change the dates”. Perhaps that software is writing out metadata in such a way as to zero out a DateTime field in the metadata that Plex uses to display the DateTime. It may be writing the correct time value to a different field. However, when Plex sees it it gets a 0 for that DateTime and thus displays Dec 31, 1969. You might try using some other software to set your DateTime and/or look into the metadata container of the videos in question to see where such DateTimes are are stored. Often there are a number of them like create time, modify time, etc.
The videos in question are MP4 files. I wipe metadata in the files using Subler (MacOS app) before scanning them in. I wasn’t aware that Plex had a setting to prefer embedded dates. I just spent 10 minutes going through the various server and library settings (advanced settings shown) and didn’t see it.
When I change the dates, I click on the edit button, type in a date in the General tab, add tags in the Tags tab, then click Save Changes. Then I move on to the next entry. I do this for everything in the “Recently Added” line until I see a lock icon in the date field and know that I’ve caught up with the last time I scanned in new files. It’s a lot of manual work. But the date needs to be typed in somewhere and I figure at least Plex has a way for me do update each one individually in the same window (or rather, same browser tab).
Of note, these are personal video libraries, not Movies or TV Shows where the date can be grabbed from a central database. I use a naming convention that includes the date in the file name so when I’m editing, I just change Plex’s date to match whats in the file name.
So… I just went and restored a database from 4/7 and the behavior is the same. Following the support article to check for corruption yielded no results. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to just go back in time a week and see what happens.
One other data point to consider here. I had just updated PMS to 1.26.0.5715 a few minutes before I scanned in new media. Where do I find the previous version? I wonder if rolling back one version would reveal a bug. I don’t save the installer files after I update (which I’m now thinking I should). And if I do manage to find an older version, is rolling back as simple as running “dpkg -i” on the older installer file?
Ah hah! Okay, this option doesn’t exist for personal media using the “Other Videos” library type. And based on @SwiftPanda16 being able to replicate the behavior, I’m more convinced that this is a bug in the new Plex Pass release.
Hello everyone, I have the same problem. The date is not saved if I change it manually. However, the date is always changed to 1970-01-01. This is probably a bug
I agree, I think there’s a bug in either PMS or the Web UI.
Plex has recently changed how datetime values are stored in the database, and is now using unix-style epoch seconds. But the Web UI is still sending YYYY-MM-DD values, which aren’t being converted.
Definitely is a bug within the current-latest version of 1.26.0.5715-8cf78dab3.
Cannot edit the “Originally Available” field without it changing to 1969-12-31.
Even with content that has no metadata attached to it so the only info being added is from the WebUI itself.
FWIW, I’m seeing this as I’m updating metadata on music … album dates are showing as 1969-12-31 if I edit them, but it appears the correct date is still stored somewhere because when I view an artist the albums still show the correct year.
Yeah, I noticed this earlier this morning as well (for devices/views which show the year). So it could be just the presentation in the edit window.
On a possibly related note, when I look at older entries where I previously edited the date, they all now show a date that is one day earlier. E.G. If I had previously entered a date of 2018-04-20, opening the edit window now shows 2018-04-19.
I can also confirm this issue has been occurring since I ran the update last night. Manually changing a date on matched or unmatched items automatically sets it to 1969-12-31 and there is no way to change it. Hopefully this gets fixed soon as it is screwing up my collections that I keep sorted by release date!
PMS 1.26.0.5715 (on synology ds918+)/ Plex web 4.79.4
even tried local, which is web version 4.76.1
I noticed it on tv episodes, if there is no meta data available for it yet, and you try to manually enter the date, for me ends up 1969-12-31… I am in GMT -5 timezone.
I wonder if I add the date to media, and let it use local info if that would be a work around for now, until they fix this…
Changing the date of anything (movie, album, TV show, etc.) and saving automatically changes the date to 1970-01-01 or 1969-12-31. I’m using the latest macOS server (1.26.0.5715)
It doesn’t seem to affect the dates that were changed before the 1.26.0.5715 update, just the ones that are modified after this update.
I did modify the date on a lot of music albums, movies and TV shows, and I don’t have a list to find them and correct everything later…
@OttoKerner (or anybody else at Plex), this has the potential to be a real problem for me. Any idea if this will eventually get corrected back to the right date that was previously entered?
Edit:
Luckily, I had a full backup of the ‘Plex Media Server’ folder taken not long before the latest update, and I could roll back to 1.25.9.5721. I’ll stay on this version until all these date issues can be solved…
