WMV files (only) are getting the wrong dates

General Discussions
1

I have an “Other Videos” library with hundreds of personal videos.

I’ve set the creation/modified/accessed dates of ALL these videos to the date of the original event. This works correctly in Plex for MOST of the files (MP4, etc.) but it fails for the WMV files.

Instead – every WMV file I import does not get its “video date” in Plex from those attributes … it comes from the import date. This results in tons and tons of files with “today’s date” as their video date instead of the date they were created.

2

afaik we the only time we take the date from the create/modified date of file as the date added is when a library is newly created. new files then get the date added to library.

We also only read embedded metadata from MP4s

3

Yes… this happened at Library creation time… worked for MP4s, not for WMVs.

More detail:

I have a folder full of videos… hundreds. Many are MP4 – those all worked fine, setting Plex “year” from one of the file attributes (I don’t know which one. I ran a script that set the created/modified/accessed file attributes to the correct video year.) Note – I have NOT set an embedded MP4 value to this date. Only the external file attributes.

But many are WMV … affected by exactly the same script … setting the same three file attributes… but it did NOT work to set those "year"s in Plex… All at Library creation time.

Would be happy to provide more details… this is a worse bug than it might seem, because I now have hundreds of videos that are marked as 2022 but they were actually from 2003, 2004, etc and they now sort to the top of the list.

4

One other data point-- I just did a test on NEW FILES that a library scan discovers… the SAME behavior occurs.

If I add a new file to an existing “other Videos” library:

  • MP4s – Plex sets the date/year metadata in the library from the external file attributes (yay! perfect!)
  • WMVs do not

thx

5

@BigWheel - sorry to bug you – wondering whether you think there’s ANY chance this will get fixed? If you think odds are low… then I think I have an idea for a workaround:

  • unplug my windows box running plex server from the internet … set its clock to Jan 1 2000
  • build the library with these WMV files while the PC thinks it’s the year 2000 … I assume they will get Jan 1 2000 as their date
  • connect to the internet, correct the clock … and then add all the MP4 files.

If you have ANY thoughts/advice… I’d appreciate it! Thank you!