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+--- Thread: Seperate nfo files (/t-seperate-nfo-files)
Seperate nfo files - UserIts - 2025-04-20
Hello!
Im currently using movies folder that is symlinked, to fetch metadata in 2 different languages, which works well. Also I have set up some metadata manually for the non-english movie library trough jellyfin interface including sort titles, however, I havent verified what exactly, but most likely some kind of library fetching or updating action wipes this manually set up data once in a while.
So, I was wondering if it is possible to set up seperate nfo files for symlinked and original folder to get around this issue?
Thanks!
RE: Seperate nfo files - TheDreadPirate - 2025-04-20
Negatory. The NFOs need to be next to the media they are for. Without some tedious hard linking setup, I'm not sure how else you would achieve separate NFOs for the same media.
RE: Seperate nfo files - UserIts - 2025-04-21
Yeah, that does sound very tedious.
I would imagine it stores the metadata for symlinked and original folder separately, could I not make the translated metadata read-only after manual edits trough permissions or would that break something elsewhere?
RE: Seperate nfo files - TheDreadPirate - 2025-04-21
Yes. The symlinked library is considered a separate item since the observed path is different. Jellyfin stores metadata for each item in its database and in its metadata folder and assigns the symlinked path a different UUID.
Regarding manually editing NFOs, regardless if you have NFO saver enabled in a library or not, their presence will still trigger Jellyfin to read them in both the "real" library and the symlinked library.
Since Jellyfin will not follow symlinks for files, only folders, both libraries will get the same NFO metadata.
Which is why I mentioned hardlinks. Create a real folder for the 2nd language's library, create real folders for each show/movie, then hardlink the media file in these folders. THEN you can have multiple NFOs for the same media.
But you'd either have to do that manually or write a script to semi-automate that process.
Going back to your original question, though.
Having these two separate libraries for the same media via symlinks will not cause some metadata conflict within Jellyfin. Or cause an update to one library to reset metadata in the other. As I stated above, they are separate items from Jellyfin's perspective and have their own database entries that do not interact with each other.
Updates to the "real" library will not reset the language metadata for the "fake" library since Jellyfin does not modify your media files in this way.