Keeping Metadata of Removed and Replacement Content

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I fully understand the privacy concerns. There are self-hosted alternatives (https://github.com/mispa/flox) but I'm unsure how they'd work with the existing plugins, you might have to do some work or try to work with the developer to get things functioning.

As for media managers, it's hard to speak in abstracts, so I'll be direct and not go into too much detail. Sonarr offers several options for date manipulation of media files, for instance you can have it change file creation date to the release date of the film. I haven't looked into other options as I don't mess around with dates. As for NFO files, it can spit out Jellyfin-compatible NFO files; I'm not sure how much control you have over them, but there's a lot of leeway you have as far as scripting to modify whatever you like with regards to post-[operation] scripts (e.g., import, update, delete).

Here's the feature request for a MySQL backend where EFCore is discussed as a framework for allowing whatever DB backend you desire: https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/315/...r-back-end. Not saying that allows you the flexibility you want, as the relational nature and schema of Jellyfin's database will remain the same. But with the migration off of legacy code well underway, this means the team will have better control over their code base and, consequently, the ability to move forward to additional features with regards to DB-related metadata and altering the schema without downstream effect to legacy components.