"Cast & Crew" photos doesn't download properly

[moccor]

So I imported a bunch of shows and movies and it worked fine. I then deleted a bunch of metadata because I wanted it stored on a SSD instead of a HDD. I opened up the HDD, searched "png" "jpg" and deleted everything. I then told it to re-download the metadata and it did that without problem (Movie/show photos, etc), it shows the images fine. But, one thing that is being problematic is the "Cast & Crew", for some reason it is missing many and no matter how many combinations of "refresh metadata > replace all metadata > replace all existing images" it does not work. But what does work, is if I go to each individual actor and do it. It won't work if I try to do it by folder or by movie, only 1by1 actor by actor. What is the cause and fix of this? I am sure I can just uninstall Jellyfin and re-install and it will work fine, but I don't want to do all that. Is there a way I can just wipe all of the metadata? I would rather wipe it all and start over, then to go through the hassle of re-installing and setting up folders/accounts for Jellyfin every time a problem like this happens. Any tips would be appreciated.

OS : Windows 11
Jellyfin Version : 10.9.11 (non-portable)

[TheDreadPirate]

Go to Dashboard > Scheduled Tasks, and try running "Refresh People".

[moccor]

Just tried it, and I tried restarting Jellyfin too. It is something weird, like maybe some kind of conflict because the normal methods of requiring them automatically doesn't work, but I can go to the many empty images under Cast & Crew and individually, it works. It is like Jellyfin thinks they exist so it skips them, when they don't actually exist or maybe they exist in another location that I am not aware of. The scans also complete very quickly, as though it is saying "this file exists, skip it", but like I said it won't show the image, but it will find it if individually searching 1 person at a time

[TheDreadPirate]

Also try scanning and selecting "Find missing metadata"?

[moccor]

Just tried it, it seemed to work good, except it only works when doing it on a per movie/show basis "sometimes"? It is weird. Is there a way to just nuke all of the images and metadata without reinstalling Jellyfin? Because even "collections" just won't ever update images. Funny thing is, I noticed after trying the "find missing metadata" it turns some images to a "dark gray", instead of the light blue. And what that apparently means is the image exists, but it doesn't want to show it until I actually click on it?

[TheDreadPirate]

Selecting "replace all metadata" and checking "replace all images" when scanning a library/movie.

[moccor]

But I have tried that and that does not work for me. Is there no better, sure-fire way to purge it all?

Edit : I just decided to uninstall and reinstall and they are showing up without problems. I am not sure what the exact cause is, but I know it has to do with deleting png/jpg/nfo files. Because I wanted to remove them off the HDD and allow them to download on my SSD. Something with that and Jellyfin thinking the files still existed when they didn't. But thanks for the suggestions

[moccor]

I learned of two bugs/issues -

1. The problem with actors showing as gray is explained here - https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/8103 - and how to "workaround" it. Apparently it has to do with I guess, previous NFO files leftover in the media folders so it just skips searching? I can confirm this using 3x HDD. Two of which, I had working perfectly last night, I deleted all JPG, PNG, NFO, reinstalled Jellyfin, everything worked perfect. I then added the 3rd HDD, and only the movies/shows on this HDD, had issues with actors not showing up.

2. Weirdly, "collections" were created fine automatically, but none of them grabbed an image, no matter what I tried with the "refresh metadata" options. I then went in to "edit Metadata" and saw it enabled "lock to prevent changes". After unchecking that, and then doing a "refresh" it grabbed the images for collections fine. But why would it lock it without actually grabbing an image? I know it is unrelated to the issue #1, because I made sure to delete all NFO, PNG and JPG before reinstalling Jellyfin and starting over, on a HDD that has specific collections that didn't load fine, so the bug happened regardless of the HDD. Is there a way to just not "lock" this stuff by default?