Moving individual movies/series to a new path

[Hausmeister]

Jellyfin: 10.11.8
Ubuntu 24.04

Hi,

I'm having a small issue that I can't seem to resolve. I'm using Jellyfin, installed directly on the hardware, in an Ubuntu 24.04 environment.
Since my main storage pool is filling up, I’d like to move some content to a second, new pool. However, I want to keep the metadata, favorites, and other "watch" data. The "added on" date is also quite important to me.

Since I don’t want to move the entire library, just individual movies/series, it’s not as easy as simply changing a mapping.

I spent some time working with the SQLite database and thought I had a plan:

• Add the new path to the existing library
  
• Quit Jellyfin
  
• Move the files with rsync
  
• Update the database
  
• Start Jellyfin and be happy.
  

I'm patching BaseItems (Path, ParentId, TopParentId) directly in the SQLite DB to move individual movies between library roots. The patch looks correct, but on the next scan Jellyfin still deletes the patched entry and creates a fresh one with a new ItemId, losing all metadata, favorites and watch time. I'm clearly missing one or more tables. What else do I need to update?

I looked further into the database and couldn’t find any entry that showed me what else I needed to change. Occasionally, movies in the AncestorIDs seem to be linked to the path ID, but this rarely happens.

Do you have any ideas on what I need to watch out for so that the migration of individual movies/series happens transparently for Jellyfin?

I did some Googling, of course, but most of the posts on this topic were from BEFORE the major database change in version 10.11.

Thank you very much for your help! 
Andre

[niels]

You cannot easily so this. Not only are absolute paths used in various places of the database, the IDs of items are actually hashes of those paths. So you'd have to change those too everywhere. Including various XML files.

[TIMFLIX1138]

Metadata, including added on date, should be exportable to local files, specifically a NFO file. Then you can move it anywhere you want and rescan and it's all the same (unless you have JF looking at the actual scan date, not the date added in the NFO or main file creation date.)

For watched, use a plugin like TRAKT or SIMKL (or both) and those services will track your watches automagically for you. Then any rescan you just ned to resync with them and viola. It's not perfect for some items but for the vast majority of regular movies and TV it works surprisingly well.