Actors and people

Kryspal Media builds a person record for every actor, director and writer it finds, and links each person to their titles. This page shows how to edit, merge and complete those records, and how the server decides who is who.

You find people in the admin console under Content → People. Click a person to open a panel with the tabs Overview, Details, Photo, Titles and Actions.

How people are created#

When a library is scanned, the server reads the cast and crew of each title from NFO files and from scraping sources such as TMDB. When the same person appears in many titles, the server decides whether it is one person like this:

1. IDs first. If the person has a TMDB, IMDb or TVDB ID, the ID decides. Different spellings of the name still count as one person.
2. Names second. Without an ID, the same name means the same person. The comparison ignores case, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese count as the same (成龍 and 成龙).
3. Several people share the name. The server does not guess. It creates a new person and marks them Needs review until you decide.

Edit a person#

1. Open Content → People and click the person.
2. Open Details (use Edit at the top right of the panel).
3. Change the name, sort name, biography, birth date, death date, birthplace, aliases, tags, links or provider IDs. Photos are on the Photo tab.
4. Click Save.

Fields you edit by hand are not overwritten by later scraping or refreshes.

Merge two people#

When one person has become two records (for example one under a real name and one under a stage name), merge them.

1. Open the person you want to keep and go to Actions → Merge.
2. Search for the other person and pick them.
3. Confirm. The merge cannot be undone.

What happens:

• Titles, provider IDs and favorites move to the person you keep.
• The merged person's name becomes an alias of the kept person. Later scans that find this name go straight to the kept person, and searching for the name finds them.
• The merged person no longer exists.

To merge several people at once, select them in the list and use Merge…, then choose which one to keep.

Complete missing details#

Scraping usually gives only a name, a role and a photo. The server fills in biography, birth date, birthplace and similar details in the background:

• People with many titles go first.
• If a source has nothing yet, the server tries again later.
• Fields you edited by hand are never overwritten.

To start it yourself, open the More actions menu on the People page and choose Fill person details. You can also refresh one person with Actions → Refresh from plugins, or several with Refresh from plugins in the list's selection bar (up to 100 at a time). Progress shows in Tasks.

When more than one plugin can supply a person's data, System settings → Settings → Actor data sources sets the order. For each piece of data the server looks at the preferred source of that person first, then this order, then the other enabled plugins; the first one that has it wins. Plugins you do not list are still used, after the listed ones. Changing the order does not start any job. When you refresh one person with Refresh from plugins, you can also pick a Preferred source for that person; what it lacks is filled in by the others.

Under Details you can also add Extra attributes such as height or blood type. Attributes you edit count as manual edits.

Photos#

When scraping brings in an actor, a placeholder shows at first. Once the actor's photo has been downloaded, it replaces the placeholder by itself; you do not need to do anything. Photos you uploaded or chose are never replaced.

On the Photo tab you can upload a photo yourself, or press Choose from sources… to see the photos every image source has for this person and pick one. Sources higher in your list come first, and the photo that came with the person's data comes last.

To fill in missing photos automatically, open System settings → Settings → Actor image sources and add the plugins that offer person photos. Sources higher in the list are tried first; the photo that came with the person's data is always the fallback; an empty list uses only that. Only people without a photo are filled in: a photo that is already there (imported or chosen by hand) is never replaced. Changing this setting does not start any job.

The Photo tab also has a gallery of photos from your image sources. They are fetched when someone first opens the actor in the viewer, or when you press Fetch photos now, and they are not stored permanently. A small corner button on a photo uses it as the avatar, and another deletes it from the gallery; a deleted photo can come back when you fetch again.

How many photos are kept per actor is set under System settings → Settings → Metadata (default 30, from 1 to 200); see Images.

Delete a person#

You can only delete a person who has no titles. If titles remain, first use Move a credit (see below) or merge the person into another one. Deleting also removes the person's favorites and manual overrides.

People that need review#

When the server is unsure, it marks a person Needs review and shows why. Common reasons:

• ID conflict. The same TMDB ID appears on two people, or a source gives a person a different ID than before.
• Same name. Several people in the library share a name and the new one has no ID, so the server cannot tell who is who.
• Possibly the same person. See below.

Use Show only these in the banner at the top of the People page (or the State filter, Needs review) to list them. Open a person and compare the candidates, then merge them, or choose Confirm identity → Confirm to clear the mark.

Advanced people tidy-up MAX#

Check the whole library#

Open the … menu on the People page and choose Re-check all older flags. The check runs as a background job (follow it under Tasks). It re-judges older flags and also looks across the whole library for people who may be the same person. The Needs review list then shows every flagged person and the reason for each, so you can work through them in one place.

Resolve ID conflicts#

When a source gives a person a different ID than the one stored, you can choose:

• Use new value. The new ID is correct.
• Keep both. Both IDs belong to this person, for example when a source has two entries for one person.
• Ignore new value. The source is wrong. Scans will not flag this person for that ID again.

If the ID belongs to another person you already have, the two are the same person. Use Merge instead.

Possibly the same person#

The server finds pairs of people whose names look the same and for which there is supporting evidence, and lists them under review for you to judge.

What counts as the same name:

• Case and Traditional/Simplified Chinese are ignored.
• Spaces and punctuation are ignored.
• Katakana and hiragana are treated the same.
• Accents on Latin letters are ignored: José equals Jose.
• Word order in English names does not matter: Taro Yamada equals Yamada Taro.
• Names added by earlier merges (aliases) count too.

Plus at least one piece of evidence:

• The two share a title.
• Both have a birth date and it is the same.
• They share another source ID.
• An alias map lists the two names as the same person (see below).

Not listed:

• Very common names: if more than 5 people share a name, they are not paired.
• Very short names: one Chinese, Japanese or Korean character, or fewer than 4 English letters.
• Pairs you have already marked as different people.

Conflicts are shown, not hidden. If the birth dates differ or the IDs from one source differ, the pair is still listed (a source can be wrong). It carries a warning tag, Birth dates differ or IDs differ, and it sorts after pairs without conflicts.

For each pair you can:

• Merge the two people if they are the same.
• Choose Not the same person so the pair is not suggested again.

The server never merges people by itself. Every merge is confirmed by you.

Split a person#

When one record is really two people (two actors with the same name were treated as one):

1. Open the person and go to Actions → Split.
2. Pick the titles that belong to the other person.
3. Confirm. The titles move to a new person with the same name and no provider ID. Then add the correct IDs to the new person.

A rescan does not merge them back.

Move a credit#

Point one title's credit at a different person. For example, the "Zhang Wei" in one film is a different Zhang Wei.

1. Open the person and go to Actions → Move a credit.
2. Choose the title, then search for the person who should have the credit.
3. Click Move.

A rescan does not undo this.

Hide people without a photo#

At the top of the Smart people care tab of Content, the Hide people without a photo switch (the tools are shown on every plan, and locked without MAX) stops cast lists from showing actors who have no photo. Directors, writers and other crew are still listed. Only what is shown changes: nothing is deleted, and the people pages, search and the admin console still show everyone.

Clean up people in bulk#

Next to it, Clean up… finds a batch of people and deletes them, for example the junk names a bad scrape left behind:

1. Give at least one condition: a name (it contains the text, or tick Use a regular expression), only people with no photo, only people with no source ID, or fewer than a number of titles. Only the name is matched, not aliases.
2. Press Preview. You see how many people match and the first 500 of them. If more than 5000 match, add conditions: one round deletes at most 5000.
3. Press Delete, and confirm. If you change any condition after the preview, preview again first.

This deletes the people and their credits in every title. It is not a block list: if a data source (an NFO file, a plugin) lists them again, a later rescan or scrape can bring them back. The action is recorded in the activity log with how many people were deleted and the conditions used.

Alias maps#

Many scraping sources keep tables of real names, stage names, former names and spelling variants. A plugin that supports this can give the whole table to the server, and the server refreshes it daily.

The table is used for:

• Recognizing people during scans. If a new name is listed as another name of an existing person, the scan uses that person instead of creating a new one.
  • If the table conflicts with the person's data (different birth date or ID), it does not match automatically. The server creates a new person and may list them under possibly the same person for you to judge.
  • If one entry points to several existing people, it does not match automatically either.
• Search. Searching any name in the table finds that person.
• Finding possible duplicates MAX. Two people whose names are in the same table entry count as evidence.

An alias table never merges two existing people by itself.

You can see and turn off alias maps on the plugin's page under Plugins. When turned off, the table is no longer used for recognition, search or duplicate finding. People already matched stay as they are.