[inzzzomnia]

With a bad feeling in my stomach I opened up one of my TV show folders just to realize Ember had begun downloading season fanart, which isn't a big problem since it's just to delete them, but it had also downloaded and replaced every single season poster and banner, and not just deleting them to the bin, it completely wrote them over!

I whould say that's not true. If you add a tv show source and there is a tvshow.nfo with a correct TVDb ID, Ember automatically scrape missing episode info and images, also season images if an enabled season image type is missing. But at that point Ember only enable season image types to scrape if they are missing:

Code:

'Scrape season images
If isNew AndAlso tmpSeason.TVShow.UniqueIDsSpecified AndAlso tmpSeason.ShowIDSpecified Then
     Dim SearchResultsContainer As New MediaContainers.SearchResultsContainer
     Dim ScrapeModifiers As New Structures.ScrapeModifiers
     If Not tmpSeason.ImagesContainer.Banner.LocalFilePathSpecified AndAlso Master.eSettings.TVSeasonBannerAnyEnabled Then ScrapeModifiers.SeasonBanner = True
     If Not tmpSeason.ImagesContainer.Fanart.LocalFilePathSpecified AndAlso Master.eSettings.TVSeasonFanartAnyEnabled Then ScrapeModifiers.SeasonFanart = True
     If Not tmpSeason.ImagesContainer.Landscape.LocalFilePathSpecified AndAlso Master.eSettings.TVSeasonLandscapeAnyEnabled Then ScrapeModifiers.SeasonLandscape = True
     If Not tmpSeason.ImagesContainer.Poster.LocalFilePathSpecified AndAlso Master.eSettings.TVSeasonPosterAnyEnabled Then ScrapeModifiers.SeasonPoster = True
     If ScrapeModifiers.SeasonBanner OrElse ScrapeModifiers.SeasonFanart OrElse ScrapeModifiers.SeasonLandscape OrElse ScrapeModifiers.SeasonPoster Then
          If Not ModulesManager.Instance.ScrapeImage_TV(tmpSeason, SearchResultsContainer, ScrapeModifiers, False) Then
               Images.SetPreferredImages(tmpSeason, SearchResultsContainer, ScrapeModifiers)
          End If
     End If
End If

Also Ember only overwrite enabled file names. All enabled file names should be recognized while DB update before the scraper starts to scrape missing image types (as you can see in the code only if "LocalFilePathSpecified" isn't specified the image type will be scraped). If a movie, movieset, tv show, season or episode will be scraped all images will be re-saved with all enabled file names, even an image already exist. So it's possible that the file names has a gets a new "modified/created date". But in the case of DB update that doesn't mean that an image has been re-scraped/changed! Also the setting "Keep existing" hasn't any influence at that moment. So IMHO it's not possible that your already existing season images has been overwriten.

The settings "Keep existing" isn't enabled by because whit that setting enabled it's not possible to rescrape already existing image types. Usually if someone want to rescrape a movie or something other he also want to rescrape the images based on actual preferrences like resolution or language. I mean rescrape means "get the best results with me preferred settings". If you enable "Keep existing" it's only possible to rescrape images if you use the manual way via the "Edit" dialog.

But again, a DB update does not change any existing image or NFO, it only re-save an file is some cases.

[EDIT] P.S.:
Something I also can't understand: if you try a new software, why do you let it run trouth your whole archiv whithout any tests before? I would describe this as coarse, regardless of whether the software is now "bad" programmed or simply a user error. 

Thank you for a long and very in depth answer, I only understood half of it but that's not your fault.

OK, so the artwork that now have populate a big part of my collection and that I've never seen before are just a mirage? Because what happened to me can't happen?
Will they'll turn back to pre-Ember if I stare at them long enough? Yes, I'm sarcastic and some what pissed off at the whole situation

Regarding your PS.
You are kind of contradicting yourself here, as I were to believe what you write above that nothing bad at all can happen, why would there be a need for a "test"?
But to answer your question.
Not in my wildest imagination I thought that only doing such a simple thing as to point the program to where my collection is would trigger it to rescrape or "run trouth" it.
I thought that it would act like all other, more sane managers, I've tested and just add the collection to the program so I could do whatever I intended to do with it afterwards.
But lesson learned and I will stay far away from this program until it's the last one working.

Thankfully I found out that Mediaelch got new developers and there's a new version out that works with the new TheTVDB API so no need for a change yet.

Thank you all for your posts!

Sayonara!