What is your prefered methode, of adding films and episodes you watched before you used Trakt? Do you use the release date, the current date, try to remember when and use that date? Or don’t you add those at all?
When I started to use Trakt I tried to remember when I watched a movie or tv show. But after some time I was not happy with this and stopped the approximation. The release date was never an option because there were so many movies, e.g. “Lady and the Tramp (1955)”, I was not even born on release date. Besides what do I do on multiple watches?! This really frustrates me.
This is why I actually track only since first time registration on Trakt. I hope that tracking without date info gets supported some time, see Watched state without date info.
Please vote 
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I just add them on release date. That way it won’t mess up recently watched metrics. Otherwise the week that I decided to go all in on Trakt would show that I watched like 300 days worth of content haha.
And if I had watched a movie/show multiple times before starting to use Trakt, I just counted it once. I may have watched most episodes of Friends a dozen times, but I just have it marked once on release date (and add any additional views on the day I watch them moving forward).
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Like the others, I’ve mostly just been tracking what I’ve watched since signing up for Trakt. If you want to add your Netflix history, you can pull that from your Netflix account settings and see what you watched and when. You would still have to enter all the date and time info manually though. You might be able to do that on other platforms like Amazon and Hulu, I haven’t checked.
Yeah, I did that for 2020, guess the time, sadly Amazon has a viewing history but no dates for when I watched it.
I really feel stupid for deleting my history. Wanted to start from fresh, now it is even worse and more confusing. Well, I have to live with my mistakes I guess.
I use my birthday date for movies and my 1st birthday for tv shows.
I have a really complicated system that you may be able to adapt or take some pointers from.
Firstly, I assume that everything from a certain cutoff date onward is tracked correctly, i.e., the date I started tracking on here. The second big assumption is that a 5-minute window is accurate enough, so that I don’t care if I watched something on 10:01 or 10:05.
That gives me a little freedom in deciding how to track things before my cutoff date.
- If I know exactly (within a 15-minute window) when I watched something, e.g. I watched it on tv or at a festival where I can find out the programme times, I enter it with a time of :x0 or :x5, e.g. November 16, 2020 09:30 or 09:35.
- If I am pretty sure but cannot remember the exact time, e.g. I watched it in the cinema, but only know the start time, not how long after that the actual movie started, I enter it with a time of :x1 or :x6, e.g. November 16, 2020 09:31.
- If I only know the day, I use 22:02 as the time of watching.
- I don’t use any more variants, but you could assign certain times to mean that month or that year, for instance, 22:03 to mean that day or the month before or after that, and 22:04 for the year before or after that.
- Everything I can’t track with any certainty, I just use a common date I cannot possibly have watched it, in my case January 1, 1900 22:00.
I hope that gives you some inspiration.
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It does indeed. I really appreciate this thread and all your answers. So, thank you.
I use the release date for most before Trakt. I’m old so the ‘release’ date is ok most of the time for me. LOL and the ones before my time I still use the release date. Enjoy!
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I decided I wanted to get vaguely accurate stats for 2020, so for all the old shows I removed all my watching progress and added them back in on March 31 2019. Sort of like that episode of Parks and Rec where April scheduled 93 meetings for Ron on March 31 because she didn’t think that day existed
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I recently started a private list “watched but don’t know when”. So if the feature - to add a movie / episode without date info - comes I am ready to click me throw this list 
I’m taking a break from trakt I think. Maybe I will miss it so much that I will come back and think about this question again.
I’ve only entered what I’ve watched since I joined Trakt 7 years ago. I’m glad I did that because if I didn’t all my stats such as what time and days of the week I’ve watched shows would be all screwed up. I at least have accurate data of everything I’ve watched over the last 7 years so I can accurately see things like my favorite months, times, and days to watch shows and movies.
When I joined I wanted it to show what I had and hadn’t watched, so all shows I was certain I had seen every episode of I added as watched. I now regret that for the exact reason you state. The stats. For TV Shows they’re completely out of whack. And I’m not sure of any easy way to undo that.
I’m slowly going through fixing up movies. I’ve wanted to watch all the old classics, so I did that and I’m just re-watching everything plus the classics I never saw. It’ll be a few years until the only movies listed in Trakt are movies I’ve actually watched at times I’ve actually watched them. But one day that will be accurate. And yes, I really did watch 623 movies in 2020. I had an 8 year relationship end in 2019 so freshly single in 2020 with covid and lockdowns and 5 weeks annual leave already booked but now with nowhere to go meant a LOT of time watching movies.
No way in hell I’m doing that for TV shows though. There’s a lot of shows I’ve seen numerous episodes for but no idea which ones. And they’re not shows I ever enjoyed so I’m not going to watch every episode just to make it accurate (eg Friends & Seinfeld - I’ve seen a lot but was never that big a fan). And there’s no way in hell I’m re-watching 25 years worth of Simpsons.
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To clean up my mess I go through the years before registering at trakt. I mark everything as “unwatched” and put it on a private list to track it for later use. Maybe there will be a feature to track videos without date information
Great question.
I am living in Sweden and when I ad Movies/series from the past I first use the swedish database
smbd.kb.se and looking Up when The movie/show were showsed in Swedish television. And then a go after when I think I Saw it