Any way to only scan specific season, not entire library?

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Server Version#: 4.47.3
Player Version#:

Hi all - could someone please confirm if I am missing something?

In my “Series” library, I have about 20-odd different shows, some with multiple seasons. When I purchase a new season, and want to add this new season to an existing season within my “Series” library, there does not appear to be a way to have Plex only scan for new files in that specific season?

Instead, each time new episodes are added, Plex trawls through my entire “Series” library, which can take several hours (currently it is detecting “intros” for each of the episodes in my library again).

I don’t need it to scan the entire “Series” library – since it is all in order. I just want the new episodes from a specific series to be added.

Am I missing the way to have Plex only scan a specific folder/series, as opposed to the entire library?

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This is certainly not normal. Just scanning over items that are already in your library should only take a few minutes at most.

This runs separately from the library scan.

First thing I would check is that your files are all name correctly:

e.g.

Series/Show Name/Season Number/Show Name - S0xE0x - Episode Title.ext

And to answer your question, you can scan a specific folder only using the web API:

e.g. http://127.0.0.1:32400/library/sections/:sectionId/refresh?path=D:\Series\Show Name&X-Plex-Token=:yourToken

However you shouldn’t need to do this unless you want to optimize for an extremely large library.

1 Like
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Thank you – tidied up the naming regime, and re-imported – seems to be scanning as expected now!

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Hi Guys,

There is a lovely work around for Plex scanning your ENTIRE library when adding items… You’ll note the option “Run Partial scan when changes are detected” - This will run a scan only on the folder that changed… BUT what this means is if you have ONE folder where your entire library sits. IT WILL SCAN THE ENTIRE FOLDER.

SO what you do is this:
Movies Library, make TWO folders one where your movies reside. and ANOTHER ONE called Movies-0day, or Movies-Temp. This is where you will add your NEW movies. When a change is detected it will scan the entire “Movies-0day, or Movies-Temp” folder, and not your MOVIES folder. Then once a month, stop the plex server!, move all the new movies from 0-day folder into your Movies folder, Start Plex and run a full manual scan on the Movies Library. It will rescan the entire movies lib and refresh the meta-data. Plex will only refresh the file locations and the meta-data should remain the same ie watched movies will remain watched etc etc

I have the same setup for my Series:
Library = Series. with TWO folders: my Series folder and my Series-0day folder in which i place newly downloaded episodes and series. Once a month or so, stop plex, move over all the 0-day episode into Series folder, start plex and run full manual scan immediately.

I have had NO more problem doing things this way, Partial scans are fast and only scan the folder that changed being my 0-day folders.

Unfortunately, it will detect all the intros again of the files moved over. One way around this is to copy the files from your 0-day to the main folder instead. and once the scan is done, delete the duplicate files from the 0-day folder. I don’t care to make duplicate files and waste time copying a file when a Move on the filesystem is just basically renaming a folder location and is literally infinitely faster than copying file data. Your choice

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