This was driving me absolutely nuts the past couple weeks.
I had set up a Live TV & DVR scheduled recording for Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with an episode limit of 5 most recent. But then I just downloaded the last 20 of the 31 season of the show and added them to Plex. I deleted the scheduled recording from the Live TV & DVR section (before adding the downloaded files to Plex).
The next day all but season 31 of the show were gone. Over many days I re-downloaded episodes only to have all but season 31 disappear again the following day. Then I remembered that there was once a season pass for the show. Had season 31 of the show been more than exactly five episodes I might have figured this out sooner.
So the other day I “re-created” the season pass, changed its episode limit from 5 to all (and modified its delete-after-watching setting from 1 day to never, just in case) and then deleted the season pass again. Several days later and my files are still there.
Plex 1.23.4.4805 running on Synology.
Edit the show at its top level,
go to the Advanced tab
set “Keep” to “All episodes”
set “Delete episodes after playing” to “Never”.
Sorry if my post wasn’t clear. The pass was already deleted before I started adding shows, and it was enforcing an episode limit even though it was, as far as I could tell, no longer in effect. Only after recreating the scheduled recording and changing the limit was I able to keep my episodes.
I don’t know hat you mean with “Season Pass”. Such a concept doesn’t exist in Plex.
Have you taken a look at the advanced tab of your show?
Okay, let me try this again.
Let’s say I’m starting fresh and have 0 scheduled recordings.
Day 1:
Find a show, let’s say “Grace Under Fire” since I see it’s on right now. Schedule a recording, switch from “This Episode” to “All Episodes”. Under “Show Advanced” change “Keep” to “5 latest episodes”. Hit “Record” to close the scheduler.
In my DVR Schedule, I know have 1 scheduled series recording.
Day 2:
Realize that this show isn’t airing any new episodes and you can just download every episode right now.
So go into Plex, find the scheduled recording, click the big red “Cancel Recording” button.
In my DVR Schedule, I know have 0 scheduled series recordings.
Download all the episodes of the show and add them to Plex.
Day 3:
All but the last 5 episodes of the show have been deleted by Plex overnight, because, even though the scheduled recording has been deleted, its rules seem to still exist somewhere in Plex, and it enforced the now-deleted scheduled recordings episode limit.
I’m saying the bug is that the scheduled recording isn’t 100% being deleted if Plex still deleted all but the last 5 episodes.
And the temporary solution is to re-create the scheduled recording, change its “Keep” setting to “All episodes”, then delete the scheduled recording again.
Thanks.
With this step you have instructed Plex to keep only the 5 latest episodes of this show.
That doesn’t change if you delete the recording job.
The show is the same show, even if you add it later by a different means – e.g. by supplying the files directly instead of recording them.
So, after adding all the files,
edit the show at its top level,
go to the Advanced tab
set “Keep” to “All episodes”
set “Delete episodes after playing” to “Never”.
Only this reverts the instruction to keep only the latest 5 episodes of this show.
