[BUG] Non-German or missing metadata in German Plex DVR recordings library - should not happen

[rossinior]

Dear Plex Team,

I have a problem that I cannot solve.
I use a Windows PMS (latest beta) with Plex DVR to record TV shows.

Lately, I discovered a rather weird behavior.
For me, German metadata coverage within Plex is very good. Plex DVR EPG provides German descriptions and covers… lovely.

I set up my Plex DVR to ONLY use this metadata in the Plex DVR library.
But lately, I see that Plex brings up English (ie. non-German) descriptions for recorded shows in my DVR library for some shows - and all of these shows definitely have German metadata within the EPG. And sometimes, metadata is just missing in the library that had been there in the EPG when I recorded the TV show episodes.

Other shows are just fine.

Let me give you good exampes of TV shows that have this kind of problem:

A) “The First 48” (english title) / “First 48 - Am Tatort mit den US-Ermittlern” (german title)

The EPG side (all is fine, metadata incl. Cover is there and German):

B) TV show “Tatort” (German TV show, title is the same for English as well)

The EPG side (all is fine, metadata incl. Cover is there and German):

C) TV show “Forensic Files” (english) / " Medical Detectives - Geheimnisse der Gerichtsmedizin" (german)

The EPG side (all is fine, metadata incl. Cover is there and German):

Once I have these shows recorded, the German TV shows get English titles and descriptions (on Show level), but the episode descriptions are usually still German (occasionally, the German episode titles and descriptions from EPG disappear with no English replacement).

Here is the Plex DVR recording library representation of all three shows:

A) “The First 48” (english title) / “First 48 - Am Tatort mit den US-Ermittlern” (german title)

The Library side: English title, english TV show description, German EPG Cover, german episode descriptions

At times, there’s descriptive metadata missing from single episodes that should have been there:

B) TV show “Tatort” (German TV show, title is the same for English as well)

The Library side: english TV show description, German episode description

C) TV show “Forensic Files” (english) / " Medical Detectives - Geheimnisse der Gerichtsmedizin" (german)

The Library side: English title, english TV show description, German EPG Cover, german episode descriptions

Also with this TV show, at times, there’s descriptive metadata missing from single episodes that should have been there:

How can I tell that the episode title should have been there? Well, you can see that there’s no descriptive episode title for that episode. But the file name of the recorded episode has it (you can read “Falsche Freunde” in the file name of the recording):

Okay, so something must overwrite the German information with non-German information. And something changed lately… how can I tell?

For the TV show “The First 48”, I do have two TV show items in my Plex DVR library… one you saw above and another one with a single episode recorded at March 12th, 2021. Please see below:

Not all TV shows show the same symptoms… here’s an example of a show that has German metadata only:

Here are my settings:

• Plex DVR destination library:
  

  

• Library settings:
  

  
  
  
  

• Agent config (there’s not much to configure I guess):
  

  

When I discovered the problem, here’s what I did already to fix it:

• I deleted the TV shows that had english text in it (by that time, a PMS beta was releases that seemingly fixed an issue of overwriting metadata in a DVR recording library)
• I cleaned trash bins and removed old “packages”
• Update to latest beta
• server (hardware) restart
• make sure that my library agent settings are what @OttoKerner me how they should be to remove any possibility for non-EPG metadata in that library.

Oh, by the way… I checked the first evening recordings of “Forensic Files” daily recordings and the show appeard correctly as “Medical detectives” in my library… I went to bed and on the next morning, it was “Forensic Files”.

Can the Plex team be so kind to help me fix the problem?

• How can I get the German metadata from the EPG airings back for these shows?
• How can I stop Plex polluting my library with non-German metadata when German metadata is already available?

This is getting messy, unrealiable and generally makes me think if the new TV show beta agent is kind of responsible for this.

Please HELP.

[OttoKerner]

@rossinior

makes me think if the new TV show beta agent is kind of responsible for this.

Unlikely, because your screenshots are showing that your library isn’t even using it by default.

Please extract the content of the guid="... property from the Plex XML info of one affected episode.

[rossinior]

Thank you for responding.
Here’s three episodes from “First 48”, which has all kind of problems (two different TV shows in my library, one with German, one with English TV show titles/descriptions, single episodes missing info at all):

First 48 - german descriptions only (lloking good)

Episode guid - plex://episode/60388100036cac002c6343bc
TV show guid - plex://show/60388100036cac002c6343ba

First 48 - english show description (has problem with English TV show description & title, episode description is German)

Episode guid - plex://episode/5fb4b55cc704b0002b0cdcc2
TV show guid - plex://show/5d9c0878d4f2a9001f801b8e

First 48 - missing episode description (same TV show as second example, has problem: no description at all)

Episode guid - local://39110
TV show guid - plex://show/5d9c0878d4f2a9001f801b8e
Recording file name shows: …The First 48 - Am Tatort mit den US-Ermittlern (2004) - S12E10 - Brutal Business.ts

[OttoKerner]

The guid are implying that you converted this library at one time to use the new agents. Unfortunately, this is a one-way street.
There is no point in selecting the other agent and scanner after that.

There are several ways to go on, all with side effects:

• select as Agent the new “Plex TV Series (Beta)”. Which enables you to select German as language afterwards. However, this will regularly clash with the episode and season numbers of the EPG. So some descriptions and posters will be wrong in certain series.
• Unmatch the affected series. This may or may not lead to a loss of metadata. It is also unclear what happens to newly recorded episodes.
• delete the library and recreate it with the old scanner and personal media agent. Which of course leads to a complete loss of metadata, but may retain all the EPG-provided metadata of newly added recordings

[rossinior]

@OttoKerner

The guid are implying that you converted this library at one time to use the new agents. Unfortunately, this is a one-way street.
There is no point in selecting the other agent and scanner after that.

Thank you for you analysis and for your guidance.
I can definitely say that I never actively convert it to use the new agent. Absolutely not.
I was well aware of the fact, that there’s no way back and I actively avoided any action in that direction.
Whatever happened can only have been done by upgrading to a beta of PMS.

@OttoKerner

select as Agent the new “Plex TV Series (Beta)”. Which enables you to select German as language afterwards. However, this will regularly clash with the episode and season numbers of the EPG. So some descriptions and posters will be wrong in certain series.

As I said, I want to avoid using the new agent. You mentioned just a few shortcomings of such a solution.

@OttoKerner

Unmatch the affected series. This may or may not lead to a loss of metadata. It is also unclear what happens to newly recorded episodes.

I just did that with The First 48 TV show and metadata is gone. I can match it and find a german TV show title, but apart from that title, nothing more is added regarding metadata. So, this is a loss.

@OttoKerner

delete the library and recreate it with the old scanner and personal media agent. Which of course leads to a complete loss of metadata, but may retain all the EPG-provided metadata of newly added recordings

I must say… I have hundreds of recordings for TV shows set up. If I delete that library, will the planned recordings still find their “new home” library? And how?

[OttoKerner]

@rossinior

If I delete that library, will the planned recordings still find their “new home” library? And how?

You will have to edit each recording job and verify the recording target library (and folder, if there is more than one folder attached to this library).

[rossinior]

Arghhh… any other solution that you can imagine?

And… how can things like this happen?

[OttoKerner]

I would have mentioned it, if I knew of any other options.

There is no other explanation than you or one member of your household messing with the scanner or agent settings.

[rossinior]

There must be. You can have all my logs if you like to check.

And as long as bug fixes just like these keep popping up in the Fixes list, I would not postulate the “no other explanation” theory:

• (TV) The beta TV agent could overwrite EPG metadata for a show.

[rossinior]

It stays CRAZY.

PLEASE HELP

Having updated my Windows PMS (the one with Plex DVR) to BETA 1.22.2.4276

I started from scratch.

I created a NEW TV show library, making 100% sure, that it uses the old agent and BY NO WAY the new agent.

Then I edited more than 100 programming of TV show recordings to use the brand new library (man, I had the vision that a computer could do such task in a bulk action, but no, I had to manually do that).

I recorded a Tatort episode (and a few others) in the evening and I had wonderful GERMAN descriptions both in EPG as well as in my new library, etc…

OVERNIGHT, I did not check, but when coming home this evening, the SAME FRICKIN’ TV SHOWS have the SAME ENGLISH descriptions !!!

Here are my logs… find the error & fix it!

Plex Media Server Logs_2021-04-06_19-03-08.zip (26.4 MB)

I literally spend half a day yesterday to create that new library and manage those recording programmings.
The result: of a weird bug is that everything in the Plex DVR library is a mess again.

In the evening, all was fine. Now, Plex scr€wed up the library again.

I cannot say how pLssed and frustrated I am (excuse the capital letters)… Don’t stop by telling me that I somehow magically converted my library.

Can somebody from Plex PLEASE TAKE CARE of this, analyzing the problem?
Escalate this if necessary.

If you are missing kind words and lots of “please” - call me rude, but that problem crossed my red line already.

H E L P - and I mean HELP.

[OttoKerner]

@rossinior

I created a NEW TV show library, making 100% sure, that it uses the old agent and BY NO WAY the new agent.

That’s the mistake. It must use the old scanner and as agent you’ll have to set “Personal Media Shows”.
This ensures that newly added shows won’t get matched. That’s a good thing in this case, because only then Plex won’t overwrite the metadata which were supplied by the EPG with those from either TheTVDB or TMDB.

Of course this means that existing episodes won’t get much metadata at all. Only newly recorded ones will inherit the metadata from the Plex DVR EPG.

[rossinior]

@OttoKerner

That’s the mistake. It must use the old scanner and as agent you’ll have to set “Personal Media Shows”.

Well, the settings for the Plex DVR library are exactly the same as in my regular library with the same agent and same scanner.

Plex DVR has German results… and all of a sudden these get reverted and exchanged with English results.

• Plex EPG results should not be changed if I do not manually manipulate (that is how I get Plex promise)
• Same setup non-DVR library gets different German results. So I am sure that the Plex DVR keeps the EPG data at first, but later does no longer care about language and EPG. How do you explain?

I am speaking about unexpected (and blatantly wrong) behavior of Plex DVR metadata handling - you are speaking about avoiding it.

I had your suggested settings in the OLD library. Exactly as you told me. I had English results and you told me that I converted the library to new standard. I did not. You did not respond.

It simply not MY MISTAKE.

That is why I ask for escalation of that problem… you are not thinking that I have a problem apart from not doing the right thing. I am telling you that it does not make a difference - as I have proven with the original library.