Copied movies from a USB drive to plex, and they are not getting metadata/posters, scan library isn't working

Plex Media Server
,
1

Server Version#: 1.21.1.3830

I recently installed the plex server on my Ubuntu server. Everything works fine when I download a movie with Radarr and it happily sends it on to the Plex movie library I have set up (/home/parker/Media/Movies). It gets metadata and the movie poster, no problems there.

I have a bunch of movies on a USB hard drive that I want to add to my library, so I copied a few of them as a test directly into the media folder. They are all in folders with this naming convention: “Movie Title (Year)”.

The movies I copied in from my USB do not get metadata and they don’t show the movie covers. They play fine.

I tried going into Settings > Library and clicking scan library to refresh metadata, but all it does is quickly pop up a spinner next to the Movie library and then it goes away with no change.

Does anyone know how I can fix this? I have a feeling that it may be a permissions issue but the Media folder has full permissions, and I have added the plex user to the group “parker” which is what my user account is in.

2

Check the permissions.

I suspect user plex does not have read permission to the directories containing the files (nor the files themselves)

3

ls -ltr results for the Media folder and the Movies folder inside:
drwxrwxrwx 4 parker parker 4096 Dec 30 12:14 Media
drwxrwxrwx 48 parker parker 4096 Jan 3 11:46 Movies

ls -ltr example of one of the movies in the Movies folder:
drwxrwxrwx 48 parker parker 4096 Jan 3 11:46 Movies

Shouldn’t the plex user have access then? Do I need to change something?

4

how about just a cd /that-directory
then ls -la

I’m also concerned about . and .. but otherwise, those look fine which would imply what’s below there is where the problem lies.

Standard permissions are: 755 for directories, 644 for files

5

Here’s what I got when I ran ls -la inside the Media directory
drwxrwxrwx 4 parker parker 4096 Dec 30 12:14 .
drwxr-xr-x 28 parker parker 4096 Jan 6 13:31 …
drwxrwxrwx 48 parker parker 4096 Jan 3 11:46 Movies
drwxrwxrwx 2 parker parker 4096 Dec 30 12:14 ‘TV Shows’

6

The same Wide-Open exists for everything beneath this point?

If so, we need to look at the actual names used.

7

Yes that’s my understanding of it. When I was messing with it I gave full permissions to everything and selected to apply the same to files below.

What do you mean by names used?

8

How do you have them named?

I ask because, when Radarr names them (which is known to provide proper naming), they work.

You have other media , on USB, which you copied in.
It’s not clear how they are named. By Radarr? By hand?

9

The folders are named by a program, I can’t remember which, and all follow the format “Movie Title (Year)”

The video file itself doesn’t have a naming convention and there is a lot of junk. For example it could be something like “21 Jump Street (2012) DVDRip xvidripz.torrentz.ru.avi” Would that cause an issue?

10

You have two things going against you there.

  1. Junky file names will kill you. Why? Plex allows you to put all your movies (just the files themselves) into one directory and they will all match. This means the file name is the dominant portion. Junky names introduces confusion.

  2. AVI and MP4 files carry embedded titles. If they have junky embedded data, it is worse.

Recommendation:

  1. Make certain to purge embedded metadata from the files themselves
  2. Use a renaming tool (FileBot is very common) to make them perfect.
11

I will look into that. Do you have any tools you recommend to purge the AVI data?

12

The rename worked! Refreshed all metadata and now I have a beautiful library. Thanks!

13

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.