Server Version#: 1.19.4.2935
Player Version#: 4.35.1
Others have posted about this but I’ve tried the suggestions in their posts to no avail. My Plex Media Server (running on Ubuntu 18.04 server) keeps attempting to Detect Intros for the same set of seasons for days.
I tried folks’ suggestion of engaging a conversion and ensuring it is not paused - there was a write permission issue, which I subsequently resolved and validated as working. I ensured hardware transcoding is enabled. Still, I’m experiencing the detect intros infinite loop issue.
If you look in the attached logs, you’ll see that the system tries to detect intros, fails due to insufficient matches (which is fine), but then cues up the same season to detect intros again even though there has been no change to the underlying files. Take, for example, [612009] [The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel] [3], which runs intro detection three times over the course of 1 hour (first instance in Plex Media Server.log occurs at Jun 14, 2020 16:40:06.456).
My server’s current top load average is 3.95, 3.90, 3.17 which is largely attributed to this detect intros activity - as I’m seeing these kinds of loads even when the server is under light use in other regards.
There seems to have been a lot of issues with intro detection since it was introduced. Does anybody have any success stories with this on the latest version of PMS? I’m almost afraid to enable it again even though the bug that was affecting me is supposed to be fixed now.
This issue is present on Ubuntu 16 as well, running Version 1.20.1.3252.
Detect intros was running for a solid 3 days on the same set of seasons (2 to be exact), then this got cleared up with a reboot, but now my server has been detecting intros for 3 episodes for 2 days.
I re-enabled detect intros after having it off for a few months and it seems to be functioning for now. Not a solution but it’s possible they’ve been pushing some updates to the feature that might have fixed the specific problem for me? (Running 1.20.1.3252 as well now.)
May be helpful for you @kazz3r24 to check the logs that document the Detect Intros activity and see if your issue is the same as mine or different.
EDIT (ish): It still isn’t working, same issue as before. Just took a few days to resurface. Turning off the feature again. It did, however, scan my new shows, so I guess in theory I could just toggle the service on and off every few days to save CPU.
Ok, I think I’ve found where my issue is… but to me the error makes absolutely no sense since the files play fine and Plex has no issues transcoding h.265 files typically.
Can be found by searching 0x7f9318ff9700
Oct 13, 2020 22:49:36.019 [0x7f9318ff9700] ERROR - IntroDetector: Failed to transcode file (69): /mnt/Echo/TV Shows/The Haunting/Season 2/The Haunting.S02E03.The Two Faces, Part One.mkv
Oct 13, 2020 22:49:36.103 [0x7f9318ff9700] WARN - MDE: unable to find a working transcode profile for video stream
Oct 13, 2020 22:49:36.104 [0x7f9318ff9700] WARN - MDE: unable to find a working transcode profile for video stream
After looking through the log and seeing the above error, I started seeing other errors as well indicating an issue with EAE.
Without going into a long shpeal about what I had to do, turns out I had likely run out of inotify watches, increasing my inotify limit appears to have fixed the issue. I’m watching the logs now to ensure they complete without error.
I found the relevant logs in Plex Media Server.log - you can see lines that say detecting intros. It seems odd that this would be related to iNotify watch limit (is there a setting for this?).
The transcode error does look like it makes sense, though Plex should have a way to not keep on trying once it fails on a file/season once unless the underlying files change.
I found the location of the logs after I looked closer at your initial posts (just had to open my eyes ;)).
I found it very odd as well, and it wasn’t obvious to me at all - I just had a hunch they were related by how closely the events occurred in the logs.
I agree, the transcode error doesn’t make much sense - but I’ve been saying for years now the Plex logs are rather poor.
I can confirm though that after adjusting my inotify watch limit, running sysctl -p and restarting my server the issue is completely gone. I manually initiated the analysis of the season in question and within minutes it had finished detecting intros like it was no big deal. The issue has completely cleared up for me now as well as making my logs less noisy with errors.
I feel like the server was getting hung up on something and this was just the catalyst for it.
