I’ve got the latest versions of Plex Media server on a Windows PC and a Synology NAS. Both have access to the same directories located on a NAS drive (on the Synology) but, oddly, the Windows PC Media Server shows a couple of more movies than the Synology NAS. If it’s the same pool, it should show the same number of movies… or at least I would think so. I’ve checked this a couple of times.
That said, I’d like to troubleshoot but don’t know a way to do a dump of all movies showing in Plex to do this to compare directly what I’m seeing in Windows that I’m not using the Synology server. I usually take a dump from the drives themselves. Windows Com can generate a nice list with all sorts of parameters, e.g. resolution, bitrate, etc. Is there some tool in Plex that will generate a dump from each category, e.g. movies, TV, etc.? Has anyone seen something like this? Is this normal?
Sometimes a discrepancy like this is explained by collections
If a few movies got left out of a collection or you have “hide items in collections” selected on one, you would see a different amount of movies in the library view
Filter the library by something other than “title” like date added and see if the number of movies is the same for both servers
I would also filter the library for duplicates. I run two servers and occasionally I’ve split apart duplicates on one server but forgot on the other
Thanks for the suggestions. I shouldn’t have any filters on but will look and is a good suggestion to double check.
Also a good idea to try to run some filters to try to see what might produce different results that can help identify what this could possibly be. As to duplicates, the dupes are resolution, no identical files. I found that doing a list in Windows or Linux was most usfeul for this, dumping into Excel and then using filters to highlight duplicates, e.g. same byte size, which should almost never be identical. That was a good way of finding some file that somehow ended up in another folder and not noticed!
I’ve discovered some of the problems and I cannot reconcile them. For the same movie (correct format, year in title in parenthesis is (2021)) I have the NAS getting it correctly but the Desktop using 2020 for the movie for reasons I cannot explain. I tied ot have Plex desktop analyze the film but it wouldn’t get it correct.
I’m at a loss for how the Synology NAS would have such a different result than the Desktop. Even the thumbnail image is a little different on each the NAS and desktop. Has anyone seen this?
Mind sharing the specific file names incl. their folder structure?
Also… what agent do you have configured for the library in question on the NAS vs. your Windows server? Have you enabled the option to prefer local/embedded metadata on the respective libraries?
Thanks!
Structures of two different movies that are giving me a problem. One is on drive 2, which has a root (Movies_2) and the other has none, just a directory of movies. That works fine for the most part but I can always put every movie into a “Movies_1” folder if it makes a difference.
Both are using the identical agent settings.
I’ve noticed that when I search, I’ll see the same movie name appear in different years in the dropdown on occasion. For example, a movie being offered by Plex can actually be a year which is different than listed on IMDB. The one on the NAS shows in the correct year, but on the Desktop it shows a prior year.
Now here is another odd ting I’m noticing about Plex TV. Take a random film like Glasshouse which is a 2021 movie but it’s showing as appearing on Plex TV as a 2022 film - which seems to be incorrect. You should see the same as I do for that because it’s being streamed on Plex. I’d like to think there is a setup difference but if I’m seeing this, I wonder.
That’ll depend on your library settings.
Plex is considering regional release dates – it seems there’s conflicting release dates found on IMDb and TMDb for different regions (ranging from 2021 to 2022)
Interesting. Thanks for at least resolving one anomaly - and that’s understood.
But what I cannot understand is, let’s take The French Dispatch - which seems to be a 2021 movie and that can appear as either with the same settings. I’m confused about this. And I’m still trying to find the 3 titles that appear on the NAS server that don’t on the Desktop. It’s a very difficult task. - Is there a way to do a directory dump of everything plex sees in its library to a CSV file?
I’m not sure what 3 movies you’re referring… you kept your posts rather vague.
As for “The French Dispatch”… same as with Glasshouse there appear to be release dates in 2022 for some regions.
There’s the various filters inside Plex to start with (e.g. filtering your library for Duplicates, Unmatched items or sorting it by date added to figure out if there’s some items that don’t seem to belong there.
After just being alerted of others having this problem and some comments about it, I was able to diagnose my issue - and it appears to be a bug or unintended consequences of using Plex for Windows.
The Windows version of Plex created a duplicate movie with two entries both pointing to one pyshcial data file. So for example, a film like “Much Ado About Nothing” might have two different entries with two different pieces of cover art pointing to the same file. So Plex thought the same file was two different movies and created entries for each as if they were two different files.
If you delete one from Plex, it will not delete the source file, just the entry, and the other one that remains will play.
You can discover when this occurs as follows.
Use Plex Webtools-NG Export Tools to export a list of all of your media.
Highlight your CSV column in Excel that corresponds to file name which is called “Part File” or “Part File Combined”, e.g. D:\movies\This_Way_That_Way.mp4
You should see the same file appear twice, which should never happen since you can’t have the same duplicate file with the same name appearing in the same directory - so that is the replicated entry.
Interestingly enough, this error never occurred in the NAS version of Plex.
