Should this still fail to match, confirm for me whether you’re using MP4 or MKV files? If MP4 files, it’s extremely likely you have embedded metadata (name information) which is confusing PMS. PMS reads name information from MP4 but not MKV.
These specific episodes are MKV files (as I showed you in a screenshot earlier in this thread), and I’m not seeing any embedded meta data
I added a bunch of looney tunes episodes to the library recently (over 1000), and I’m seeing those go through this same metadata loop too.
Since you mentioned it’s failing to match, I looked into it within the plex library (even after doing what you said). And did a Fix Match search for it. Doing a manual search seems to have found what it was looking for as after I did that it downloaded the cover art and poster image for it.
So I’m going to be keeping my eye on the activity tab and seeing if other things can be manually fixed that way too. Again, It was Plex’s DVR feature that recorded and named that america’s war on drugs show. So I’m curious as to why it couldn’t find the metadata for it properly.
I’ll keep this thread updated, and thank for taking the time to help
Loony Tunes matching is ‘interesting’. Some of them do match, some don’t. If you can find it on TheTVDB, use that name and it will match (be aware you’ll likely need to “Plex Dance” (move out, etc etc, move back in) to obtain a fresh match.
One which will not obtain metadata is Wile E. Coyote Road Runner (1949-2010) I have it in a video (non tv) library. This ends the constant searching
@ChuckPA said:
Loony Tunes matching is ‘interesting’. Some of them do match, some don’t. If you can find it on TheTVDB, use that name and it will match (be aware you’ll likely need to “Plex Dance” (move out, etc etc, move back in) to obtain a fresh match.
One which will not obtain metadata is Wile E. Coyote Road Runner (1949-2010) I have it in a video (non tv) library. This ends the constant searching
So matching those few shows seem to have fixed the downloading metadata loop that was happening.
I’m still seeing a lot of repeated scanning of folders. . .
3:09pm Scanning SpongeBob SquarePants (1999)/Season 05
3:09pm Scanning the “DVR” section
3:09pm Scanning the “TV Shows” section
3:09pm Scanning SpongeBob SquarePants (1999)/Season 08
3:09pm Scanning the “DVR” section
3:04pm Library scan complete: Extra information may still be downloading from the Internet
3:04pm Scanning the “TV Shows” section
3:04pm Scanning SpongeBob SquarePants (1999)/Season 05
3:04pm Scanning the “DVR” section
3:04pm Scanning the “TV Shows” section
3:04pm Scanning SpongeBob SquarePants (1999)/Season 08
3:04pm Scanning the “DVR” section
2:59pm Library scan complete: Extra information may still be downloading from the Internet
2:59pm Scanning the “TV Shows” section
2:59pm Scanning SpongeBob SquarePants (1999)/Season 05
2:59pm Scanning the “DVR” section
2:59pm Scanning the “TV Shows” section
2:59pm Scanning SpongeBob SquarePants (1999)/Season 08
Which seems unneeded, but it’s not downloading metadata for stuff over and over again.
Thanks again for all of the work. If this repeated scanning (when nothing is happening in those folders) is out of place, let me know.
Do you have something touching / updating the date/time modified stamps in those directories? If so, Linux is getting updated which triggers PMS. It’s the only thing which could be causing this if you’ve ruled out ANY possibility of media issue (looking at the scanner and all log files for signs of corruption (ERROR) )
@ChuckPA said:
Do you have something touching / updating the date/time modified stamps in those directories? If so, Linux is getting updated which triggers PMS. It’s the only thing which could be causing this if you’ve ruled out ANY possibility of media issue (looking at the scanner and all log files for signs of corruption (ERROR) )
Ummm, I could have something like Sonarr scanning the directory, but I don’t think it would be constantly scanning it like that, and if it was Sonarr then it would be happening on literally hundreds of the TV shows I have on my NAS (unRAID) since Sonarr monitors all of them.
And I know there definitely isn’t anything that would be messing with the timestamp of one of those episodes. I just did a search through the log files in Application Support\Plex Media Server\Logs and don’t see any instance of the word “corrupt” or “corruption” (I assume those logs are where I need to look).
I do run an unRAID docker for plex and it does use a hard drive for parity in case a drive goes down. I would think that drive needs to be pretty active of new changes and could be scanning the drive maybe? So unRAID itself could be 'touch’ing those directories to make sure they’re up to date so it can have accurate information for the parity drive?
But I’m not sure about the technical details of this. I imagine Plex is made to be ran with NAS boxes with parity drives and such, so I would assume this would be taken into consideration?
I know nothing of unRaid. If it’s actively modifying the date/time fields of your files, this is bad.
Sonarr will only modify the date/time when it updates / replaces / upgrades the file . This is correct behavior since the quality of the file has improved and PMS needs to know this
@ChuckPa said:
I know nothing of unRaid. If it’s actively modifying the date/time fields of your files, this is bad.
Sonarr will only modify the date/time when it updates / replaces / upgrades the file . This is correct behavior since the quality of the file has improved and PMS needs to know this
No unRAID shouldn’t be MODIFYING the time/dates of anything. But it does ‘touch’ them as in it looks to see what has been changed on the drives so that it can build parity data on a completely different drive.
I am to the point where I’m about to pull the remaining hairs out of my head.
Most of this stuff had been added many many days ago and they match perfectly with TVdb.
I have even gotten to the point where I just want to disable any and all library scanning/updating entirely. I’m perfectly fine with letting Plex poll the internet to download metadata when it gets added to the library, and then do NOTHING ELSE with that file, ever.
I have tried disabling any and all update library options (did this last night) and yet it still wants to keep downloading stuff.
There needs to be a ‘download metadata once when it’s added to the library and then LEAVE IT ALONE’ option.
Emby has this option right when you create a library and that whole setup is garbage compared to what Plex offers.
What Plex is doing is eating up bandwidth (which is CAPPED monthly in the first place) and waking disks up when they should be sleeping and left alone. I honestly can’t handle this anymore and am 2 steps away from throwing Plex into the garbage.
Look, here’s even more scans for a show that it detects perfectly fine (have tested with both movie db and tvdb and it detects/matches just fine but continues doing this crap) that has continued while I’ve typed up this post (and again, those were added many many days ago).
@ChuckPA when looking at this bobby’s world stuff, it seems to be looping on things that the agent doesn’t have information for. for example, I matched this show up with The Movie Database agent because thetvdb had even less metadata on this show
So for Season 4 Episodes 4/5, the agent simply doesn’t have metadata for that episode
“We don’t have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.”
This looping is happening for each one that doesn’t have anything. This is the type of stuff that I need to be able to tell Plex ‘I don’t care about description metadata’ so that it doesn’t keep trying to grab it. It’s not like there will be new metadata for this 20 year old show tomorrow that isn’t here today.
There simply isn’t a reason to keep looping like this. I get that you want to keep trying so it’s complete, but there needs to be a way for me to tell Plex to stop for a particular show/episode/library/whatever. or if you don’t want to program in a manual toggle for users, then do something like ‘if no metadata is returned after 3 loops, stop looping daily and only try again once per month’
Would you please gather your PMS logs again? A couple other team members are looking at this and we’re all a bit confused. They’d like to see your full scanner logs.
Settings - Server - Help - Download Logs
Please attach the ZIP file it gives you here with your next post.
@ChuckPA said:
Would you please gather your PMS logs again? A couple other team members are looking at this and we’re all a bit confused. They’d like to see your full scanner logs.
Settings - Server - Help - Download Logs
Please attach the ZIP file it gives you here with your next post.
Thanks but would you please go to Settings - Server - General and uncheck the Verbose logging box? When Verbose is enabled, information scrolls by extremely fast. We only use it when diagnosing fine detail. We have a sticky over here ---------> about it
While you’re there, please also turn off Partial scan when changes are detected? I’d like to minimize PMS activity while debugging this. DVR + Partial scan is never a good idea while the media grabber is running
@ChuckPa said:
Thanks but would you please go to Settings - Server - General and uncheck the Verbose logging box? When Verbose is enabled, information scrolls by extremely fast. We only use it when diagnosing fine detail. We have a sticky over here ---------> about it
You didn’t link anything I but I found the thread from a Google search and disabled it
And I’ve had partial scan disabled for a while, here’s the server → library settings pages
So I should let this run for a day or so, or until I see the looping happen and then grab logs for you and the team?
@ChuckPA said:
the blue sticky I was referring to is on the right… Scroll up
My apologies for being ambiguous (LOOOOOOOOOOOONG day here . TGIF!!! )
lol, fair enough
Since the last post there has already been 22 pages of stuff added to the ‘activity’ page. some (like the mist) was added last night and has already had its metadata stuff downloaded. so here’s another log file just in case it’s useful
I’ll keep my eye out for bobby’s world or any other old duplicates though
@ChuckPA ran pretty quiet throughout the night and morning, with all the update library settings turned off. but it wasn’t adding any new entries
So then I turned on only the “Update my library automatically” option and let it add the new shows and movies. stayed quiet for a bit and then started looping. I grabbed a zip of logs right when it started, and then waited an hour or so and grabbed more (as it’s still looping). these are movies and episodes that had been added days/weeks ago and already had metadata(including a description) on them
Moderator Edit: User authentication tokens visible in log files. Log files removed. Settings - Server - General : Uncheck the box Allow Plex Media Server tokens in logs
I but I found the thread from a Google search and disabled it
