The other thread recommends doing a Refresh All, but I already did that after the upgrade, as the software itself recommended I do upon its first restart.
Nevertheless, I followed the other thread’s advice, first optimizing the database, then doing another Refresh All pass. The problem persists.
I believe this due in part to a different odd Plex behavior that I reported last June, which remains in the current software. Briefly, that change means Plex now requires that if you want actor pictures and such to be pulled from online databases that there be no competing Cast data in the MP4 metadata. It used to merge the file’s Cast metadata with the online cast data, but now if there’s any local Cast data at all, it completely overrides any online metadata found with the matching process.
Since that change, I’ve been going back through my library and deleting the Cast entry from movies that are expected to match, since I don’t want that file metadata overriding the data retrieved from the online databases.
On the other hand, this also means that movies I don’t expect to match will have a Cast entry because Plex can’t get the data any other way.
What I’m reporting here is that since the new scanner change, Plex can no longer make the conceptual leap that Cast values in the unmatched movies may match cast data from online sources in the matched movies. Plex used to be able to do that.
Simple test case:
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Create an MP4 file using whatever method you like, with a title that’s unlikely to match anything in the online movie databases the scanner consults.
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Use an MP4 metadata editor — I prefer Subler — to set a Cast member on this one with the same name as in a movie you have matched in the library already. You have to provide it via file metadata since we know this movie should not match in IMDB, TMDb, etc., because we just created it. If you’re struggling to imagine how this can occur in real life, one possibility is that you live in Hollywood and captured a video of Samuel L. Jackson on your mobile phone and have saved this video to Plex to enjoy. This will never match in the online movies databases, and attempting to add the movie metadata to TMDb or similar will be rejected, but it is Sam Jackson in that personal video, the same one as in all the commercial movies.
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Add the new movie to Plex.
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Unmatch the movie if it mistakenly matched something in IMDB or TMDb despite your careful title choice.
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Click on the actor in the Plex web page for that movie. Notice that it doesn’t take you to the pre-existing movies with the same actor. Plex considers the new movie to have all-new actors.
Prior to the recent scanner change, it would make a guess about the actor, assuming that if there was a name match with other movies in the database that it was the same person. ~99.99% of the time it would be correct for the “curation” reason I gave above. Now it assumes they have to be different people. I want the old behavior back without reverting to old software that will eventually be discontinued.
If you repeat this process with a second new movie, it will now match the other new movie’s actor (Samuel L. Jackson in my example above) but still not match with the commercial movies.
