So I did a server update last week and then earlier this week upgraded the libraries as suggested. I am now in the middle of a project where I’m moving new replacement HEVC versions of some VOB and mp4 versions of movies in my library. Up until the upgrades, I would just copy the new files to a separate drive and then let Plex find the dupes and then delete the old version in the server library. It saved me from having to dig across 5 different hard drives to find the exact location of the original movie folder. However, after upgrading the server and library, duplicates are no longer found. This can be hugely time consuming now, and I don’t understand how or why this could/would happen. Please tell me there’s a rollback, upgrade, or easy fix for this.
Could be you changed the standard agent for your library without subsequently refreshing the library’s metadata. This way you can end up with existing items remaining matched to the old agent while all new additions are matched using the new one… resulting in Plex not recognizing them as duplicates.
This triggered a thought to refresh all metadata in the library. It took forever, but did catch a lot of duplicates. The down side is that the movies I had intentionally split for alternate-version reasons (still baffles me why Plex prefers to be set up this way) are now duplicates again. It’s kind of a no-win situation, but probably faster to do the re-splits than to track down every dupe. Thanks for jogging the noggin.
