I was trying to figure out why a particular movie wasn’t showing up in my Watch History when it had clearly completed watching (status showed as Watched, not Unwatched; individual Play History showed it as having been watched). Doing some digging, a parenthetical mention somewhere else clued me in to the fact that movies marked with Edition data do not sync watched status, and presumably also therefore don’t show up in Watch History.
This is absolutely ridiculous. I rely on my Watch History to keep track of what I’ve been watching recently and when; to have something I’ve watched completely absent from it, with no warning, completely breaks the functionality. I was extremely excited when Edition was added as a feature, since it lets me not only split versions for movies where I own multiple editions but also track which edition I have if the only version is something other than the theatrical release. But apparently in addition to making my library more navigable, it also turns those films into ghosts, which makes absolutely no sense. It shouldn’t matter what edition of a film I’m watching for it to show up in my watched history. I would literally rather have the wrong edition displayed than no movie at all.
Features (particularly features exclusive to Plex Pass users) should improve our experience, not degrade it. And if they’re going to degrade it, you need to warn us up front so we can make informed decisions.
If you are referring to watch history on your profile it is not there because that watch history is what is synced to plex tv via watch state syncing. When the feature was released it was mentioned in the support article on editions that we do not sync editions watch state in the FAQ. https://support.plex.tv/articles/multiple-editions/
Literally why not just have the activity appear as an edition-less version? The films are matched for metadata purposes, so clearly you have that information.
It’s also incredibly easy to miss that flagging a film as an edition completely removes it from state syncing. It’s also not clear that Watch History is entirely reliant on state syncing.
Obviously I think it matters. I honestly have no idea how to explain to you that a sub-par version of something (telling me that I watched a movie but not what version of it) can be better than nothing at all (or, in this case, even worse than nothing, because it’s actively misleading, pretending that I didn’t watch the movie in any format, just because I added a single piece of metadata to the version I watched).
But the official Plex employee stance is apparently to be condescending and defensive instead of listening to concerns from customers and evidence that your documentation around a particular feature is not good enough, particularly where it interferes with or entirely removes other expected functionality. “Oblique references are buried in seventeen different articles, and if you put them all together you’ll understand what’s going on" is not actually good communication with your users.
This also speaks volumes about what you think about personal Plex media server users. We literally are the reason this application exists, but now you’re acting more like we’re something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe. Guess if we’re not generating ad dollars for VC bros, we’re just inherited trash you wish would shut up and go away.
Hi @BigWheel if I set the edition field of a single movie to “Extended edition” because that’s what the edition is then why isn’t it getting to my watch status that I have just watched that movie? Or maybe even the Extended edition of that movie.
There’s more than one reason to use the edition field of an item - not just the fact that I may own more than one edition. I wouldn’t want to loose the Extended Edition info, even if this is the only edition I own. Getting back to this item in a few years to watch it, I would love to see if that is the extended edition, the director’s cut, the bloody-h*ll-is-breaking-loose adult edition or whatever.
For example, if I backup blu-rays, then I add the info on the release to the edition field - for all movies. Am I destroying my Plex watch history? What is this all about that you jump to conclusions if this field is edited? Why are you doing this?
You going to have to define “destroy”. The previous watch history still exists and doesn’t go any. New watch history won’t ever be created if an edition
.
For the reason stated in the support doc I linked in my first reply. It’s a privacy issue.
if every time we say somethijng you don’t happen to like and just accuse of this or that then it isnt a conversation.
when the feature was released plenty of folks did ask about this and we told them why and privacy of your personal media, which we care very much, trumped the need in folks minds for in every case i have spoken to folks about it.
Dear @BigWheel thank you for taking the time to point me to the source of information. It was too easy to not read the article completely Sorry.
I can now better understand where you are coming from. Thank you for taking care of privacy concerns. I like that.
If I would have the complete “sync watch status” disabled, is Plex then tracking the watch status of editions? So is it just the syncing and “forwarding of info on editions to others” is a concern? Or did you also disable watch state tracking for any edition library item if no syncing outside a PMS is involved?
Sorry for this question, but the knowledge base article is not clear about this (at least for me).
I am in the process of updating all of my movies to hold the source in the edition field. It would be contra-productive if these movies would no longer pop up in my own watch history (nothing is synced). Thank you for taking the time to ask this probably stupid question.
to be clear. your Plex Media Server tracks the watch state of all things locally. Watch state is not a watch history though.
Your play history that is stored on the server can be viewed on the dash board settings. “Play” history are things that were actually streamed for at least a minute from your server, not things that were just manually marked as watched
Thank you, sir. I am more confused than before - which is of course my fault. I am not too much into this topic.
Is a “play history” something different than a “watch history”? I always thought that what a user on my PMS watches, is logged to the watch status on my server and that this gets synchronized if I swtch on that feature. I only now learn that it’s not that easy. I totally agree that private information about library items should not be processed and stored at plex.tv. My own first thought would have been that the “private metadata” part gets stripped from the info synchronized. But I learnt that it’s not that easy once again. I can not see why the info that movie xyz has been streamed is not visible (with private info being stripped). I know that editions are kept as seperate entries and that this must be handled by the sync somehow. In my own world, I can see a software setting switch which asks for the user preference of how to handle that. But I stand corrected. I am not in the position to have the extension of that feature being implemented. Maybe as a nice-to-have thing once the real software issues in the Plex universe have been sorted out (to be clear: just my personal impression of the problem priority).
@BigWheel I understand that my PMS still sees and shows the watch (or play?) status of all things on my personal PMS. That’s insight enough for me, personally. Thank you.
the watch state. is what is marked as watched or unwatched (which could be automatic after watching, or manually marking as watched/unwatched). this is stored on your server and you can see this by the check marks on the posters. ( you can also mark things as watched in Discover that you may not have on your server which is saved to your account Plex.tv)
Watch state syncing is that state being synced to plex.tv with a time stamp. This is an account level thing. If you have access to multiple servers then your watch state is synced from all server. If you marked something as watched or unwatched on one server ( or discover) then after it is sycned to plex.tv it will sync back to the other servers and marked them as watched/unwatched on all servers ( as mentioned it does not do this for editions. it also does not do this for music, photos, “other video” libraries") ( this data can be removed in privacy settings)
Watch History is a log of when the watch state is set to watched and displays a block in your profile of the data stored to your account at Plex.tv. Marking something as unwatched does not remove something from watch history since it still happened. Individual watched activities in the history can be removed manually though or watch history can be removed as a whole from plex.tv in privacy settings.
Play history on the dashboard is what was actually streamed from your server. So as a server admin you can ask things like “why was my internet usage going crazy at 5pm? . Oh John, Paul and Ringo were all streaming different movies at the time”. It does not show things that were just manually marked as watched. marking something as unwatched does not remove it from play history since it still happened.
Sorry.