Failed to Save/Update Smart Music Playlist

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.25.9.5721
Web Version#: 4.76.1
Windows Version: 10 Pro
Browser Version Chrome 100.0.4896.88

I have posted about this before, but was not thorough enough with my observations and I think the topic was closed. I am returning with more details and hopefully more insight. This is related to music playlists only.

First the scenario: I have over 50000 tracks, 2600+ albums/singles/EPs. I create playlists on a separate Windows machine. The issue seems to occur when the criteria results in 200+ artists. The criteria will include:

  • Criteria group Match All: Year greater than x and Year less than Y
  • Criteria group Match All : Track rating greater than 4star, Track Not Played in Last 3 weeks; Track Not Skipped in Last 3 weeks
  • Criteria Group Match Any: Artist contains “artist name”. Typically this can be 200+ artists, depending on the style of the playlist

Issue: At some point (not sure what the trigger is) the number of artists reaches a point where the playlist cannot be saved. I get an error from the server saying the save operation failed. Even if this was an existing playlist (one that I have been creating over several sessions which I have updated periodically), the update will fail when I reach this point. If I try to “Save As” to a new playlist rather than update, it also fails.

Once the update fails in this manner, the playlist becomes irretrievable. It cann be updated or played. Any attempt to do so will result in

There was an unexpected error loading this item

Please visit our forums if you continue to experience problems

If I go to list playlists, I see the updated playlist with seemingly all of the tracks it should find (based an expected playlist duration). However, I cannot open it, edit it or play it. The playlist is effectively “bricked”…

Here is the catch. I did not close the browser. Therefore, I still had my work displayed in front of me. Again, Update Playlist and Save As playlist failed. Before abandoning the playlist when I was trying to Save As a smart playlist, I tried saving it as a dumb playlist. So, while I had the browser opened to the edited playlist, and I already had an Update to the Smart Playlist fail, I saved it to a dumb (or static) playlist. That worked! All of the tracks that would have been selected using the Smart playlist was saved in the static playlist. And it was quick, vs saving/updating a Smart playlist which does take some time.

Observations and guesses: Smart vs. Static playlists - different storage and processing mechanism which accounts for time and complexity to save. Also, Smart playlists require more resources during the creation and retrieval process.

Questions:

does the type of browser affect the creation and edit of Smart playlists? I use Chrome, but will switch if so recommended.

Is there something I can do during creation/edit that can mitigate this problem?

I have saved a copy of my DB if that can help Plex-gods in determining cause. DM me for file.

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When you save a smart playlist, the number of items doesn’t matter. What you are saving there are actually only the filters you’ve selected.
So I’d rather look at the precise search terms and patterns you are using.
Particularly if you have exceptionally complex/nested queries or whether the search patterns contain any special characters.

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I would like to show you the offending filter criteria, but I can’t pull it up because it won’t load. I will work on reproducing at least to give you an idea what I typically create.

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Otto,

I have another playlist that I can provide you that also has complicated filter nesting and works., I am attaching a txt file that has the URL for the playlist (only way I can show you what it is).

I observe that the URL has approx 9300 characters in it and represents about 178 artists. The playlist that failed had over 200 artists. Question: If the number of artists is high enough and the name of the artists long enough to exceed say 10,000 characters in the URL, would that cause Plex to fail to save the playlist info in the DB? Is there a way I can see what was saved in the DB using an SQL tool? Any info on where in DB to look would be helpful. My thinking here is that the playlist in the DB is incomplete and when trying to open it, Plex realizes the construct is missing content and states error reading playlist.

Hope this helps.
Blend Playlist.txt (9.2 KB)

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Otto,

I just reread your last post and what struck me was special characters. I would say that could be a possibility. There are several artists with names that have special characters, accented characters, etc. I have not had any trouble saving those recordings in Plex and having them displayed and available. I have noticed that I cannot use comma in the artist name (e.g. Crosby, Stills and Nash), because the scanner will split “Crosby” and “Stills and Nash” into two separate filter entries. Similar with 10,000 Maniacs. As I say, I have been down this road before and use caution when building said playlists.

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Ouch. I don’t know the technical limits here, but it is easily conceivable that there is a kind of limit.
Maybe you want to find a different way to “tag” these artists, so you can use a less complex filter string?

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Ok, I did as Otto suggested and changed my approach to creating this playlists. Rather than having a sub-group that includes “any of the following” which had 200+ entries of the type Artist is “artist”, I tagged all of my desired artists with a common name in Moods. That is, I went to all of the artists I want in the playlist and added a Mood tag (“mylabel”). Then in the playlist, I coded a filter entry Artist Mood is “mylabel”. I also included a filter entry of Track Rating is *****. It properly collected tracks from all of the tagged artists and tracks that I wanted (those with a rating of 5 stars, which I had already rated).

Save and load performance was extremely fast.

The Conclusion: either the size of the URL approaching 10,000 characters caused Plex to fail parsing and then saving the playlist. OR the number of individually identified artists in the playlist filter (200+) exceed some processing limit for the playlist. It certainly cause saving and loading the playlist to bog down.

Otto I thank you for discussing with me and I can move forward with this technique to serve my personal needs. However, if any Plexgods are reading this, there is an operational issue that should be researched or at least documented so others do not find themselves getting frustrated. Good thing I don’t have anything else to do :slight_smile:

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