I’m using Plex Version 4.116.1 in an iocage Jail in TrueNAS 13U5.1. I have a large collection of home videos that I had named and updated the thumbnail several yrs ago. I just noticed that it is all messed up. The videos in most but not all folders have the same name and thumbnail. I have an old backup of the all the data from plex from 2022 (hopefully it has all the good info).
How do I restore this data?
is there any way to just restore the home video metadata and not destroy my current TV and Movie metadata?
Is there a way to embed the metadata and thumbnails into the files so plex can read them to prevent problems like this in the future?
That Plex version is the web client that your server provides, not the actual server version. To find the version, don’t report the number found under Settings > Plex Web > General but instead go to Settings > SERVERNAME > Settings > General
I suspect you may have hit upon the issue caused by a fairly recent beta release of Plex, as documented and discussed here:
If so, read all the posts, as there are some good suggestions to try. Forguy in post 3 or so links to the article on how to restore backup, while Dokuro offers some things to try to fix this without a restore from backup. I think it may only work if you use local metadata, which it sounds like you don’t (but are interested in).
Plex will read some tags in mp4 containers, but for anything else you may need to use external metadata files, which it looks to me like Plex mostly currently uses image data (posters, background art), but not titles or descriptions.
Not sure you are running into the problem @Divideby0 mentions.
That problem was introduced in 1.40.1.8111 and you are running a prior version. It did not change the name displayed in Plex. It replaced posters with thumbnails, but they are from each individual file and are not the same.
For the videos that changed, is there anything unique from the ones that did not? MP4 vs MKV, etc.
Pull the server log files and unzip. Look in Plex Media Server.log, and .1.log to .5.log, for any ERROR entries that mention the database is corrupt or malformed.
Plex Media Server 5.log has 3 entries with malformed
Jan 27, 2024 22:22:40.165 [0x80aa44000] WARN - [HttpClient/HCl#57f7] HTTP error requesting GET (3, URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL) (URL rejected: Malformed input to a URL function)
Jan 27, 2024 22:22:41.510 [0x80983ee00] ERROR - [Req#224dd5] Unknown metadata type: folder
Jan 27, 2024 22:23:31.515 [0x80ae33b00] INFO - [Req#224f3a] AutoUpdate: no updates available
Jan 27, 2024 22:25:25.607 [0x80aa44000] WARN - [HttpClient/HCl#580e] HTTP error requesting GET (3, URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL) (URL rejected: Malformed input to a URL function)
Jan 27, 2024 22:25:26.750 [0x809842d00] WARN - [Req#225156] QueryParser: Invalid field 'contentDirectoryID' found, ignoring.
Jan 27, 2024 22:25:26.900 [0x80aa44000] WARN - [HttpClient/HCl#580f] HTTP error requesting GET (3, URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL) (URL rejected: Malformed input to a URL function)
None that have corrupt.
I have a backup from 2 yrs ago as my daily backup won’t help as the error occurred in January. If I restore the backup what will happen to all the new media in Plex since 2 yrs ago?
Can optimize and clean my bundles to fix it?
You do not have database corruption, which is good news.
Suggest you stay on the 1.32.8 release. The 1.40 releases introduced many database changes which has caused problems for many users. Give Plex a couple more releases to work things out.
Which agent & scanner are you using for the library holding the files? Edit the library, then choose Advanced to see the settings.
When viewing the files in Plex, they have the exact same name?
Analyze two of those files with MediaInfo, using the TEXT layout.
In the top section, is there any duplicate info between them, such as movie name/title, etc?
I’m wondering if the files have the same embedded metadata and Plex is picking it up.
You can also use tools such as Mp3tag (Windows) or Subler (Mac) to view/modify embedded metadata.
They are setup as a TV Show with Seasons and episodes. As you can see all the poster frames became the same. This was all working well in the past, I don’t know what went wrong. The file names are what I want plex to show
