I’m not sure how to explain my problem, so I try my best here (sorry if that makes my post long)
First off, I have a TV Show library, that matched as “personal agent” (not from the internet, but the metadata in the mp4 file) and all my apps are updated to the newest version.
But here is the Problem: Plex randomly overwrites/changes the “Aired Date” to the wrong date.
Here is what I do (and at first give all the correct information!)
I move all the TV Show files (mp4) into the folder of my Plex library
I scan/add the show to my library within plex.
The show gets correctly added and Plex reads all the metadata correctly too (Name, Episode names, Seasons etc. ALL GOOD!)
Only the “Originally Available / Air Date” is wrong at this moment. It seems Plex prefers to read the file date over the metadata.
At first I can fix this easily by just clicking “Refresh Metadata” and now the date is correct too.
However the trouble is, that the date is not “sticking”. Meaning that sometimes after a few days randomly or if I add another (different) show, plex randomly changes the dates on some (not all) shows back to the file date.
If I click “refresh metadata” on the affected shows, it gets corrected (from the metadata) again.
My Problem or questions is: Why doesn’t it stay that way?
For example let’s take " 11.22.62 S01E01" The airdate (also set in the metadata) is 2016-02-15.
After I added it onto my server, plex took all the metadata correctly (Like Name, Season, Episodes etc.) except the date, where it seems to read the file created date (2018-05-07). After I clicked “refresh metadata” it also got the right date (2016-02-15)
However when I added a few episodes to a different show (The 100) yesterday, it seems that plex had forgotten the dates on 11.22.63 and set it to the “file created” again, (2018-05-07)
This of course screws with the displaying of the “recently aired” in the “On Deck” section.
For me this means I have to go to the other shows and do a “refresh metadata” again, so it once more changes the date back to the real “aired” date.
I wish plex could save this information correctly and stays that way…
Of course, to anybody trying to provide help, I do hope my explanation is clear enough on whats happening! If not I try to explain missing details (:
Please post the Plex XML info of one of the episodes.
How are the media files stored? Are they directly on a hard disk inside the plex server computer?
Or are they on an external hard disk, or even on a network drive?
Hi,
all media files are mp4 video files.
They are stored on the internal HDD that also has the plex server installation and the OS (NTFS)
The sorting is also rather simple.
Episodes that have more than just the english audio go into the folder “TV-MULTI”, which is set as the main folder for the library.
For example:
C:\PLEX-MS\TV-MULTI v_show_name\SxxExx episode_name.mp4
As for the XML file, I attached one from the Series Pan Am (from 2011)
Yesterday it was all fine about the date and today it got changed, so before I got the XML file I had to use the “Refresh Metadata” again.
Also in this example you can see why I have set my library for “Personal Media Agent” and not to get the information from the internet, as I have a few friends in Germany that I share access with. So most of my series contain episode information in german too.
For writing the metadata into the mp4 files, I use “metaX” and the only problematic info is date, everything else stays correct and is unaffected from random changes
Then keep an eye on this episode. When it happens again, please fetch the log files immediately and send them to me (either by attaching them here or per forum PM).
No, I have disabled any auto updates to the library!
The only option enabled is: “Run a partial scan when changes are detected”
As advised, I just removed the checkmark “empty trash automatically after every scan”
I have attached the current logs as it seems that during the last hours (between now and when I answered earlier) plex has done it again! This time the affected shows are “9-1-1” and “The Good Doctor” among others, in case the show names are shown in the logs.
I will not go to “refresh metadata” on these affected shows again, so they are correct once more (for a few hours or days)
I plan to add 2 complete shows to my server later, so I assume this will cause a few shows to get “overwritten” with wrong infos again, so I can attach logs then too.
As said it’s rather random which shows are affacted. For the moment “The 100” and “Pan Am” are all good, but might be they get hit again later (when I add new shows) or randomly tomorrow or day after …
by the way, thank you for taking the time and trying to help!!
I wish the shows affected weren’t so random, then atleast I could assume the issue is with the files itself
This is a screen of the “On Deck” were I can see immediately that some dates are wrong.
And after refresh metadata, it’s correct again. (see below)
I will see that I add one of the “new shows” I prepared into Plex within the next hour. Most likely this screws up some older ones randomly and the logs hopefully show some insight that’s helpful
To give some feedback:
As I planned, I did add 3 new Shows (and a few episodes to existing ones), but it seems this time there was no random changing of the shows already added into Plex.
Same as always I added the shows and had to do a “Refresh Metadata” (only on the new shows) but all seems fine on the old and new ones!
I will monitor this closely on my server the coming days (and especially after adding new shows) but if the problem will be gone from now on, then I mark your answer about removing the checkmark on the “Empty trash” option as resolution, since that was the only change in settings I did (=
Sadly it happened again …
I noticed that all my Episodes for “Body of Proof” that normally should show aired dates between 2011-2013 got changed to the creation date yesterday …
After I clicked “Refresh Metadata” on that show, I noticed it started a domino effect and another show (13 Reasons Why) got affected.
I did that for three shows (the refresh thing) and just got too frustrated so I clicked on “Refresh All Metadata” for the library, so that I don’t have to go thru all 70+ shows I have…
seems to me like that plex is prioritizing the “File Creation Date” over the date set in the metadata. And as soon as anything changes in my library, plex changes the correct metadata information with the file creation date.
I guess this means for me that I have to run a “Refresh Metadata” on the whole library every 24H or so
P.S. I added the show names in my post, so that it might be helpful when checking the logs (in case the contain the show names too)
@OttoKerner said:
Settings - Server - Scheduled Tasks - ‘Refresh local metadata every three days’
Is this active? try toggling it either way.
It’s currently off. But I set it to on now. That might save the task of doing it manually every day. I just hope the metadata keeps for 3 days without being messed up!
I have to admit, I don’t know much about the programming apps stuff, but in case you are a developer (or any of them reads it)
a full fix might be to tell/set Plex to prioritize metadata information over file information. So that once it reads the correct date from the metadata, it doesn’t get changed to the file creation date.
And thanks so much for taking the time and trying to help me!!
