Since Plex has its issues with automatch for new content, I’m finding that a mis-match at this stage (thousands of pieces of media) means that the content could effectively be “lost” to a wrong name. Looking for it as a duplicate doesn’t work (sometimes the duplicates don’t actually show that way and they stay separate) and I can’t search it out based on when it was added. I was hoping there might be a way to search by file name in the database.
Anyone have any ideas?
Plex is actually handing matching really good. The most common issue is bad naming convention.
I think Plex mismatched maybe like 1 or 2 times for me. I know I’m not answering directly your question but try to fix your issue rather then looking for solution how to optimize your manual matching.
Read this if you haven’t and believe me when I tell you that proper naming convention solves almost all matching issues:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/categories/200028098-Media-Preparation
@“Bartlomiej Baraniec” said:
Plex is actually handing matching really good. The most common issue is bad naming convention.
I think Plex mismatched maybe like 1 or 2 times for me. I know I’m not answering directly your question but try to fix your issue rather then looking for solution how to optimize your manual matching.
Read this if you haven’t and believe me when I tell you that proper naming convention solves almost all matching issues:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/categories/200028098-Media-Preparation
While I appreciate the response, it doesn’t address my issue. I’ve already gone down the path of ensuring that files are named correctly and I still have too many issues with misses. When I add a movie to the library and it doesn’t show up, I need to understand why. Many times this ends up being the result of Plex incorrectly identifying the movie, loading it as a duplicate to another movie already present, and then not actually identifying as a duplicate (click Library then change from All to Duplicates - nothing shows up). At some random point in the future, I will search for a movie and get two copies of the same cover art to show up and that’s when I realize one of the movies was incorrectly identified but DOESN’T show up in the search for duplicates.
Yes I know I’m not addressing your issue directly but still do you mind sharing your naming convention?
I’ve “deployed” few Plex servers on various platforms and I rarely have any issues with matching.
My naming convention is “as required”.
Movies/Movie Name (Year of release)/Movie Name (Year of release).mkv
Many come through ok, but there are a bunch that were picked up incorrectly and I had to [eventually] fix. I don’t recall specific ones at this point to offer up, but am going through my entire library to validate items and will likely find some that are incorrect.
One other thing that causes Plex to “mismatch” files is embedded metadata. I strongly suggest that unless the embedded metadata is intentionally being used the “Local assets” agent be moved in every agent to as low as possible. It has very little value for 95% (maybe more) of Plex users. I REALLY have no idea why Plex has made the stupid decision to default such a useless tool to the first position in every single agent.
As has been stated Plex, once set up correctly and with the agents properly configured and with properly named files, is about as close to perfect in its matching as anything I have ever seen. I fairly recently had to completely redo my entire library from scratch and I only had to fix Plex’s match on five of my 2600+ movies and not one of my 500+ TV shows was mismatched.
I, too, would like to see exact naming of movies that Plex has mismatched. It would be interesting to find out why since my experience is so good with matching.
This is probably one the most unhelpful threads. Does anyone have an actual answer? Funny how people jump in with non-answers that address related topics. Not helpful.
No - you can’t use Plex to search for file names.
@OttoKerner Sez:
Yes, you can name your files correctly so they’ll match:
FileBot (link in my signature)
Go to:
https://www.themoviedb.org/
find your movie - name it what they named it.
If you’re using MP4/M4V files drag Local Media Assets to the bottom of ALL those Agents lists so Plex will stop preferring bogus Embedded Title Fields over perfectly named files (if you have any):
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200241558-Agents
For TV Shows - Proper Names and Structures for TV Shows:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/media-preparation/
or
Prayer/VooDoo Magic 'cause when Plex did this:
They started a run-away chain reaction that is now developing into a Nuclear Explosion that will end all life in the Plexiverse - give it a few more weeks and the evil plan will be complete. Plex WILL NOT back off this bad move - they’re gonna ride it directly to detonation:
I had this for one movie and i ended up just moving the file out of my plex library folder, wait a few minutes, and then move it back. I was then able to see the file in plex.
Naming convention is fine - its the meta data thats throwing it off, at least in my case. The folder name is fine, the movie name is fine but I have several where Plex uses the meta data to name the movie which makes it difficult to find a particular movie in all of my files.
For 1 movie in particular, it placed it in my library under another movie.
Manhunter was the movie. Plex placed it under Red Dragon. Didnt notice it showed 2 movies for Red Dragon.
I found it by searching through the Plex DB files with SQLLite.
select * from media_items
where hints like “%manhunter%”
/* gives metadata_item_id 2355 */
select * from metadata_items
where id = 2355
/* gave title = Red Dragon */
Searched Plex for Red Dragon and found 2 movies there. Split it / fixed meta data on the movie / win.
May be easier / better ways but thats how I found it.
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