Yeah, Plex gets kind of “sticky” when it first sees a file. Once it scans a folder, it remembers each file that was in there. It then does whatever work it needs to do to match that file against online databases to find the metadata. After this, it NEVER* checks the file against online databases again.
So if you name a file “S01E01.mkv”, Plex will match that file against the first season, first episode. If you made a mistake, and renamed the file in-place to “S00E01.mkv”, Plex will notice the rename, but it DOES NOT compare the new file name versus the online database. So it is still marked as season one episode one.
To fix this, you must:
- Move the file out of the library (these “staging areas” people mention are good, because it’s locally on the computer and can be moved to the final spot instantly without waiting for network copy speeds).
- Scan the library. This gets Plex to detect the file is gone.
- Empty trash (depending on whether you set Plex to automatically clear trash elsewhere. Even if you do, it will NOT hurt Plex if you empty trash again). This makes it so Plex will “forget” the file ever existed. If you don’t do this, Plex might just think the file was “missing” for a short time, and it might see the file is back and stick the old incorrect information on it.
- Rename file properly.
- Place renamed file back into show folder.
- Scan library, so Plex sees the “new” file.
That’s the basics of the Plex Dance. There can be a few other steps included (clean bundles, etc) but in my experience they rarely need to be done.
