I have a movie that I started to watch, but the resolution wasn’t what I wanted. So I replaced the file on my Mac server with a file with better resolution. Then when I started the movie again, Plex said there were multiple errors, and it wouldn’t play. So I looked at the metadata on the movie, and it was the same as the old file which I replaced. If I play the movie on my Mac with VLC it plays fine.
How can I update the metadata on a movie if I replace a file in the database with a different file with the same name?
I’ve been doing quite a few quality upgrades lately.
From my experience I can tell you that a regular library scan doesn’t catch the changed file, if you retain the original file name.
Thanks guys, for the suggestions. I started with “Analyze”. Once I figured out the steps, It worked, and the movie is now playing in the Plex app on my Roku. Thus, I don’t know if a scan will do it. I think I scanned since I updated the file, but I’m not sure. But now I know for sure that Analyze works.
A Scan will cause Plex to look for anything newly added since the last scan date. A file with the same name but different content ought to trigger an analysis as well, to double check the video dimensions, codec, tracks, etc.
You can drop in a file with the same name and skip the scan, and it MIGHT work, if the file hasn’t changed majorly. When you go to play the file, Plex will use the previous analysis of the file and find the file in its original location, and start sending the video data to the client. Other than duration, I think the only reason to look at the rest of the “analysis” data is to determine if the client requesting the video is capable of playing without transcoding, and it can transcode if required.
I’ve plopped in an identical file with a new subtitle track embedded into it, and did analyze for it to pick that up. A scan would have detected a change and done analysis, but it scans the entire library, which can take up to a minute on my NAS. Analysis is for the one file and is quicker.
