Incorrectly flagged duplicate TV Show Episodes

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.14.1.5488 (Latest)
RPM Data: plexmediaserver.x86_64 1.14.1.5488-cc260c476
Player Version#: N/A
Linux: CentOS 7 x64
Kernel: Linux collaroy 3.10.0-957.1.3.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Nov 29 14:49:43 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Reported issue: While trying to clean up duplicate TV show episodes I am getting incorrectly flagged duplicates for a couple of shows.

The shows are completely different to each other. The following files are shown in “Duplicate Episodes” filter (TV Shows Library > Show By Episode > Duplicates)

Example 1:

Show “The New Scooby-Doo Movies” / “The Ghastly Ghost Town” is shown as duplicate. Drilling into that to show the 2 files in conflict, the following 2 files are listed:

**File 1: ** /videos/TV_Shows/The New Scooby Doo Mysteries/Season 1/The.New.Scooby.Doo.Mysteries.S01E01-02.Happy.Birthday.Scooby-Doo.SDTV.avi
**File 2: ** /videos/TV_Shows/The New Scooby-Doo Movies/Season 1/The.New.Scooby-Doo.Movies.S01E01.The.Ghastly.Ghost.Town.SDTV.avi

Note: they are in completely different folders and are named with the correct TV show name.

Example 2:

Show “The Office (US)” / “Pilot” is shown as duplicate.
Drilling into that to show the 2 files in conflict, the following 2 files are listed:

** File 1:** /videos/TV_Shows/The Office (US)/Season 1/The.Office.(US).S01E01.Pilot.SDTV.avi
** File 2:** /videos/TV_Shows/The Office/Season 1/The.Office.S01E01.Downsize.SDTV.avi

Troubleshooting undertaken:

  • Rescan library -> No change
  • Deleting both conflicting shows from Plex TV Show Library (After copying files) -> Full Rescan
    • Re-adding each show one at a time. Conflicts come back
  • Noted that a completely different server (Same versions and install) shows the same error (not connected to the same data store)
    • (I replicate the data at another site, but it has its own locally install Plex server [same versions]) It also shows them as duplicates as well. Servers were installed at different times
  • Restarted server (as in shutdown -r -t0) and then rescanned library -> No change

Media is mounted via NFS fwiw
No other software installed on the same server as Plex (Eg Sonarr not installed) Servers JUST do Plex.

I believe it might be a bug but not really sure what to do troubleshooting wise from here,

Any help greatly appreciated

TIA

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From what you’ve posted, this seems more like a naming issue than a bug.
It might however also depend on what agent you use for this library.

Example 1

TheTVDb.com doesn’t know a show named “The New Scoopy Doo Mysteries”. In such a case Plex will look for matches that come close to the title you provided – which probably resulted in the two shows being recognized as the same (even knowing they’re in different main folders).

The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries is actually the name of a subset of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo

Naming should be like this…
File 1: (from https://www.thetvdb.com/series/scooby-doo-and-scrappy-doo)

/videos/TV_Shows/
  Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo/
    Season 06/
      Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo - s06e01-e02 - Happy Birthday, Scooby-Doo.avi

File 2: (from https://www.thetvdb.com/series/the-new-scooby-doo-movies)

/videos/TV_Shows/
  The New Scooby-Doo Movies/
    Season 01/
      The New Scooby-Doo Movies - s01e01 - The Ghastly Ghost Town.avi

also… multi-episode files need the E ahead of the first and last episode (e.g. s01e01-e02 – not s01e01-02).

Example 2

let’s try to perform the full “Plex Dance”…

  1. move the 2 shows (The Office and The Office (US)) outside of Plex’ scope
  2. scan the library for changes and wait for it to complete
  3. empty trash
  4. return the files
  5. scan the library for changes

personally I’d give a try to tidy up the file names too:

/videos/TV_Shows/
  The Office (US)/
    Season 01/
      The Office (US) - s01e01 - Pilot.avi
  The Office/
    Season 01/
      The Office - s01e01 - Downsize.avi

(the dots should work as separators but sometimes a more clear structure can help)

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Thanks for the response.

This makes sense for the issue. Checking Sonarr (which I use to name everything) says that it did exist in TVDB once upon a time but it seems it was deleted somewhere along the line. Sonarr says it was once on https://www.thetvdb.com/dereferrer/series/264040 but even Sonarr says it has been folded into the parent.
I’ll fix it up that way, thanks for tracking that down.

Ah, I didn’t even notice that, but that is how the rest of the library is named. Must have missed this one when importing them. Fixed now

Well that seems to have worked. Except that it thought it was the Finnish version when first imported! A fix match fixed that up and every after a rescan it doesn’t show them as a duplicate, so happy days.

Going to hold off on this. The spaces make it a nightmare to work with the files in linux as every space needs to be escaped, I think the bulk of the issue is in the Plex match to the show.

Thank you very much for the help. I guess if anyone else finds this thread with a similar issue, it would boil down to “It’s more likely a matching / naming issue”

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