Scheduled Maintenance?:
Metadata refreshes and the last actor image is blank… boom… blank actor image… we’ve been screaming about it for at least a year… to a symphony of crickets.
Yes, I’m aware of the fact that. What happens when the last actor image on TMDB is NOT blank, there have been no TV or films added, and the scheduled maintenance does NOT include refreshing the metadata, which mine does not? What would cause an image to disappear under THOSE circumstances? Because it’s happening. Which maintenance could be causing that, because I’d like to stop it. Does it not automatically store it? If I add no new files or data and perform no refreshing of metadata, theoretically, images should never disappear. But they do. I know you’re determined to blame me, but I’ve checked everything you mentioned, and I’m trying to tell you it still happens frequently.
Got me, Buddy.
I’m still reeling from ‘the bug’ and the lentil sized brains at TVDB:
Thank God James Remar’s image isn’t there - I think he played the pivot man in a Human Centipede in a TV Show…
Eddie has captured my sentiments - precisely.
I think Nick might be OK with that as his image.
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So today I opened Plex Media Player in Windows 10 to check something, and when I clicked on Thor: The Dark World, all seven actor credits (without scrolling) had an image, but then five of them instantly disappeared. So at least five actors no longer had an image anywhere in the database for any of their credits. That said, there had been no metadata updates to that movie (manual or scheduled), and all five actors still have images on TMDB. What makes those images just delete themselves? I don’t like to constantly have to refresh metadata to get data that was already there to begin with. Plus, if there is a blank actor anywhere in that movie’s credits, it could erase an image somewhere else. How do I prevent these random disappearing images?
You could try this suggestion:
Thanks. I’ll read up on that, as long as it doesn’t just erase stuff from my server. I don’t want to refresh all the metadata. Also, my PMS is on a NAS drive, not my windows PC, so I’ll have to figure out how clearing the cache works and what the ramifications are. Appreciate the suggestion. That said, it still shouldn’t just happen, right?
Corrupt cache can happen and it normally just re populates. But with a NAS you may have to only empty the folder were as in a OS all that needed is deletion of folder.
Thank you for the suggestion. I’m going to check it out.
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I rearranged the agents as described above. This did nothing. So, I wiped out ALL the cache (incl. restart of plex), then refreshed all metadata. As you can see, this is not producing useful results.
Perhaps, a way to deal with this is, if the retrieval of actor images fails for, say, 40% of the cast of a movie or show, then the thumbnails are eliminated for all cast, leaving just the text actor/role info. I think that will look better than an internet-connected service that can’t find a picture of Tom Hanks. I mean, this looks seriously broken even though it isn’t.
+1
I find this happens ALL the time and it’s increasingly frustrating, as I enjoy being able to see the cast photos. Oddly, when I start the “Refresh All Metadata” for my Movies library (which has over 2000 movies), it appears to only take about 5 minutes (the activity spinner stops spinning). And none of the cast photos get updated.
EDIT: I checked the console and it’s still working in the background, so it may actually be refreshing still. Will update this post in a few hours to see if it got the new cast photos or not.
The ONLY way I’ve been able to fix this is by refreshing metadata for each movie one at a time, as I notice them, which does in fact refresh cast photos. Of course, this is extremely time consuming, so I don’t check every movie regularly.
However, for movies that I KNOW I’ve refreshed metadata for, I often find missing cast photos again and again. This seems somewhat random to me.
I have my agent settings configured as outlined at the top of this thread. However, should Local Media Assets be disabled? I don’t know what else to try at this point. I’ve been fighting with this for a LONG time.
The following seems to work. Kinda work, anyway:
- Arrange the agents as described above
- Shut down the plexmediaserver service
- Delete all the cache files
- Start the plexmediaserver service
- Select Refresh All Metadata from the web interface
- Wait exactly N days: on a Core i5 w/ 8GB, N equals about one day for every 1,000 movies.
This causes many of the cast images to load, depending on whether the remote server being accessed by the agent actually has an image for that actor, and assuming there isn’t a timeout, connection reset, or any of the other 10,000 things that can cause a socket read to fail.
I recommend considering a re-write of the agents, and tracking the cause of why the image wasn’t retrieved. If it was because there was no image, or because of a timeout or connection reset, then check the server for that actor’s image every time the cast member is displayed (this can be done with a single byte per image).
I’d say that, with the above steps, I’ve got 90% or more of cast images. It no longer looks completely broken, although I know it never was broken. I added that last because developers who never have to wear a tech-support hat for the code they write have a different definition of “broken” than someone who only uses the code.
Well, I did the refresh all metadata again. Double checked the console to make sure it was completed. Still a bunch of cast images not displaying. I’m not certain, but it appears that using that command (refresh all metadata) doesn’t actually grab cast images. Back to square one trying to figure this out.
This is still an ongoing problem. Looking today I have lots of movies that have missing actor images. I realize that when a cast image was unavailable, it displays the initials. I’m not talking about that. Instead, the circle where an image should be is simply black (or blank). Refreshing all metadata again, but pretty sure that won’t help. Fingers crossed this is resolved in an upcoming version update. Seeing the cast images is a nice feature, but only when we can actually see them…
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Bump because still happening.
Manual refresh usually fixes this, but for how long nobody knows.
Spaghetti code ftw
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