Merged movies disappeared

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Hello.

I found several versions of movies in my library and decided merge them by selecting them (little circle in top left corner of each thumbnail) and then pressing “merge” button. After the merge these movies totally disappeared from the library. They are not showing in search or when movie category sorted by alphabet.
I’ve done merge before and it was just fine, the only difference this time was I used plex.tv website to manage my library instead of localhost, which has a slightly different interface and I don’t know if it’s related at all.
I’ve tried update library, refresh all, analyze, empty trash, restart server, restart whole computer, nothing brought the movies back.
The movie files are still physically present, their meta data/thumbnails also available in plex storage folder.

Any ideas how to bring them back and what actually happened?

Thank you.

Windows 7 SP1 x64
Plex Server v1.3.4.3285

P.S.
A little back story why I merged the files:
Plex originally merged them automatically, but for some reason on one of the version I could not disable subtitles, web interface would show error message when I select “none” in the subtitles dropdown (it has built-in subtitles). On nvidia shield at first it did not show subtitles when I selected one, so I selected none and then selected language and it worked, but then I couldn’t disable it again. So I decided try split versions apart and that’s when the nightmare began.

2

I’d be interested to see those file names. My guess is that they were non-compliant and when Plex ran 'em together they were no longer able to be identified.

3

Filenames are fine, they are just like the rest of the library: my movie name (2017) 1080p.mkv
I’ve tried renaming one of the files, it didn’t show up anywhere.

4

I assume the files are still there. Correct?

5

Did you try doing Plex Dance with those files?

6

I guess that file name (and the rest of the library) being out of compliance wouldn’t make any difference then…
my movie name (2017) [1080p].mkv
is how I name mine, but what do I know?

This one’s all you, Jim…

:slight_smile:

7

@astrofisher said:
Did you try doing Plex Dance with those files?

That helped! Thank you very much.
Now if I could only remember what other movies disappeared…is there a plugin that would help identify files that are not listed?

Thank you.

8

@vanowm said:
Now if I could only remember what other movies disappeared…is there a plugin that would help identify files that are not listed?

Thank you.

Here are some:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/87745/rel-find-unmatched-items/

9

Thanks. I’ve tried webtools, it didn’t show the missing movies. That means they are still in the database, just for whatever reason they are not showing in the listing?

10

Check for duplicates, maybe they got matched to another movie - worth a shot.

11

Yep. All sorts of strange things can happen with non-compliant file names… like disappearing when merged, for instance.

:slight_smile:

12

@astrofisher said:
Check for duplicates, maybe they got matched to another movie - worth a shot.
Is there a tool that would search filenames and show what movie they are attached to?

13

How 'bout this thing?:

It’s been updated a 100 times and all indications are that it’s right handy. I don’t know if it will do what you want, but it might.

14

@vanowm said:
Is there a tool that would search filenames and show what movie they are attached to?

ExportTools can do that.

(automatically installable per WebTools)

15

Try deleting the library and recreating.