Metadata & posters not downloading

General Discussions
1

I just recently entered the Plex world and things are not going well. I have a library of ~1000 movies, and upon initial ingestion they nearly all were matched with posters and metadata. Great! However, a couple of days ago I returned to add new media and now nothing is downloading metadata.

I was originally running PMS on an iMac with a drive connected to my Airport Extreme, but I’ve since connected the drive directly to the mac to eliminate variables. I’ve also uninstalled and reinstalled PMS, so my setup is essentially 100% fresh. But still no metadata. Any suggestions?

2

Please multi-select and “Refresh” (left side) several of your problematic movies
When complete, if still no metadata, go to Settings - Server - Help and Download Logs.

It will present you with a ZIP file you can attach here with your next post.

We’ll give that a good look and see what’s going on.

3

Logs attached below! Thanks ChuckPA!

4

I see PMS scanning through your movies and reporting the scanning progress.

What is not happening the way you expect it? Please explain as clearly as possible, attach a screen shot if you can to help.

5

Attached is an image of one of the movies selected in in the attempted metadata refresh. What’s not meeting my expectations is that not a thing has been downloaded for this movie except for the title. No poster, no description, no cast, no release date, etc.

This is not the expected behavior, right?

6

correct… this is not expected.

Please go to the cog (gear) in the upper right corner of your library. When you click it, you will find the ‘Refresh All’. This will force download all the metadata again.

You have no problems with matching. It only appears the metadata did not download. I have asked others to investigate the cause of this.

7

It seems like metadata may be slooooowly coming in. It’s very sporadic though (seemingly randomly spread throughout my library), and targeting a single movie for a refresh never works.

Hard to tell if ‘Refresh All’ actually does anything, but choosing single or multiple items to refresh definitely does not.

8

I went back through your log files again.

Please grab me the latest logs so I may compare. I know what’s happening now (did a lot of research) now I want to confirm and resolve it for you.

9

Here are the most recent logs. Thanks!

10

Thanks.

What Plug-ins are you using? What have you added yourself?

Everything I see now points to a plug-in which is holding up everything.

11

to be honest I don’t recall any installing any plugins…

12

Would you mind doing those logs again? Your “Plex Media Server.log” file is not coming through. That is important. It is always the current status of what’s happening

13

Allow me to revise my previous:

  1. Clear out all the HTTP caches (https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/202967376-Clearing-Plugin-Channel-Agent-HTTP-Caches)
  2. Restart PMS
  3. Go into a preplay screen and Refresh that single item
  4. Grab the logs download zip from the server again
  5. ALSO go manually copy/save/whatever the regular Plex Media Server.log file (https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200250417)
  6. Attach both those to another reply
14

I’ve been chatting with the operations folks about what goes where.

TMDB is a direct connection from your PMS machine to them without Plex.tv proxy.

There is a 15 second timeout from the time the request is made until it will time out if no reply.

I do see transcoding activity in your log files. Are you streaming out your internet connection and possibly delaying the reply?

As diagnostic ping api.tmdb.org and check its responsiveness. it should be stable and without interruption.

15

New logs (incl manually added log) attached below. I pinged api.tmdb.org and am reaching their servers quickly and reliably (avg ping is less than 2ms).

The transcoding you’re seeing is likely due to remote playback as I have been watching content while I get things set up, though I can’t be 100% sure that’s the source as I don’t know what period of time is included in the log.

16

@ChuckPA any updates? Still having trouble with metadata, though it seems like I get one new poster for every Refresh All I do :stuck_out_tongue:

17

Sorry for the delay. I’ve been swamped in other things I had to get done.

I did get a chance to look at the logs a few minutes ago. I see the requests going out to TMDB but don’t see anything coming back in TMDB logs 3 and 5. I should be seeing them in all.

To confirm, a Refresh All blackens all the images, covers them while they are searched again, and then you will see one new one appear?

18

No worries!

Yup, that’s what happens when I Refresh All. Occasionally a new poster will appear, but since you started diagnosing the problem there hasn’t been any new metadata downloaded.

Thanks!

19

Same thing is happening with me. I am not getting any posters though. For anything

20

@“her2mes@gmail.com” , it’s annoying, right? At first I thought it was due to agents’ databases being down, but given that I’ve been experiencing it for over a week I think it’s something on Plex’s side.

Very curious to hear the cause.