Movie extras not being seen (new Plex Movie agent)

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Server Version#: 1.35.1.2632-c6783c78
Player Version#: Plex for Mac/Plex for iPhone/Plex for Samsung TV

Hi there,

I’ve just updated to the latest Plex Movie agents for my Movie directories and have noticed that most of my recently added movie extras are now not showing up in the player menu. Web based trailers were showing, but not ones that I’d ripped myself from my DVDs.

I’ve tried moving one of the problem film folders out of the main movie folder, doing the Plex Dance and moving it back/re-scanning but to no avail. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the file naming correct since I’ve had no significant problem with extras in the past.

I’m just checking that I’m not doing anything stupid or overlooking anything obvious.

In the Movie/Manage Library/Edit… setting I’ve currently got it set on the Advanced tab to:
Scanner: Plex Movie
Agent: Plex Movie
Use Local Assets: (Ticked)
Prefer Local Metadata: (Ticked)
Find extras (Currently unticked - but have also tried this ticked - is this for local or remote extras?)
Only show trailers: (Unticked)

My Plex library has been converted/updated to work with the new agents.

Older films which previously showed extras using the previous Plex Movie legacy agents still display my local extras/trailers/deleted scenes/interviews etc.

New films don’t display them at all, even though I’m following identical naming conventions to the films that do show them.

For example:
A Mighty Wind (2003) / Ode To Irving Concert-featurette.mp4
…shows up fine (and was added with the old movie agent) whereas

Mulholland Drive (2001) / On the Road to Mulholland Drive-featurette.mp4
…doesn’t show at all (and was added with the new movie agent).

In the Plex Agents main settings page, under the ‘Movies’ tab and ‘Personal Media / Plex Movies (Legacy) / and The Movie Database’ sub tabs, ‘Local Media Assets (Movies)’ is pushed to the top of each list.

I’m probably making some obvious error here, but it’s really frustrating that it doesn’t seem to want to show any of the new extras I’m adding.

Thanks

2

Have you already tried refreshing the metadata of the affected movies?
Local extras are not added by the scanner but the agent.

Also… the current generation of Plex ... agents no longer use the central agent configuration. Instead each agent will be configured per library. So you might want to review ⋮ > Manage Library > Edit... → Advanced for that movie library.

3

Hi Tom,
Thanks for helping. Yeah - tried metadata refresh direct from the affected movies and also only tweaking the agent settings directly from the Movie / Manage Library settings.

I’ve also tried using sub folders within the movie file instead of dash-based filename extensions, for example:

Featurettes/extra.mp4

as opposed to

extra-featurette.mp4

and refreshing, but this doesn’t seem to work.

Shouls the new ‘Plex Movie’ scanner and agent work out of the box with existing local assets, or should I go back to the legacy agent and try and get things working again with that?

Alex

4

Did you also “Refresh Metadata” on the whole library after the conversion?

5

I don’t think I’ve tried that. Thanks. I’ll give it a go and check back.

6

No. the ‘Refresh Metadata’ on the whole of the Movie library didn’t work either, unfortunately.

I’m tempted to drag the whole films folder out, do the Plex Dance and drag it back again, but I’m worried it’ll lose what it’s currently displaying as far as extras go.

7

Can you confirm that you have only one movie within the folder and not two or more?
Please show a file listing of one movie folder, using the actual file names.

8

plex
plex1636×500 84.4 KB

Thanks (sorry for JPG but wasn’t sure if there was a better way of presenting this than a screen shot!)

9

Looking good so far.
And you can confirm, that you have the parent folder of Mulholland Drive (2001) added to the library, and not a folder further up or down in the hierarchy?

Also, do you have added several folders to the library? If so, do they all exist, are all accessible, and are all not empty?

10

Hi Otto,

Yes. Mulholland Drive is directly in my ‘Films’ folder with other films which are seen ok by the Plex players. I’m running a Unix Plex server with two separate media drives in it, so this is in my second folder called ‘Films’ (albeit in a second physical drive) and both are linked to in the one ‘Movies’ library.

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Untitled-31436×532 23.3 KB

They’re both accessible and both full of other films that the player can see.

Grasping at straws last night, I dragged Mulholland Drive folder outside of the 2nd Film folder (so the server couldn’t see it), did the Plex Dance, then dragged it onto the first drive’s Film folder and refreshed to see if it was an issue with the second drive’s permissions, but it gave the same result.

11

Since we are talking Linux: have you also checked the access permissions of all the files individually? Not just the permissions of the folder mount?

Disable “Prefer Local Metadata”.

12

Good call. I think they’re all good, but I will double check since sometimes files are added to the server by Plex (via PVR tuners) and sometimes by hand from Mac Finder over the network.

13

‘Prefer Local Metadata’ and a refresh on the library did nothing, but I checked the permissions of a folder of a film that was showing extras ok (774) and Mulholland Drive which currently isn’t (755). Could that be it?

14

Doesn’t sound likely, because 755 still means that the Group has “read” permissions.

15

I’ve just pasted one of the deleted scenes from ‘Mulholland Drive’ into the folder from ‘A Mighty Wind’ (that would be some deleted scene!) and it’s appeared as a Mighty Wind extra. So there isn’t a problem with the file itself. I’m guessing it must be to do with the second hard drive’s permissions. Perhaps on the parent folder?

16

Ah! Worked it out (I think).

There were additional files in there - Mac specific files - possibly from Finder. Like DS_store, but listed as .mp4 files with the filename prefix '.’. They were all around 4kb each. Here are some from my ‘Chungking Express’ folder:

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I deleted these and the extras appeared suddenly. I’m guessing that these are added by the Mac Finder? I’m running a few tests as I’ve just deleted these from my Chungking Express folder and now Plex can’t see the film at all!

17

I can confirm that this has solved the issue. Weird Mac-only files confusing Plex. Delete the files and Plex is happy once more. Thanks again Tom and Otto for all your help.

18

Drilled down a bit further with this issue and it seems the problem is with AppleDouble files (small files created by OSX for each file in the folder and prefixed with the dot and underscore). They appear to be confusing Plex. Remove them and the issue is gone. I’ve installed a program called BlueHarvest on my Mac which checks the external Plex drives for these files and cleans them off periodically (and can be set to leave the .DS_store files intact which contain other Mac Finder info like layout etc). Is there a way to set Plex to ignore these AppleDouble files so that it doesn’t get confused and so they can be left on the drive in case OS X requires them in future?

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