After reading all I could find on this topic, I had about given up. But, I finally found an answer - at least for my situation.
I had cut and pasted several folders from my Movies directory to my TV Shows directory because of the changes TheMovieDB (edited) did in handling mini-series. After doing so, the items showed up, as expected, in the TV Show directory and after renaming them for TV season/episode they displayed (and played) correctly. However, the series remained displayed in the Movies directory, as well. They would not play from the Movies directory yet did not show the “trash can” icon and remained after clearing the cache and rescanning. A problem many others have reported yet, no answer that I could find. I call them “ghost” items.
My fix was simple. Go to server settings -> library and check Allow Media Deletion. Now go to the library that has the deleted item displayed. Click the 3 dots in the right corner and the option to delete is now displayed. Choose delete and work your way through the safety popups.
Now, be aware, you can delete something you want to keep if not careful. I try to play the item one last time to verify it won’t play and if I had moved the item, I make sure it plays from its new location before actually deleting the “ghost” item. When finished, I recommend unchecking the Allow Media Deletion option.
Maybe you mean TheMovieDB? ie; IT (The old Tim Curry “movie” was moved from Movies to TV on TheMovieDB) If you don’t mean TheMovieDB, always follow TheMovieDB and TheTVDB as your defaults. IMDB is only used for ratings info as far as I know.
Instead of doing it that way (giving Plex the authority to delete stuff) You can go to Library>Manage Library>Empty Trash To get rid of content that you deleted or moved in the filesystem
Good catch. It should be TheMovieDB. However, emptying the trash did not good in my case (and several others as best I can tell). The item remained even after emptying the trash.
Yeh, sorry, Otto added the step I missed, which means after moving the folders or deleting the content you need to “Scan Library Files” first, wait for that to finish, and THEN Empty Trash. That’s how it works typically.
I may be doing it wrong, but my library folders are the top directory. Sub-directories (folders) for each movie are not visible in the “Add Folder” mode. So, I cannot verify the individual movie folders are empty. My approach is to step out of Plex and use Explorer to to move the entire folder from Movies to TV Shows.
@molaker let me see if I can de-mystify this for you.
Once you’ve moved the folder/content, or deleted the movie you need to do two things.
Scan Library, and wait for the scan to finish. This should put red trashcans on everything missing that needs to go.
Once the red trashcans are there, go to Library>Manage Library>Empty Trash. This will then remove all of the red trashcans and the items associated with them from that Library.
If that doesn’t work, then there’s a bug and the community will need logs to assist further, because this is the way it’s supposed to work. I do this all the time (for separate reasons to your own).
Edit: I re-read my post and it sounds a bit harsh, I assure you it wasn’t intended to be. I just wanted it to be as clear as possible. So please, take it as help and not as be belittling you.
All the folders are there. For legacy reasons, I have my movies divided into MPAA rating folders (G, PG, PG-13, etc.). All of these folders show appropriately in Add Folders. My TV Shows and Mini Series categories only have a single folder.
I think that is the problem. The red trashcan did not show up for those items that did not clear even after running a scan and then emptying the trash. I checked the actual location on my drive and the folder was gone. Why it did not show a red trashcan, I haven’t a clue.
Yep, then we’re going to need logs. If you still have stuff that needs to be moved, I suggest:
Shut down your server.
Restart it (this will create a fresh log file).
Move the movie/item that needs to be moved, or delete the item that needs to be deleted.
Perform a Library scan. Wait for the scan to finish.
Go look, make sure the item you moved doesn’t have a red trashcan
Attach the log files here, along with the folder structure and filename of what you deleted. Because that would mean it’s not picking it up that it’s “gone” in the scan, and that’s not good.
Edit: If you’re moving something from Movies -> TV Make sure you scan the Movies library, and not the TV Library.
Okay, I just moved the series The Stand (Stephen King) from my Movies folder(s) to my Mini-Series folder which is set up as a TV Show folder. There are 4 episodes. All 4 episodes are now in my Mini-Series folder and playable. The items are still showing in my Movies folder(s) as well but are not playable (unavailable) even after rescanning and emptying trash.
Look at
Settings - Server - General - ‘Show Advanced’ - “The path where local application data is stored”
What’s in it?
It looks like you did point Plex to the “naked” drive letter D:
That is not recommended.
I urge you to
shut down Plex server
create a folder D:\plexdata
move the folder D:\Plex Media Server into the folder D:\plexdata
edit the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Plex, Inc.\Plex Media Server\LocalAppDataPath so it now points to the new location inside of D:\plexdata
Do you have anything else stored on D: ?
Sorry, your logs are relatively useless, because you don’t have ‘Debug’ logging activated.
I’m thinking I’m going to put this problem on hold for now while I finish some other details (including relocating the Plex directory. One thing I plan to do is install a pair of SSDs in RAID 1 mode and relocate the Plex directory there. I’ll bookmark this and return to haunt you later. Thanks for your help.
