I’ve been using Plex for years, have lifetime plexpass, system working reliably etc. After a server update 6-8 months ago, existing movies started showing up with new ‘posters’. I didn’t change it, something in the app just decided that Beverly hills cop, shouldn’t use the poster I’ve recognized it by for decades, but rather some new poster. Swell, plex sucks a little more than it did before. Whatever.
Now, EVERY time I go into my movies library (once every week or two) I find that a bunch have lost their match. OLD LONG time library movies, are no longer matched. I went through them all two months ago, corrected EVERY LAST ONE of them, and today there are 37 out of just over 100 existing movies, that have lost their match (and literally 1/3 of the movies have different posters than I had set for them).
Anybody have any idea how to get plex to stop doing either of these things?
Server Version#: 1.25.6.5577
Player Version#: 4.29.2
So first of all, we do recommend to have movies in individual folders, since that would speed up scanning, and secondly, the naming of the actual file is also bad
So create a folder named: Anchorman The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) {imdb-tt0357413}
While true, I still recommend it, to make sure match is always perfect
And most people only find their edge cases too late, and as such, already posted up here
I think we should only be recommending adding the imdb|tmdb ID in situations where the “normal” naming guidelines fail, for whatever reason. This user is nowhere close to those. This feature was added as an aid; I don’t believe we should be suggesting this as a blanket solution for every user’s matching ills.
Thanks everyone.
That all makes sense if I had just added a bunch of movies and they didn’t find a match, but why did they suddenly LOSE their match? They were (automatically) matched previously, and stayed matched for almost a decade in most cases, then in the last several months started losing their match.
I expect when I do a refresh scan of the library files is when it’s deciding it no longer recognizes the files? Has plex gotten more particular in recent versions? Curious because when I go to match them again, Plex IMMIDIATLY knows what the movie is again? And when I set it to the right movie again why does it loses it again some other time? I would think something manually matched would stay regardless of latter scans, no?
Historically, I’d move a file on to the server and if it recognized it, great I’m set. If it didn’t then I’d adjust the file name so it would. I expect this is indication it’s better than best practice to rename any and all new additions…?
And again, bonus question; Any idea why my posters are getting changed on existing movies, and any way to prevent it?
The poster can change if the “default” at the source changes. If a different poster gets voted to a top spot a TMDB for example, it will update during a metadata refresh. Same for background images. Sometimes a bug in the metadata fetch will grab a “wrong” poster but that’s less common and usually self correcting.
The only way I know to keep the poster from changing is to manually set your own either by selecting it manually, uploading one, or including it as a local file (see previously mentioned naming documents).
There was a bug, it was fixed but mostly impacted people who weren’t following current expected naming standards.
Previously recommended and supported structures are no longer taken into consideration for feature changes and may have unintended consequences (or significant ones if there’s a 2nd bug that hits you when you change your library to follow the rules - that bug was also fixed).
That’s not a bad thing really … but Plex isn’t very good about informing people of changes or new feature functionality outside of updating support documents and not all reps (official and unofficial) are equal when it comes to discussing them.
A previously supported - and recommended - folder structure was to use subfolders to separate movie files into smaller batches to reduce scanning a huge library of files in one folder (which is still supported) without having to go full in on the movie folder for every movie title structure.
I was specifically addressing their question about why they might have had previously matched movies suddenly unmatched. Just recently there was a bug that would hit people using that subfolder method that would cause unmatching of titles. 2 bugs actually that unfortunately amplified each other in messing up a Plex library. Those bugs were fixed. It was possible that the OP was hit by that bug if they were also using a now unsupported structure.
I quoted that specific line from you because that matched the situation. If we aren’t following the current naming rules, bad things might happen. It was not intended as criticism.
True, but note that we always recommended to put movies into their own folder!
But yes, we do support not, but if adding extras as well as to improve scanning time, it’s still recommended, thus why it’s my preferred recommendation
As I said, some reps recommended putting movies into subfolders and it used to be in the documentation as an option.
If there is one recommendation from Plex Employee A and a different recommendation from Plex Employee B they both have equal weight… and not very significant weight.
But if one recommendation is tested against and the other isn’t… then they aren’t both recommendations. One is a rule for consistent functionality and one is a trick that might work.
I’m sure you’ve meant “recommend this rule” each time but that’s not always clear across forums and documentation and the various years and reps … and wasn’t clear to me - and others - until just recently when another Plex rep stated the same as what I quoted from you… that the two currently documented rules for file structure are the only ones tested against.
No criticism here other than wishing some language being used was a bit more imperative and that changes like this were easier to find - like a “recent updates” in the documentation area or similar summary instead of digging through the forums.
Just to double check; Is the IMDB info formatted literally like you show? Meaning specifically use the curly brackets around it, so that in my example, the quoted text above would be the actual file name when I change it?
Just want to make sure when I sit up all night watching batman cartoons and renaming my movies, that I do it right!!
