I have several videos in my Movies collection that are not showing up either in the Library list or in the Collections area. They are listed in File Manager in the proper place, so I know they exist on the server and I can play them from the File Manager. I just can’t get Plex to show them. I have told Plex to scan media files twice, and the movies still don’t show up. Short of deleting the missing movies and re-installing them, what else can I do?
There are several reasons for this to happen, but pretty much all of them can be solved by following the rules in the official naming guide.
A few possibilities:
- Your movie is combined with another movie. You can change the “sort” of your library from
AlltoDuplicatesto see if Plex combined any two movies due to similar file names. Check this first to see if it is the case. - Due to bad file names, Plex mis-matched the file to a different movie than you expect. Use the official name as seen on TMDB or IMDB, and be sure to include the year in parenthesis afterwards. For example, the first Indiana Jones movie is actually titled
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Using a more sort-friendly name can mess up Plex’s identification. - You have numbers in front of a filename. Plex might ignore a file that LOOKS like it is in a TV Show naming format, such as
S01E01 TITLEor22 TITLE.
If you are confident that you are following the guide, and none of my suggestions appear to be the case, then paste the filename of one of the movies that fails to appear and we can verify, or guess for a reason why.
Thank you for the response. I hope you can help. I have the Looney Tunes Golden Collection on my Plex server. I have all of the DVDs but having the cartoons on Plex is much more convenient. There are 19 disks in the collection. All but 5 of them are displaying and playing properly in Plex. All 19 have the same naming format:
\movies\looney tunes\looney tunes golden5_Bugs Bunny
I chose one of the 5 that is listed in my file list on the server but does not display in Plex. However, \movies\looney tunes\looney tunes golden2_Bugs Bunny does show up. Again, of the 19 disks, all following this naming format, only 5 don’t show in Plex. Each of the 4 collections in the Golden Collection Volume 1 (golden1 in my naming) has a different name. golden1_porkey and golden1_all stars are obviously different collections. The same applies to all the others
Now, I realize that these are collections of shorts, not technically movies. But they aren’t TV shows, either. So, if I need to use some other naming convention to solve this, well renaming 19 disks is certainly a lot faster than having to delete then reload the 5 missing ones.
I appreciate your help.
I appreciate the ideas. However, your suggestions do not address my issue. My concern is not with the metadata. I can manually add that myself if I need to and it seemed that many people were having to do that. My problem is that Plex doesn’t even acknowledge that 5 of my disk (each disk is a collection) even exists. My server knows they are there. I can play them using my server’s player. But I can’t get Plex to find them. My other problem is evidently mine. Like others, I have over 300 of these shorts. I have ripped them to a single fine to correspond exactly to the DVD disk I purchased. I know this means I can’t find individual shorts as efficiently, and that’s okay. I’m content to just let Bugs, or Tweety or Road Runner play for 90 minutes. Bur I would like to first be able to see them. I guess the one tip I saw that I can certainly try is to create another library outside the regular Movies library and try from there. I hope that will work.
There are two parts to this: a) naming and organization; and b) metadata.
When using a movie or tv show library, you must follow Plex’s naming and organization guidelines. If you do not do so, then Plex will not recognize the files. See Plex Documentation → Your Media.
For metadata, Plex relies on TMDB & IMDB for movies and TMDB & TVDB for tv shows. If the media is named and organized correctly, Plex will use the metadata from the appropriate source.
Specifically for Looney Tunes / Merry Melodies:
They are listed in TVDB as a TV Show (as linked by @OttoKerner). If you name and organize correctly, Plex will recognize them and download the appropriate metadata.
They are also listed as movies at TMDB & IMDB. If you want them in a movie library, then name and organize appropriately.
For example:
/movies <-- folder added to movie library
/A Wild Hare (1940) {tmdb-144904} <-- name (year) {optional TMDB/IMDB ID}
/A Wild Hare (1940) {tmdb-144904}.mkv
If Plex is not correctly recognizing the files, please show how you have them named and organized - a directory listing, screenshot, etc. Include the full path to the files and the file extensions.
Plex doesn’t know “Discs” as an organizational tool for video content.
Thank you for all who helped. Plex is finally recognizing all my Looney Tunes shows. I didn’t do quite what others have done, but this worked for me, so I am including it here for others’s benefit. First, as several suggested, I took Looney Tunes out of the Movies library and created a separate library, set to “movie” type, called Looney. Then I looked up the Golden Collection in IMDB and used the IMDB name and date for my file names. Everything works. Makes for a long file name, but Plex recognizes it and is filling in appropriate metadata. So thanks to all who helped.
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