Well, yes, I screwed up yesterday and ended up with a much bigger file, I suppose.
I understand that I won’t get proper posters where a poster should appear for “unofficial” movies (or scenes therefrom) when using an “other videos” library (item 5 in your list). Should I not at least get an automatically random sample of three screenshots from the video files in said folders? It used to do this automatically with no problems before about mid-December last year and things were not named in any particularly disciplined manner, and use one of said screenshots in place of a poster. It looks like they used to be stored in the “Art” and "Thumbnails’ sub sub sub folders under “Media” in the PMS folder on C:.
Now I don’t know the mechanics of whether those screenshots were grabbed from the videos on my machine by Plex itself, or whether as of mid-December some font of metadata (uploaded to by kind souls) for those scenes you alluded to just went offline suddenly. It may be down to me to just figure out a way to get screenshots manually myself with VLC or something, and put them manually where they need to be (what a pain).
Thanks for the new info about updating only one library at once, in item 4. I didn’t know that.
I’ll do the thing you mentioned just to rule out the issue you said you spotted.
[OK, weird: I had a whole reply written and posted, went to edit one little thing, and must have hit the wrong button because poof it went away–reconstructed from memory]
Yes, I messed up with folders and ended up creating a much bigger log file, sorry.
Good to know that I shouldn’t download directly to a folder connected to a Plex library. I didn’t know that, nor did I know what you point out in item 4 about updating only one library at a time.
Now to item 2: point taken–I understand that Plex can only download proper posters for er, “proper” movies, and not for the movies (or scenes taken therefrom) that you allude to. Still, whatever the content of an “Other Videos” library, my understanding was that Plex would grab a few random screenshots from the other videos themselves, randomly pick one, and use it in place of a poster. That understanding arose because that’s what Plex did automatically for random videos before mid-late December of last year. This worked however one named the videos (if one even changed the names).
I don’t know the mechanics of how it worked–whether Plex just worked on the local machine to grab said screenshots or whether it grabbed them from some online database that is no more (seems pretty unlikely). The screenshots would end up in the Thumbnails and Art subfolders for the appropriate bundle for the item within the Plex Media Server folder under AppData\Local. Looking at older items, there were always 3 jpg files in each. I would think Plex could do this with personal media whatever the subject. Just think of all the “stupid pet tricks” videos people must have of their dog or cat. Are you saying that Plex can’t grab (or no longer grabs) a random screenshot from videos like that and use it as a poster?
If the answer there is that it can’t (which seems bananas, because other media browsers do), then I guess I’ll have to grab screenshots using VideoLan Player or something and add them manually to the appropriate folders.
Just to rule out the possible issue you mentioned in item 6, though, I’ll take the steps you mention with a proper movie to see if a poster is grabbed.
OK, did as you advised and everything looks good for a “Movies” library (poster and cast list and summary all come up), even though I forgot to change the name of the file, as you can see from the logs. Brave (the Pixar movie) happens to be a movie I actually own on Blu-ray, BTW. Oh, and I don’t have any registry optimizers or cleaners running.
As far as “personal media” thing goes. as an experiment I’m going to create another folder and library with a short video clip from my iPod, saved as .mp4, and see what happens. I’ll upload those logs too.
Does your Windows user name contain a special character?
As it happens my machine name is José’s_Win_10 or something, and I wonder if that may have something to do with my issue of not even getting thumbnails as “posters” for “Other Videos” type libraries.
Also, my Windows username has the string José in it (that is my name).
We may have hit upon the issue. As an experiment, I created a new “Other Videos” library and pointed it at a folder with the same .mp4s that wouldn’t get art or thumbnails before, et voilà, il n’y a plus de problème!
Looks like something about Plex changed in December where it stopped allowing “them there funny letters” in the path to the Plex data folder. I’d call that a bug.
@Papageno_1961 said:
Also, my Windows username has the string José in it (that is my name).
You are on the right track here. That’s why I proposed to create the other path.
The way forward I recommend for you is this:
To get you a working server, we are going to move your old server data from its curent place to the newly created folder.
shut down Plex server with its task icon
search in the Windows control panel for ‘services’ and shut down the ‘Plex Updater Service’
empty out the folder C:\plexdata (this will remove all libraries you created for our experiment)
‘cut’ the folder Plex Media Server from its current location at C:\Users\José Hulse\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\
(if you have trouble getting there, because the folder C:\Users is set to be ‘hidden’ by default, simply paste the path C:\Users\José Hulse\AppData\Local\ into the address bar of Windows file explorer, then press Enter)
paste the now ‘cut’ folder Plex Media Server into its new location at C:\plexdata
Wait for the operation to finish.
tell your anti virus software not to interfere in C:\plexdata
start plex server
Keeping the plex data now at C:\plexdata, is making it easier for you to back them up.
Or to switch windows user accounts.
The cause of the issue has been reported to the developers, nonetheless.
Thanks, @OttoKerner , for your help and insights. Übrigens, mit dem Namen, bist Du Deutscher?
What is the purpose of turning off the Plex updater service? Is that just for the duration of moving the contents of the Plex media server to the new location? Should I start it again afterwards?
@Papageno_1961 said:
Thanks, @OttoKerner , for your help and insights. Übrigens, mit dem Namen, bist Du Deutscher?
In der Tat.
What is the purpose of turning off the Plex updater service? Is that just for the duration of moving the contents of the Plex media server to the new location? Should I start it again afterwards?
Only for the duration of the move. It will restart itself upon next reboot.
@Papageno_1961 said:
Thanks, @OttoKerner , for your help and insights. Übrigens, mit dem Namen, bist Du Deutscher?
In der Tat.
Ach so. Ich hab’ insgesamt ungefähr anderthalb Jahre in Heidelberg verbracht. Allerdings in einem früheren Leben, vor vielen VIELEN Jahren.
What is the purpose of turning off the Plex updater service? Is that just for the duration of moving the contents of the Plex media server to the new location? Should I start it again afterwards?
Only for the duration of the move. It will restart itself upon next reboot.
I’m currently having the issue with screenshots being added to movies instead of posters. My server is a Synology DS918+. Where can I find the caches to try deleting them on this? Thanks.
Apologies…learning as I go
Found new folder with caches that look like the right ones
/Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Caches
Deleted all cache files in there and set movies to refresh all metadata… so far no difference. All posters etc are as they were. What am I doing wrong?
The same thing has happened to me. Moving from windows to a Docker container. It is unable to pull any new posters even though it seems to match them on the Database just fine.
I have tried everything I could think of.
It has the poster and background info but instead of selecting it itself it’s just leaving it there without even a screenshot from the movie
