I noticed last night that a whole swathe of TV shows have been mis-identified by Plex and are now sitting under ‘McMafia’ for some reason. Shows sitting under ‘McMafia’ include:
Have I Got News For You
Springwatch
Masterchef
BBC News
What’s weird is that all these shows have the correct meta-data files locally, and are all named correctly (e.g.,
“TV\Have I Got News For You\Have I Got News For You - S53E02 - Kirsty Young.mp4”
“TV\Springwatch\Season 2016\Springwatch - S2016E01 - Episode 1.mp4”
They were all imported by Sonarr, and show up correctly under Kodi.
I wondered if it might be local media setting screwing something up or a bad scan, so I deleted and recreated my entire library, and let it rescan everything, but it’s still the same this morning. I have my Agents set up to have TheTVDB first, not using local metadata.
Quick update - I tried the Plex Dance® on my entire collection but still to no avail. I also noticed I have a bunch of shows grouped under get_iPlayer which seems to indicate this is a problem with plex erroneously picking up local metadata. But it seems absurd that if I have the correct folder structure that it would put two shows from different folders together under the same show.
Rule #1: don’t download or rip directly into folders which are being watched by Plex.
Always download first into a temporary folder.
Then unzip and rename the file.
Only after that move it into the Plex library.
You are using mp4 files. Those often have SPAM in them, which then leads to Plex mismatching the files.
Preparation:
Go to Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB
In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase
Then revise your preparation scripts to always write a 2-digit season number in the folder names (except when the season number is 4-digit, ofc).
Nowadays it is also better to always include the year of the first broadcast of S01E01 into the folder names.
e.g. (don’t forget the ‘season’ folder) TV\Have I Got News For You (1990)\Season 53\Have I Got News For You - S53E02 - Kirsty Young.mp4
After doing the above, perform the Plex Dance and add back each series separately.
Thanks. I don’t rip or download directly to plex. Everything is renamed by Sonarr to the correct naming convention and folder structure.
I also have Local Media Assets at the bottom or unchecked, but it’s still mixing the shows even after doing the dance again.
I really hate the fact that you have to do the Plex Dance to fix this. It’s so painful and time consuming. It seems that since it’s recommended so regularly in the forums, it should be an actual function/feature - ie, rescan my media and reindex the shows should be an option the the gui, so I can just click on the wrongly identified shows and tell Plex to try again.
@OttoKerner said:
You are using mp4 files. Those often have SPAM in them, which then leads to Plex mismatching the files.
Preparation:
Go to Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB
In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase
I still don’t see the logic here. At the bottom it doesn’t contributes?
At the top it supersedes causing matching issues. It kills me…
Whatever. Plex will do what Plex is wants to do. We are only there to share the experience.
In most situations, people will prefer to have Local Media Assets as the first metadata source so that things like local artwork files will be used.
LOL! That’s the first you and all the support staff tell people to change.
LMA should be separate from embedded SPAM(as you said). How about LMA and ELMA. Sounds good, right?
Yes, my Plex TV library setup points to /volume1/video/TV.
As NewPlaza states, it seems like LMA is flawed and should be defaulted to the bottom or off, as it doesn’t seem to work very well at all.
I may have started the dance media scan before I disabled LMA completely, so I’ll try doing the dance again now it’s completely turned off.
Bear in mind that I’ve been running Kodi on the same files and same folder structure for 2 years up until a month ago, and it didn’t make this mistake. It’s a bit frustrating that Plex can get this so wrong!
I like the idea I can use my own artwork and stuff but am forced not to have any SPAM in my MP4 files because of this flaw. It really is a double-edge sword. So sad.
Yet I’m still seeing this - a show called get_iplayer, and a bunch of shows categorised within it as episodes, despite the episode names being structured/named correctly.
I’m presuming it’s picking up metadata from the MP4 because those shows were downloaded with get_iplayer, but if LMA is disabled, surely that should never happen?
Seems like something is seriously broken. Any Plex Staff around who can advise? I didn’t just pay for a lifetime pass last week for this.
Yes. See the bit in the post above where I said “Then did the Plex Dance”.
I did the dance for the whole collection - my entire set of TV shows. Interestingly, after leaving it overnight, the metadata has all populated, and the get_iplayer show appears to have disappeared. However, I’m still getting literally hundreds of random episodes listed under ‘McMafia’.
Seems like HIGNFY series are being collected under McMafia, as well as some other stuff like Winterwatch.
Yet again, the series are all named correctly and in the right folders.
How can I debug this? Seems like there’s a major bug here, and I’m frankly sick of doing the Plex Dance now; I did it for my entire NAS full of several thousand TV shows yesterday. Twice.
I would venture to say a step was overlooked in the PlexDance.
I only say this because you stated you have already disabled LMA and yet you have 50+ seasons of McMafia. That series only had one season. I think PLEX is detecting the old signatures of the files back when it was messed up(not that it’s fixed now, lol)
As a test, and maybe your sanity, I would create a new TV Show library and point that new library to volume1/video/TV
Move all files for the show out of ‘sight’ of Plex
Do a Scan Library Files in the web app (not ‘force update’ not ‘Refresh all’)
Empty Trash
“Clean Bundles”
double check naming schema and move files back
Scan Library Files again
I think you’re misunderstanding what’s going on here. The 50 series of McMafia are not duplicates of McMafier seasons (and yes, I know it only had one season). They’re other shows that are being misidentified by Plex. So as per my original post, shows such as HIGNFY, Beechgrove Garden, Winterwatch etc are all being picked up by Plex and identified as seasons of McMafia. That is, in essence, the whole point of what I’m trying to solve here.
I’ll create a new library and see if it gets it right, but having done the Dance twice, it seems unlikely.
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/11.22.63/Season 01
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/1864/Season 01
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/24/Season 03
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/24/Season 04
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/24/Season 05
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/24/Season 06
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/24/Season 07
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/A Place To Call Home/Season 01
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/A Place To Call Home/Season 02
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/A Place To Call Home/Season 03
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/A Place To Call Home/Season 5
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/A Year at Kew/Season 02
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/A Year at Kew/Season 03
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Absolutely Fabulous/Season 05
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Agatha Christie's Marple/Season 05
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Agatha Christie's Marple/Season 06
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Agatha Christie's Poirot/Season 02
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Agatha Christie's Poirot/Season 03
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Agatha Christie's Poirot/Season 04
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Agatha Christie's Poirot/Season 05
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Agatha Christie's Poirot/Season 06
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Season 00
/volume1/video/TV/Game of Thrones/Season 7
Each tv series must be in it’s own folder. No two series should be combined.
