I had Plex scan my “TV Shows” library recently and noticed one of my series missing. After looking around, I discovered that it merged into another series, creating one big messed up series. I tried all the tricks I know like Analyze, Refresh Metadata, Empty Trash, Optimize Database, Clean Bundles, the whole Plex Dance routine. None of that worked.
When recreating this issue, the first series added to the library is always the one that grows in size. For example, if I start with an empty library and add Game of Thrones, then I add The Office, Plex will add all of The Office episodes to Game of Thrones, making one large Game of Thrones series. If I start with The Office, then Plex will add all of the Game of Thrones episodes to it instead, making one large The Office series.
I have tried creating a new library for testing purposes, it still happens. Outside of doing a fresh install of PMS, I’m not sure what else to try.
I’ve attaching logs. Here’s what I did when reproducing the issue for the logs:
Removed all files from the library directory for “TV Shows”. Ran Scan, Analyze, Refresh Metadata, Empty Trash, Optimize Database and Clean Bundles.
Exited PMS and deleted existing log files.
Started PMS, waited 2 minutes doing nothing.
Added Game of Thrones, ran Scan to pick it up, waited for all metadata to be collected.
Added The Office, ran Scan to pick it up, waited for all metadata to be collected again.
Thanks for informing me of that. I did have it set to F:\Media\Plex\TV Shows. But I changed it to F:\Media\Plex\TV Shows\Home Media and it corrected the issue after rescanning. I guess keeping shows in subfolders breaks it somehow.
However, my “Movies” library is set up the same way, in F:\Media\Plex\Movies, and it doesn’t seem to have any issues. I guess I got lucky with my Movies library?
I did notice in the support article for organizing Plex it says not to use subfolders (other than the ones for the individual shows themselves), so I’m thinking I just got lucky with the Movies library.
I assume the correct way to get the subfolders in the TV Shows library would be to manually add each subfolder to the library, rather than the parent folder like I had it before?
Movie libraries are a little more forgiving when it comes to additional layers of folders. TV show libraries are more dependent on that structure, thus less forgiving if you add/drop folders.
If you e.g. want to organize tv-shows alphabetically in your file system (e.g. 1 top level folder per letter), you’ll indeed need to add each of those top-level folders (A, B, C… Z) individually to your library.
