This seems to be an ongoing issue, if I add new music to my collection music Plex will scan my entire collection taking hours to complete.
If I try to manually cancel the scan it just keeps going. I have a large music collection all organized and tagged with setting for artwork from local ID3. The scanning bogs down Plex and no other media will scan until this completes.
This problem started with the introduction of the new music scanner and has been happening for months now. I have seen other threads but no real solutions. is there a fix in the works ? Can we get an update to finally resolve this.
If there is an issue with cancelling a scan, please could you gather server logs for it - collecting a set soon after cancelling and again 5 minutes later
Unfortunately it is not faster for me. If I a new album was added with the old music scanner, Plex scanned the album, added it and was done within minutes. If a new album is added with the new music scanner, that album is scanned and every album in my collection (years worth) is re-scanned taking over an hour to complete and has a high cpu usage for that time. This happens every time and has been occurring for months, my only option if I wish to use Plex for anything else is to cancel the scan which as mentioned does not stop or possibly hangs
Hey @Ambrodog - the excessive music scanning is something I reported quite a while ago, and Iāve been trying to nail it down. Iāve uploaded logs in several threads, and never got a bite from anyone for assistance.
Iām not an expert at reading logs, but I see a lot of similarities in yours to what happens in mine. I believe that the scanner starts a new scanning process, every time you add a new album to the music library. The problem I see, is that each individual scanning process not only scans the new files, but it also scans all of the unmatched albums and artists in the library.
What happens on my system is the new album is scanned, and in my case, the 350 unmatched albums are also scanned. The 1800 matched albums are not scanned. I can see that clearly, because I know which albums are not matched, and only those folders are always included in the scan.
The excessive scanning is exactly proportional to the number of albums you add. So if you add 5 albums at the same time, 5 scans are initiated, and the unmatched albums are included in each scan. As you can imagine, the scan can take a very long time, depending on the number of unmatched albums, and the amount of new media you have added.
I have my server configured to scan automatically when changes are detected, and only scan the folders that have changed. The new music scanner doesnāt appear to respect those rules.
Iāll add a set of logs I downloaded this morning when added some new music here too, but I honestly donāt expect anyone to look at them. The Plex team seems a little reluctant in recognizing there might be a bug or two in the new music scanner. Plex Media Server Logs_2020-01-14_05-45-11.zip (5.2 MB)
Thatās exactly my issue except i cannot stop the scans without killing it in the windows task manager it seems to hang or ignore the command. I also have āPrefer local metadataā set and everything else related unchecked but it seems to try to find the data anyway.
How were you able to determine which albums are unmatched, with āPrefer local metadataā set all albums have covers and appear matched.
I did not clue in to multiple scans triggering when adding more than one album !
If youāre like me, you might be surprised at the albums that are not really matched.
All of my albums display the correct album art and other info from the embedded tags, so it appears they are matched. You might find a number of artists that are also unmatched by changing the filter, and those will also be included in the extra scanning that Plex insists on.
Sometimes you can fix the match for the artist or album if there is a match at MusicBrainz. And often itās the first choice in the list.
I donāt know if thatās a contributing factor in your case, but Iām pretty sure itās why my system scans a lot more than I think it should.
Too bad that info is all it is, and mostly just guesses on my part, because no one at Plex has responded to any of the threads regarding the music scanning problem. I havenāt seen any - maybe there is.
Maybe you can tell, Iām more than a little disgruntled that this problem is ignored.
If Iāve understood the comments by some of the moderators correctly, the settings under āAgentsā arenāt actually used with the new scanner. Itās supposed to be all configured under the āAdvancedā section when you edit or create the library. I donāt think thereās an option to disable LyricFind, so that may be another ābugā thatās part of the problem.
Hopefully its gets dealt with at some point as more users notice the issue, the lack of response is frustrating. I have a few others issues with no way to address them other than posting here hopefully @sa2000 can help us out.
First, and most important, thank you for looking into this issue.
I doubt that anyone will actually have logs to prove it, but Iām not convinced that the old scanner scanned every unmatched album whenever a file was changed in the library. I believe the old method only scanned the folders/files that have changed, respecting the settings Scan my library automatically and Run a partial scan when changes are detected I believe attempts at re-matching occurred during maintenance as a Scheduled Task
My experience is unmatched albums are never matched, even when they are available at MusicBrainz, and contain embedded metadata (MusicBrainz ID tags) Unmatched albums will remain unmatched after a scan initiated automatically by a change in the library, as well as after scans that occur during the Scheduled Maintenance periods.
It seems to me that the folders and files are simply scanned, but there is no indication of an attempt at matching. I have logs posted in this thread, where I deliberately left albums unmatched for a month. Those albums had to matched manually.
Again, thanks in advance for any insight you can provide in solving the problem.
@sa2000 What about a logs showing the time frame the new music scanner takes to add one new album from start to finish which includes the attempts to rematch and the requests to lyricfind.
It would be great if when setting āPrefer local metadataā and Album Art āLocal files onlyā is used these scans do not occur.
I also believe the old scanner only attempted re-match during maintenance, adding a new album was always complete in less than a minute.
I have found log files from Oct 29 2019 showing i think the old music scanner
@sa2000 you mentioned I should remind you, any progress on this ? I also noticed that Plex continues searching lyricfind after a new Album is added for all content, creating high cpu usage and adding to overall scanning time.
I have exactly the same issues as mentioned by other people. When add an album it adds no problem but then when it has finished scanning it hangs at a particular album folder and then starts rematching meta data for albums. Funny enough these albums are all legitimate recognised compilation albums āvarious artistsā. So even though they are already matched (cover art, artist name, track name) it feels necessary to do it again after ever new album is added. Itās always the same albums being re-rematched!
Are the albums really matched? All of my albums show up as expected, with covers and track names, etc, but when I filter the music library by āUnmatchedā albums or artists, I have over 300 unmatched albums. Iām pretty sure I see in the logs, as well as in the āActivityā icon, all of those albums are re-scanned for every new album added to the library.
I thought I would go back to basics so I removed all albums from hard drive that are āvarious artistsā on my drive. No it is continually rescanned matching another batch of songs the same ones over and over. So I am more convinced plex has a significant scanning fault or bug
I think that @sa2000 has his hands full with DVR and Program Guide issues, as well as a few other things.
Maybe he can pass this along to another Ninja, Team Member or someone who can give this some attention. The problem has been reported and ignored in several threads - even an acknowledgement that it is a bug would give a little bit of satisfaction to a few frustrated users.
Iām attaching another set of logs, I added one album (a single with 2 tracks, which is in the MusicBrainz database)
Without even looking at logs, the āAlertsā page in Plex web has 50 pages of scanning the music libray. I counted about 500 folders that had been re-scanned before the pages for the alerts ran out.
None of those folders should have been scanned. The music scanner does not respect the settings to only scan folders that have changed as other libraries do.
