For whatever reason, the problem has been resolved. Thanks.
Problems that fix themselves without any work on our part are my absolute favorites. You, sir, are an inspiration to us all.
Hi. I am trying to get the plex online scanner update to work but when i got to PlexOnline it moves to a basically empty screen except for the clock in the top left, the word “Applications” in the near top center and the “objects” section on the top right. I can’t find any updates or item to update or even an interface. Any ideas?
I think my cataclog is fubared (been that way since day 1) but i haven’t had time to research it till today.
Very excited about the product!
Thanks for any tips or ideas… I was thinking I needed to remove prefs, existing catalog, etc. but not sure if that’s a good route.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
– joshua
It sort of sounds like PMS isn't running or Plex isn't able to communicate with it correctly. We've seen a few issues with people having FUBAR'd /etc/hosts files, as well as web proxies running.
I'd be happy to lend a hand debugging if you're handy in terminal and want to IM me.
I'm sure the update you had me download solved most of them. As for the other issue, it was probably something that I did, but I have no idea what, nor do I care any longer. Thanks again.
HI –
Thanks for all the hard work. I’m new to Plex, but am thrilled with it so far.
I’m having a problem loading the Sopranos Season 2. Plex only recognizes 9 of the 13 episodes. Here’s a snippet of the log for one of the episodes that doesn’t get recognized. Any suggestions?
Sep 24, 2010 14:48:04 [0xa035e500] DEBUG - * Scanning The Sopranos Season 2 Episode 7
Sep 24, 2010 14:48:04 [0xa035e500] DEBUG - Looking for path match for [/Volumes/Media Storage/TV Shows/The Sopranos/Season 2/The Sopranos s02e7.VOB]
Sep 24, 2010 14:48:04 [0xa035e500] DEBUG - Checking by hash to see if we can find a match with 1543fc2abef9558d68c84124847177f8cc72b535 (display offset: 0, not part -1)
Sep 24, 2010 14:48:04 [0xa035e500] DEBUG - We found a hash match for [/Volumes/Media Storage/TV Shows/The Sopranos/Season 2/The Sopranos s02e7.VOB] which was [/Volumes/Media Storage/TV Shows/The Sopranos/Season 2/The Sopranos S02e06.VOB].
Sep 24, 2010 14:48:04 [0xa035e500] WARN - Duplicate media part detected [/Volumes/Media Storage/TV Shows/The Sopranos/Season 2/The Sopranos S02e06.VOB], ignoring.
Sep 24, 2010 14:48:04 [0xa035e500] DEBUG - Hint episode didn’t match (‘7’ != ‘6’) for DB media item 217
It looks like Plex thinks these files are identical. So far this has happened about three times and each of the three it turned out Plex was right. However, I have a feeling that perhaps TV VOBs may get the better of it. Can you double check for me that 100% the S02E06 episode isn't for some BIZARRE reason the same as S02E07? Thanks :)
Looks like Plex is right again. I must have made a mistake when I ripped the files. Sorry for wasting your time…
Plex: 4, Media Rippers: 0
:)
(Thanks for ungiving me a heart attack, I feel much better now)
Hi, I still haven’t been able to see a few files that I classify as TV shows. Some of them are TV shows and some are just media files that classify better that way (eg a 5 episode workout).
I’ve tried restarting the computer to make sure that everything is updated correctly.
What information do I need to provide in order to take next steps?
Read the very first post in this topic and we'll get you sorted out :)
Is there a way to simply make it so Plex doesn’t need to scan each video to figure out what it is, and just use the information I’ve provided in iTunes (Show name, episdoe name, season, etc.)? I really don’t care if it matches up with TVDB or whatever, I just want the media to show up in Plex as-is. I’ve got a whole ton of shows ripped, the files for which aren’t named including the episode number, etc – just the name of the show, however it ended up when I imported it to iTunes. I really don’t want to go through the process of renaming each and every one of these shows.
I guess I don’t understand why it doesn’t work the way music does (I’m guessing there’s a reason for it)…there’s an iTunes plugin, and it shows my music exactly like iTunes does, through Plex, without having to have everything named in a specific way. Am I missing something?
I’m completely new, so I’ll try my best… I have a bunch of movies and they are all in “Movie Name (Year)” format, and show up in IMDB exactly like that. I just installed Plex for Mac, and the new PMS hot fix (and restarted it), and in Plex and the PMS library it only appears to be populating information for half of the movies. I’ve tried to identify if it’s crashing on one movie, but even if I move it out and restart, it’ll just get hung up on the next one.
If I quit everything, in my process list Plex Media Scanner seems to hang and be left running. If I force quit that and restart Plex, and tell it to update library, it will quickly say it’s scanning a bunch of movies, and then spend an inordinate amount of time “Matching” the first one (like 10-15 minutes or something). I left it overnight to see if it would resolve and it didn’t. The movies in the “matching” list, show as having a -1 year in the library (WHY! It’s in the filename and directory name; they’re perfect and common!) and no poster art or metadata.
I don’t use a proxy and I have a localhost entry in /etc/hosts, I don’t use fan art or nfo’s, it’s just the movie files and subtitles 
I’m not doing anything weird, promise[tm].
Some logs (this seems pretty common):
------------
Plex media server.log
…
Sep 26, 2010 07:01:57 [0xb109d000] DEBUG - Notification of new metadata for com.plexapp.agents.imdb://tt0090605?lang=en (success=1) for 1 items.
…
------------
com.plexapp.agents.imdb.log:
…
2010-09-26 06:46:59,956 (-4f9e9000) : DEBUG (model) - Serializing to /Users/TMwNN/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata/Movies/2/136d65475e185265f40d25177e16019e46b10b2.bundle/Contents/com.plexapp.agents.imdb/Info.xml
…
-------------------
com.plexapp.agents.themoviedb.log
…
2010-09-26 07:01:45,829 (-4f9e9000) : DEBUG (core) - Requesting http://api.themoviedb.org/2.1/Movie.getInfo/en/json/a3dc111e66105f6387e99393813ae4d5/25528
2010-09-26 07:01:47,484 (-4f9e9000) : DEBUG (model) - Serializing to /Users/TMwNN/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata/Movies/7/d182a9a581e50011ed8ef5963e1b0502a6bed4b.bundle/Contents/com.plexapp.agents.themoviedb/Info.xml
------------
Help? Worst comes to worst, what do I need to blow away to reinstall and have it start from scratch?
If it’s only going one movie at a time, something odd is probably happening in the scanner. If you have terminal experience, you can run from the command line and we can check it out, otherwise look for crash reports in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ for “Plex Media Scanner”
No crash logs there for plex media scanner... 2 for media server but for yesterday, and I'm not sure it was just a result of killing it back then.
I have console experience, did you want me to run Plex Media Server and click Update Library? I just did that now and it ran through the file list quickly, then seems to have started bringing in cover art... I am occasionally seeing these in the console though:
./Plex\ Media\ Server
2010-09-26 07:21:03.656 Plex Media Server[1471:5303] Initializing Cocoa updater
Error obtaining Plex movie data for 0082250
Error obtaining Plex movie data for 0099636
2010-09-26 07:24:04.187 Plex Media Server[1471:ed03] Image data import from URL http://127.0.0.1:32400/photo/:/transcode?width=148&height=156&url=http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A32400%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F273%2Fthumb%3Ft%3D1285456986 failed with error The file “transcode” couldn’t be opened.
2010-09-26 07:24:04.637 Plex Media Server[1471:ee03] Image data import from URL http://127.0.0.1:32400/photo/:/transcode?width=148&height=156&url=http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A32400%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F8%2Fthumb%3Ft%3D1285455717 failed with error The file “transcode” couldn’t be opened.
2010-09-26 07:24:04.792 Plex Media Server[1471:f103] Image data import from URL http://127.0.0.1:32400/photo/:/transcode?width=148&height=156&url=http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A32400%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F124%2Fthumb%3Ft%3D1285455708 failed with error The file “transcode” couldn’t be opened.
2010-09-26 07:24:04.793 Plex Media Server[1471:3a0f] Image data import from URL http://127.0.0.1:32400/photo/:/transcode?width=148&height=156&url=http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1%3A32400%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F3%2Fthumb%3Ft%3D1285454827 failed with error The file “transcode” couldn’t be opened.
Error obtaining Plex movie data for 1386932
Are they transitory or actual problems?
It's still going through, but I'm not sure what I should do if I have a couple movies (like Alien) that just won't seem to pick up the year or cover art... what should I do?
Those don't look like serious problems.
If a few movies aren't getting posters, you can try right click + Fix Incorrect match and see if that helps.
If it's always stopping at one movie as I thought I understood from before, you can run the scanner from the command line:
<br />
$ alias pms="~/Library/Application\ Support/Plex/Plex\ Media\ Server.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex\ Media\ Scanner"<br />
$ pms --list<br />
That will produce something like this:
<br />
3: Alice<br />
22: Television<br />
21: Torture<br />
You can then use that number to run a scan with "pms --scan --refresh --section 3" (for example)
When I started the media server from the command line and did update library, it ran through without any problems. When it finished I started it again normally (by running Plex), and if I do update library it gets stuck on "matching" movies again.
I ran your command line and it ran through the scanner without any problems either. It only took a few seconds. Though now in media manager half my movies still have a year of -1 and no cover art.
When you were running from the command line, did you have the Media Server running? The Media Scanner communicates with a running Media Server.
Oh, I didn't. It didn't give me any errors though :$
So I started the server (normally), then ran the scanner from the command line like you gave, and it does a big list of "Scanning" that shows all my movies, and ends with:
* Refreshing Alien
GUI: Requesting metadata for 'Alien'
* Refreshing C H U D
GUI: Matching 'C H U D'
Which are Alien (1979) and C.H.U.D. (1984) respectively. They're the two first movies that won't get a year in the media server list, or cover art.
** After a long wait, it has moved onto a few others. Each takes forever ... and still no cover art or years in the library.
An hour later it finished enumerating everything, but still hadn’t done covers or years, especially half-way through the movie list and onwards.
I removed all the logs, to have a fresh slate, and started plex media server by itself (from the Finder, in Application Support/Plex itself), and it gave me a crash dump. I put all the stuff below, it only created a couple logs. Afterwards, when I started just Plex itself (from the Dock), it started the server without any crash, so I’m not sure if this is important or just log spam 
The most important thing for me is, still no years, and still no cover art for half my stuff (and it’s all common and correctly named, like star wars). If I try to go into the media manager and “fix correct info”, it says it’s searching, takes forever, and finally comes back with a window asking me to select the right movie, but it’s empty. The filename is “Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)”. I then click Search and specify Freebase, the same movie name, and it has the year blank for some reason, so I type in 1977, and it searches again (forever) then comes back to the same window, select a movie - but there are no movies to select from.
