No Longer Matches Files with Properly Placed Articles

[ChuckPa]

I think what you’re referring to is:

/videos

/videos/movies
     Movie (year)/Movie (year).ext


/videos/tv
     Series/
       Season 01/
         Series -  SxxExx - title.ext

In this case.

1. Movies library type is /videos/movies
2. TV library type is /video/tv

Giving /video to either will cause great chaos.

You are free to make the Top level directory as deep as you want PROVIDED you do not exceed the total maximum path length for the OS at the bottom file level. Files at the bottom would have their names truncated

[Volts]

I’m 99% sure we’re agreeing.

It’s fine to have this path added to your library:

/a/very/long/path/to/the/directory/with/my/shows

As long as that directory directly contains your shows:

/a/very/long/path/to/the/directory/with/my/shows/Dexter/*Seasons*
/a/very/long/path/to/the/directory/with/my/shows/The Golden Girls/*Seasons*

I don’t think it works as well if you add this to your library:

/some/other/path

IF the shows themselves are buried deeper:

/some/other/path/good murderers/Dexter/*Seasons*/
/some/other/path/oldies/The Golden Girls/*Seasons*/

Even without mixing Movies and TV, I think it can confuse the Series scanner to have “extraneous” levels of directories:

If your directories were on disk like this:

/some/other/path/good murderers/Dexter/*Seasons*/
/some/other/path/oldies/The Golden Girls/*Seasons*/

You should add these BOTH to your Library:

/some/other/path/good murderers/

/some/other/path/oldies/

So that they directly contain your show series folders.

So in OP’s case, I’m hoping this is what’s in the Library:

\videos\series\

Because that’s the immediate containing directory for Alienist, The (2018). Right?

[Volts]

@ChuckPa

will cause great chaos

Dogs and cats, living together.

[ChuckPa]

Using your examples:

Top level directories to include in the “TV Library” section:

/a/very/long/path/to/the/directory/with/my/shows
/some/other/path/good murderers
/some/other/path/oldies

If you list all 3 directories, PMS will scan everything beneath each and add to the “TV” library section being created.

My personal sorting of TV shows.

[Hylas01]

so, just because I like a clean docker, my docker for all my media apps maps my nas’ location of /data to a /data volume with in the docker.

my movies are on the nas as /data/Videos/movies/ and the series are /data/Videos/series so they map the same way within the dockers.

The actual libraries within plex are mounted to /data/Videos/movies and /data/Videos/series (as well as the equivalent for DVR as a separate libraries. e.g.: /data/Videos/dvr/series & /data/Videos/dvr/movies."

[Volts]

That sounds perfect.

Sadly, that means there’s nothing to try changing, except how your directories are named.

[BigWheel]

I agree with what folks are saying above but, gonna need logs after one of these scan in as it seems to work fine. Since your example was an MP4 are you sure there is not embedded metadata effecting what it displays?

[Hylas01]

Ahhh…“The Alienest” was just an example of how my files are named. I’ll find a real example of a failure… Note that the failure to match only happens for new shows. Once it’s matched then each episode is fine after that.

It may take me a few days…there aren’t many new shows coming out with Covid-19 and all… i could plex dance a few if i get some time between meetings tomorrow…

[Volts]

@BigWheel

I agree with what folks are saying above but, gonna need logs after one of these scan in as it seems to work fine.

Yeah - I just tested about 5 different examples, and they all matched for me.

The idea that English articles (a, the) would break 100% of matching wasn’t sitting right with me. The whole name is more correct but I’m used to Plex making good guesses.

The ones I tested don’t get a perfect score, but they still get matched.

While testing I first noticed things were just “weird”. Even perfectly-named files weren’t matching reliably. I turned off all of the “additional” agents and it got fast again.

In addition to the MP4/metadata question - do you have any other additional agents enabled?

---

@BigWheel - I see this request in the logs whenever there wasn’t a perfect match. I had the article at the end of the filename, and it stripped it out. Clever. Is this a Plex “fixer” service?

com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb.log:2020-09-01 18:56:00,428 (8022b1300) :  DEBUG (networking:143) - Requesting 'https://meta.plex.tv/tv_e/367023/house+divided/2019'
com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb.log:2020-09-01 18:56:00,841 (8022b1300) :  ERROR (networking:196) - Error opening URL 'https://meta.plex.tv/tv_e/367023/house+divided/2019'

[Hylas01]

I don’t have local assets enabled so it’s my understanding it wouldn’t be reading anything from mp4 files.

I do have some other agents enabled.

I’m doing the plex dance on a few folders right now…i’ll see what happens and upload logs…

[Hylas01]

Ok, I took out 6 series. 3 of them added back in OK. 3 of them did not match.

Here are the logs.

Plex Media Server Logs_2020-09-01_19-51-23.zip (1.8 MB)

[Volts]

What is your network setup? I’m not the log-reading expert - hopefully @BigWheel can say “look here” - but they’re a mess with complaints about network issues.

ERROR - getaddrinfo(172-17-0-1.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz012345.plex.direct) failed: -3

ERROR - PublicAddressManager: Unable to get public IP adddress from myPlex (httpCode=408):

ERROR - NetworkService: Couldn’t bind to port 0: bind: Cannot assign requested address

(Failed to connect to plex.tv port 443: No route to host)

WARN - MyPlex: Invalid connection URL ‘roger.dyndns.info’.

WARN - NAT: PMP, got an error: Not Supported by gateway.

Can you restart plex, wait 2 minutes, and then generate the logs again? The startup messages might be more helpful.

[BigWheel]

Those are issues with Remote Access afaict.

Think this related to another issue with search being generally too strict and devs are working on it hoping for a fix soon. Like there was another report of a tv show name that TVDB had a colon in name but file name did not so it could not find. Older shows we have on our proxy already so that is why those were working.

[Hylas01]

I do use Sonarr’s ability to strip special characters out of the file name. Is that a bad idea?

I do run an instance of pi-hole so I do purposely block certain traffic but nothing specific to plex. I could try whitelisting it completely to see if that helps at all. That invalid connection URL is my ddns site. When I manually connect, I’m able to bring up my plex instance. I’m not sure why it throws an error internally.

The DVR is recording right now so I can’t reboot for a couple of hours. I’ll generate a new log later this morning.

Thanks for all of your efforts to help!

[BigWheel]

@Hylas01

I do use Sonarr’s ability to strip special characters out of the file name. Is that a bad idea?

That is fine. I think the issue is with the TVDB API or something on our end.