Not able to load episodes after renaming

Hello,
I’m new to Plex and only after I imported half of my library I figured I have to name them properly for Plex to find them.
So did I, yet it isn’t able to find all of the renamed episodes (strictly following the naming convention) which it failed to recognize at the first time. I have already tried to perform the “Plex dance” suggested here, which resulted in nothing.


You will find the server log below.

Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

Trying to perform The Plex Dance® and actually getting it done are two different things.

I can see you do have decent names and if your TV Show library is: /var/media/TVShows/ then I guess that’s cool although not knowing enough about log files could get us in trouble. I have no idea what /var/media/ is. Anyway…

The Plex Dance® is only useful if you perform all the dance steps, in order, as described, exactly, without any deviations.

  1. remove South Park (or entire show) from library - gone… poof… history.
  2. update library - yep, there it went… gone
  3. clean bundles (you found that - good)
  4. empty trash (same place - good)
  5. fix names and structure (ok… triple check to be sure)
  6. replace show into library
  7. update library

If South Park (or the show or items) don’t start populating then Huston, we have a problem(beep), and it could be that the TVDB is off exploring the Milky Way again and not available for comment. However, at the time of this post I just checked and it does appear to be landed.

Report back if there’s still an issue and we’ll call in some log readers to have a closer look.

Thanks for the advice!
It was actually the Walking Dead that wasn’t being recognized properly.
But I dance again and make sure I follow the steps completely, still the episodes just aren’t showing up.
Here is a more recent log.

Well, looks like we need those telescopic eyeballs @astrofisher employs, but before he gets here reboot your server box…

:slight_smile:

I looked at the logs - You are running Linux and I’m a Windows person, but I’m going to ASSuME that the same keys I would look for in my logs should be in yours.

I see you perform the dance, but I’m not seeing the show directory being deleted. I would expect to see a line or lines in the log that contains:

About to destroy x deleted directories (where x is show directory plus season directories)
Deleting directory [The Walking Dead].

You need to make sure that you remove the entire show outside of the scanned location before updating the library, emptying trash - it doesn’t look like that’s occurring.

Thanks for going through the log.
Indeed I forgot to delete the directory.
However, I do this time and the 3 missing episodes still won’t show themselves.
Apart from what you suggested and rebooting, I also tried multiple times including deleting the entire library, add it again, update before deleting, update after deleting etc. which still cannot fix the problem.

Ok, same series - 8 episode total and you are missing three episodes?
Are the missing episodes 1,2, and 6?

Is there a difference in folder structure for the episodes themselves?

Could you provide a screenshot of the Media Info for one of the Season 7 episodes that is found.

Media Info support article.

Yes apart from 1,2,6 everything else shows up.
I don’t think there is any folder / structure containing those episodes, they are all automatically located and named (and I double checked).

That screenshot doesn’t contain the path to the file - need the slider all the way up. Sorry, was not interested in the media info of the file, just the path, as I wanted to see the folder structure of that library. I was thinking that is the problem. Folder structure should follow the naming guide for all episodes.

1 Like

Sorry for coming back late,
the requested path is
/home/username/media/TVShows/The Walking Dead/Season 7/The Walking Dead - s07e05 - Go Getters.mkv

Ok, could you provide the xml returned by the following.
serveripaddress:32400/library/sections/?X-Plex-Token=YOURTOKENVALUEHERE

Finding your account token / X-Plex-Token.

Okay, this is the information of episode 5!

No idea why the XML didn’t come through, nor am I able to upload file to the thread anymore.
Here is the requested XML! https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9j6xuVZZPMXdUxGSVctaWN0cGM/view?usp=sharing

I don’t see anything. You need to select all and use code formatting which should be available with the button bar.

Example.

Directory allowSync="1" art="/:/resources/show-fanart.jpg" composite="/library/sections/2/composite/1481768383" filters="1" refreshing="0" thumb="/:/resources/show.png" key="2" type="show" title="TV Shows" agent="com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb" scanner="Plex Series Scanner" language="en" uuid="1aa2c10f-2251-4eb7-9ae6-08213ff6da8d" updatedAt="1481768383" createdAt="1409448655">
<Location id="38" path="G:\Media_TV Shows"/>
<Location id="52" path="H:\Media_TV Shows"/>
<Location id="78" path="G:\Media_Documentary TV"/>
<Location id="79" path="H:\Media_Documentary TV"/>
<Location id="80" path="H:\Media_Classic_TV"/>
</Directory>

Ok, checked the link, but still not what I need to see. That is the xml for a single episode. I would like to see what Plex sees for your library paths. You have to type in the url and add your token at the end. Don’t want to see the token, just what Plex returns when you type in that url.

The forum bar didn’t really response to anything on both Chrome and Edge.

Yeah, I am experiencing that same issue on my laptop. I’m able to get some of it to work by providing the code tag punctuation myself.

If you can get the correct xml and put it on google drive, that’s good enough.

Okay here comes the file!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9j6xuVZZPMXT1RFQ3BobVlZSkU/view?usp=sharing

Hurray! I got it. That’s the good news. The bad news is I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.

You do have two paths listed for TV Shows which is fine, so long as all seasons/episodes for a series are contained within one path. I’ll have go back and look at your logs again.

Following is the paths listed for your TV Shows (location id)

<Directory allowSync="0" art="/:/resources/show-fanart.jpg" composite="/library/sections/5/composite/1483433466" filters="1" refreshing="0" thumb="/:/resources/show.png" key="5" type="show" title="TV Shows" agent="com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb" scanner="Plex Series Scanner" language="en" uuid="36c3ed98-b839-45d9-aceb-4902f22c37f0" updatedAt="1483433466" createdAt="1483433466"> <Location id="8" path="/var/media/TVShows"/> <Location id="9" path="/home/toby/media/TVShows"/>

Ok, looking through the scanner log again. I do not know why the episodes are not being put in the library.
Plex finds episodes 1,2 and 6, but that’s all. I do have some suggestions, which you will find at the end of my post.

Providing observation and log snippets.

Regarding missing episodes, Plex sees the files; however, it does not do anything with them.

Here, we see that Plex finds the media file (missing episode 1).

Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.245 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Adding file for scanner: /home/toby/media/TVShows/The Walking Dead/Season 7/The Walking Dead - s07e01 - The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.mkv

That is the last mention of this item in the scanner log.

Comparing to an episode that shows up. Here we see that Plex finds the file.

Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.244 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Adding file for scanner: /home/toby/media/TVShows/The Walking Dead/Season 7/The Walking Dead - s07e04 - Service.mkv

And later in the log, Plex start the process of putting it into the library.

Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.282 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - * Scanning The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 4
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.282 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Looking for path match for [/home/toby/media/TVShows/The Walking Dead/Season 7/The Walking Dead - s07e04 - Service.mkv]
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.283 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Skipping hash check, no size match for 2530293723 bytes.
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.283 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - No match for hash.
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.283 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Checking descendants of The Walking Dead
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.284 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - → Searching down into The Walking Dead/Season 7
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.284 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Checking descendants of The Walking Dead/Season 7
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.285 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - → FOUND metadata item (show)
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.285 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - → We found a local media item with rooted metadata in The Walking Dead/Season 7
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.285 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Found existing show 1126
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.286 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Downloading document http://127.0.0.1:32400/library/changestamp
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.286 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - HTTP requesting GET http://127.0.0.1:32400/library/changestamp
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.287 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - HTTP 200 response from GET http://127.0.0.1:32400/library/changestamp
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.288 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Added new metadata item () with ID 1129
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.288 [0x7fcd2e7ff700] DEBUG - HTTP requesting GET http://127.0.0.1:32400/:/metadata/flushMetadataCounterCache
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.289 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Added new media item with ID=2824 (episode=4&episodic=1&season=7&show=The%20Walking%20Dead)
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.289 [0x7fcd2e7ff700] DEBUG - HTTP 200 response from GET http://127.0.0.1:32400/:/metadata/flushMetadataCounterCache
Jan 04, 2017 11:31:48.289 [0x7fcd3d2ed800] DEBUG - Added new media part with ID=2893 [/home/toby/media/TVShows/The Walking Dead/Season 7/The Walking Dead - s07e04 - Service.mkv]

If this was an issue of matching the episode, but not getting posters or metadata, I would suggest clearing the HTTP Cache for thetvdb, but that is not what is happening.

I do see that Plex is finding numerous other files inside the scanned location. Although, I wouldn’t think that would be an issue, maybe that is confusing the scanner. I also noticed in the plex media info xml for the episode you provided, that there is extra info that Plex is seeing - maybe that is causing issues.
Even though Plex isn’t supposed to use embedded metadata on MKV files, we have seen strange issues with title data on mkv files before where the file had been downloaded and the originator had sprayed their mark of sorts on the file.

From the Plex Media info xml (just a snippet).

<Stream id="6132" streamType="1" default="1" codec="h264" index="0" bitrate="5255" language="English" languageCode="eng" bitDepth="8" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" colorRange="tv" colorSpace="bt709" frameRate="23.976" hasScalingMatrix="0" height="1076" level="40" profile="high" refFrames="4" requiredBandwidths="7371,6738,5979,5953,5953,5953,5953,5953" scanType="progressive" title="The.Walking.Dead.S07E05.1080p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H264-RARBG" width="1916"/>

What I would do at this point.

Move the entire series outside of Plex.
Update the library, empty trash, clean bundles

Sanitize things:
Remove all the files which are not needed by Plex -.nfo, .xml, .jpg, .metathumb.
Disable Local media assets - Settings> Server> Agents> Shows> TheTVDB
Run the files through MKVToolNix and remove the unecessary tracks, track names and/or tags.

Move series back into scanned location, cross fingers, and update the library.