Server Version#: Version 1.28.1.6104 (Manjaro)
Player Version#: Version 4.84.1 (web)
I have one season making the whole show unavailable. All the rest of the shows/seasons are fine, all reside on the same disk. All the episodes for that one season AND show work fine, they’re in the same folder but the overall season still shows that it is unavailable.
It did work before I changed the folder that my TV library was pointed to.
What gives?
Betting its file permissions
I can play the episodes in the season it says it’s not available, all of them. The rest of the show doesn’t have the same problem. No other show has the same problem.
I did chown -R plex:plex the whole TV folder.
Edit: Just did it again to make sure. No joy.
I moved the folder out, re-scanned, then moved the folder back in, and re-re-scanned. Fixed.
This is driving me f*****g nuts. One season of a show is apparently ‘Unavailable’ yet the files exist where Plex thinks they are and they are playable. I moved them elsewhere, but Plex never noticed (this is with repeated ‘Scan Library Files’). So I deleted them from Plex and emptied trash. Then moved the files back and Plex simply does not see them, despite even more repeated scans.
Plex is the mainstay of my media system and overall it’s great, but this is utter crap. The files ARE there. Why is there no method of telling Plex this. ‘Scan files’ clearly does NOT work. WTF? The fundamental premise of such a media player is that it can find the media files that are in the right place where they are expected to be.
Sorry, but this is simply poor programming. Nothing complicated going on here. As I said, this is THE very first thing a media player needs to be able to do. How come Plex is falling at this first hurdle?
As a long time Plex Pass holder, this is more than disappointing.
Gonna bet this isnt a plex issue. Can you post your log files? and please post the exact name and location of an affected file. 99% of the time on a Linux OS its permissions
How can it not be a Plex issue. The files are there in the exact place Plex expects and are even playable. So how can that be permissions? This is MacOS BTW, but same regarding perms.
Season 1 and 2 are shown correctly and no ‘Unavailable’ label or ‘Trashcan’ badge. I did notice that all the Season 3 (which has the problem) files had the extended attribute of ‘com.apple.quarantine’. No idea why that should be, but I removed those attributes so Season 3 is EXACTLY the same as Seasons 1 and 2. Same naming and folder structure, ownership and perms. Exactly the same, but Season 3 still showing ‘Unavailable’ etc, yet will play.
I then moved the Season 3 folder and re-scanned, but they still showed in the same location in Plex - which is now incorrect as they are NOT there. So I deleted Season 3 from Plex as putting the files back in place ought to be picked up automatically. Nope. So I scanned again. And again. And again. Just does not pick them up. They are invisible to Plex. So scanning is not working correctly.
This IS a Plex issue. The files are there and named appropriately (or how would Plex have seen them correctly in the first place) and no funny permissions or ownership. Exactly the same as Seasons 1 and 2. Like I said, this is THE fundamental requirement of a media server. To find and list the media files that are in the specified directories. If this is not occurring, then whatever the media server is doing, it is doing it wrong.
I understand the complexity of dealing with files, in different folder structures and naming conventions and I realise it can be tricky. But there is no excuse for ignoring files that are correct. As I said, it is doing something wrong and there’s no way to tell it to JFDI.
@fernhouse I am going to repeat what I asked for in my previous post:
Can you post your server log files? and please post the exact name and location of an affected file.
Yes, sorry, Got carried away. I’ll get that together.
Here’s the paths:-
/Volumes/DAVR/TVShow/The Fall/Season 1:
total 10302912
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1063921069 2 Feb 2017 Dark Descent (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1041670701 2 Feb 2017 Darkness Visible (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1063113595 2 Feb 2017 Insolence & Wine (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1039699785 2 Feb 2017 My Adventurous Song (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1066672956 2 Feb 2017 The Vast Abyss (HD).mp4
/Volumes/DAVR/TVShow/The Fall/Season 2:
total 13495656
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1055468972 2 Feb 2017 Beauty Hath Strange Power (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1064190479 2 Feb 2017 Night Darkens the Streets (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1061930849 2 Feb 2017 The Mind Its Own Place (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1046086683 2 Feb 2017 The Perilous Edge of Battle (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1067698596 2 Feb 2017 These Troublesome Disguises (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1614387092 2 Feb 2017 What Is In Me Dark Illumine (HD).mp4
/Volumes/DAVR/TVShow/The Fall/Season 3:
total 8747488
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1061479030 5 Nov 20:43 His Troubled Thoughts (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1062019048 5 Nov 20:43 Silence and Suffering (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 1052295866 5 Nov 20:43 The Gates of Light (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 358384425 5 Nov 20:43 The Hell Within Him.mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 233456206 5 Nov 20:43 The Story So Far (HD).mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 356485855 5 Nov 20:43 Their Solitary Way.mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jukebox jukebox 354575442 5 Nov 20:43 Wounds of Deadly Hate.mp4
Plex (PMS) now does not and will not see Season 3.
Plex Media Server Logs_2022-11-06_09-57-18.zip (5.1 MB)
It would have been about 09.45 this morning that I scanned that library again.
Wrong, those files do NOT comply with the Plex naming standard.
The Fall - S03E01 - Silence and Suffering
The Fall - S03E02 - His Troubled Thoughts
The Fall - S03E03 - The Gates of Light
The Fall - S03E04 - The Hell Within Him
The Fall - S03E05 - Wounds of Deadly Hate
The Fall - S03E06 - Their Solitary Way
Plex needs the S##E## at a minimum, In the past the plex scanner has had support for non-standard naming schemas, but plex has dropped some in the process of modernizing/speeding up the scanner.
My canned response is to see https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/ and:
If you want to save yourself a lot of time I would recommend using Download - tinyMediaManager and use:
Episode format:
${showTitle} - S${seasonNr2}E${episodeNr2} - ${title}
Folder format:
${showTitle} (${showYear}) {tvdb-${tvShow.ids.tvdb}}/Season ${seasonNr2}
as the new name format.
(Please note I linked to the v3 which is free to use)
That is a naming convention I no longer use - I think it was iTunes. All the files are correctly tagged anyway and I have always set Plex to use tags, but since eliminating iTunes from the workflow, now name files correctly to include Episode ID as you show.
However, the fact is that Plex was previously perfectly happy with it and never had a problem with Seasons 1 and 2. Why did it take exception to Season 3?
Perhaps the ‘quarantine’ attribute upset it in the first place and then the later PMS cannot add the files back in due to the naming scheme? So a 2 fold problem.
I’ll rename them all according to how I now do it (without iTunes) and see how that works out.
I still say it’s a Plex problem since without any changes from me (not touched these files in years), it decides to have a problem and in particular, states items as ‘Unavailable’ when they clearly are ‘available’ as it can play them. However you look at it, that is not correct.
Thanks for your help.
So what I think happened:
Sort of. The sooner I rename all the originally iTunes named files the better, but there is no anti-virus running on this Mac and I am not aware of anything built-in to MacOS that would add those attributes, especially when Seasons 1 and 2 were unaffected.
Not that it matters. Something changed in Plex so I need to update those old iTunes named files. All newer stuff is now named according to the latest requirements. It’s just some older stuff still around, for which I will now update the naming.
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