I have needed to rebuild my plex system several times in the past, whether for hardware upgrades, operating system upgrades or just to reorganize and the single biggest thing that I hate to lose if the “correct” sequence for recently added.
By correct sequence, I mean the date I originally added the media to the system. That date is saved along with the file name in the file system, but Plex appears to be willing only to consider TODAY (i.e. the date when Plex is adding the movie to its database). It seems like it should be simple to offer both a global and a per-library (if desired) setting to allow us to choose the current Plex behavior or to have Plex use the creation date of each media file as its “date added.” It is still a date value, and it should be readily available when Plex is scanning the directory for new media.
We only need an option to use it. Then, the next time I need to rebuild my Plex server from scratch, I won’t have several thousand media items added the exact same day as I do now. Please consider it. Thanks.
PS: When I started typing this I was encouraged to “remember to vote” for my own suggestion … but when I click on the vote button I get a “403 Forbidden” so I cannot.
At the time when you create a library in Plex: if you add all folder targets at this time and let it scan and download metadata uninterrupted, it will indeed use the file date as “Added at”.
Of course you will have to make sure that your media files don’t have invalid time stamps, like e.g. dates in the future or files with a date set to 01-01-1970 (usually caused by NAS devices without proper ntp support).
@OttoKerner That has not been my experience. Is that a change in one of the more recent updates? The last time I reorganized my movies was November 2019. When I was done, the last added sequence in the new movie library was totally different from the original that I was re-organizing. If both used the file dates, I would expect them to be much, much more similar.
All of my media files are on external USB drives, formatted as NTFS under Windows 10 Home (64 bit). I don’t have any NAS devices. I also do not believe I have any files with future or ‘default’ dates, but I only randomly sampled a few of my 27 movie folders (#A-Z). I can guarantee that some files will have a create date that is newer than the modified date, because NTFS has had bugs with timestamps for 20+ years (Microsoft has been told repeatedly, but they apparently don’t care.) But as long as you are choosing only create (best) or last modified (probably OK) then that would not be an issue.
I can guarantee that the sequence would be different if sorted by creation date. On the other hand, I cannot make that promise for the last accessed date and maybe not even for the last modified date.
No, this behaviour has been implemented since several years. All the users who do have “impossible” dates on their files reporting in the forums are proof of that (search for “stuck in Recently Added”).
As mentioned, the trick is to add all folders during the creation of the library.
If you add the folders to a library which already appears in the side bar, it is too late.
@OttoKerner Sorry if I am being a pest, I want to understand what I have done wrong and, maybe, help find a way to improve Plex if there is an issue as this seems to suggest:
As I understand the statement above, you are saying that my rebuilding the new movie library by adding one folder per day in order to allow the system time to fully process it before adding the next caused the recently added dates of the subsequently added folders to be handled differently.
If true, that would be bad for people who want to add a new folder on a new drive because the one they had been using for a long time filled up. It also makes me wonder about adding individual media files to existing folders … is that also “too late” for whatever adding a folder to an already existing library is “too late” for?
Precisely.
However, if you use the new scanner, it will work several times faster than the old one.
Do also divert the creation of thumbnails and/or the detection of series intros to the Butler.
Also correct. But then these folders should be considered “Newly added” anyway. Because they have not been there before.
Of course. But again, if you add a new file, it is to be considered as “newly added”.
@OttoKerner OK, I think I see. During initial library creation media from all of the folders assigned to the library at that time are added using their file dates as the date added. Once that is complete, anything added from that point onward uses the current date, whether it be an individual file or an entire folder.
If that is correct, than I would like to re-emphasize my request for an option to process new files/folders as if they were initial (using the file dates). Most of the time, that is what I want and expect. And as you said, if they are actually new files, then they will be the most recently added items – but if not, there may be a very good reason why they should not be the most recently added items.
A good example of this is when I split out all of my Disney movies into their own library. I moved them one at a time, as I found them and would have greatly preferred it if they have remained in the original recently added order instead of popping to the front of the list on my home screen.
Anyway, that’s my opinion, do with it what you will. Thanks, Otto, for your help and most of all, your patience with me!
