Please explain the "cast list"

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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1

Can someone explain how the cast list works?

I’m confused because I seem to find a lot of people that are missing from some movies and some they show up.

For example, Peter Cushing:
I have a “Peter Cushing” for some 17 movies and it has the correct (at least it seems the correct photo, although he looks pretty young) photo, and the movies listed are Hammer movies and the ones I would expect.
I also know that he was in Star Wars (the first one) as a minor bad guy. Star Wars is not show in the list of the 17 movies, but part of a completely different list of Peter Cushing movies. But going to Star Wars, he is listed, although with no profile picture and a completely different list of movies. Neither list seems to share films either.

What is going on here? Where does this data come from? Why would a single, well known, person have to completely different profiles? Is this fixable?

And I have seen this behavior with other actors (they all just don’t come to mind at the moment).

Can some one explain this to me?

2

For the cast list to work as expected, all your libraries (and the libraries which might have been shared with you!) must use the new “Plex Movie” agent.
The library(s) must also have performed a complete run of “Refresh Metadata” relatively recently.

For me this looks just as expected:

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3

To expand on what Otto said, odds are your metadata is an inconsistent state. You probably started with the legacy scanner/agent, and at some point upgraded to the modern scanner/agent. Back somewhere around 1.26 Plex changed the way it handles metadata. All information that has been added/refreshed after that point behaves differently than pre-change data. So in Plex’s mind you may have a pre and post change actor for the same name.

By refreshing the metadata for the entire library you will update any of the legacy information to the new format, and the everything should behave as expected.

4

Thanks @OttoKerner and @dbirch but I have a concern. I have had trouble in the past and lost all my play info and all the art reset.

Will refreshing the metadata reset all this again? I don’t want to redo everything again.

5

What you are describing is a matched/unmatch/match situation. This happens due to poor file naming on the underlying files.

I am going to get some push back from some people on this opinion. But I make sure my files are named correctly, If I want custom art, I set that in the folder with the movie per recommended naming. Then I make sure my watch status is synced with the cloud (a fairly recent feature) and then I just let Plex do its thing. Ill refresh my metadata every ~90 days.

Because of the proper planning and configuration I don’t have those issues you experienced.

6

Edit your movie library
go to the Advanced tab
look what is currently set as Scanner and Agent
(don’t change it yet)

If it is both set to “Plex Movie” (without “Legacy” appearing), you can proceed.

Now inspect the plex media info XML of a movie which shows the deviating actor photo.
What is the content of the first guid="... XML property? (guid all in lower case letters!)

7

Scanner = Plex Movie
Agent = Plex Movie

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8

I didn’t see a lower case "guid’ anywhere. This is what I did find.

<Guid id="imdb://tt0065738"/>
<Guid id="tmdb://3075"/>
<Guid id="tvdb://12135"/>

This is for the Cushing movie “Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed”.

For Star Wars its "null’. There is no guid info, upper or lower case.

P.S. Is there a reason why this XML page goes blank and only lets you view it for 10 seconds and the “find on this page” function doesn’t work? Made things harder than they need to be. I had to go back and select XML at least a dozen times.

9

It doesn’t. This must be the doing of your browser.
If it is Safari, use “view source code”.

10

Um, what happened. I put in what I had but it’s not showing in my message.

And the XML page is blank when I open in a new tab or new window.

11

Firefox.

It displays for like 10 seconds then goes blank. Searching makes it goes blank and opening in a new tab or window starts off blank.

12

The one I’m after is actually located above these. Not on a separate line but rather in the midst of other XML properties.

13

OK. In edge it’s: guid=“plex://movie/5d9f34ef68e4c8001fb5d6ad”

The other Guid(s) are the same:

Guid id=“imdb://tt0065738”/>

Guid id=“tmdb://3075”/>

Guid id=“tvdb://12135”/>

14

There looks to be 4.

guid=“iva://api.internetvideoarchive.com/2.0/DataService/VideoAssets(892498)”
guid=“plex://movie/5d776853999c64001ec3358e”
guid=“plex://movie/5d77682c999c64001ec2d7ee”
guid=“plex://movie/5d77686c23d5a3001f4ebf0e”

15

This looks rather good. guid=“plex://movie/ means that this movie has already been matched to the new agent. This in turn makes it rather unlikely that the movie will lose its watched status during Refresh Metadata.
Perform it now with this single movie. Wait a moment for the process to complete.
Then observe the result in the actors row.

Those below are only for trailers or “related movies”. Only the first one at the top is relevant.

16

Let me see what Star Wars is.

17

guid=“com.plexapp.agents.imdb://tt0076759?lang=en”
guid=“iva://api.internetvideoarchive.com/2.0/DataService/VideoAssets(3883)?lang=en&bitrates=80,212,450,750,1500,2500,5000,8000&duration=68&adaptive=1&dts=0”
guid=“com.plexapp.agents.imdb://tt0120915?lang=en”
guid=“com.plexapp.agents.imdb://tt4853102?lang=en”
guid=“com.plexapp.agents.imdb://tt0118571?lang=en”

18

If you find this, it means that the movie is still matched to the Legacy agent.
Refresh Metadata will convert it to the new agent, but the movie may lose your custom poster selection. It should however retain its “watched” status.

19

I refreshed Star Wars.

Now it show up with the “first 17”, but changed the art work.

I’m do both pick different art from the available and download my own directly from the internet. Depends on the movie. I use the art to distinguish “similar” movies. Like all the Star Wars have similar art.

I hesitate to refresh if the art is lost as I don’t typically save them but use the hyperlink AND I don’t always remember where I got the ones I liked.

Where is the art saved for the thumbnails I download. I can copy them to another folder and the re-link as need, although that will be a pain.

20

So can I save the art it has? Or has my weekend just been assigned to Plex artwork regeneration?