Plex deciding to ignore files

[sipheren]

Server Version#: 1.26.0.5715
Player Version#: 4.76.1

Not sure where to even start, Plex has been fine and even shown the particular show I am dealing with now, but then its decided to just drop a bunch after I added some new episodes.

From the logs, it finds the shows, finds the files and then decides nothing has changed and doesnt doesn’t show anything, you can only see the empty folders in folder view.

Is there a way to get the thing to just show the god damned episodes like it is meant to, this has been driving me nuts all morning and I have tried everything I can on this site but nothing has worked nor does anything seems specifically tailored to this issue. Its like the db thinks files are there and showing but they arent.

I have tried the usual, scan, update meta, clear bin, all of which are set to happen auto anyway. I even deleted all these shows completely, did all the refreshes again, added them and nothing, still finds them, decides they exist and doesnt show anything.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, can upload full log as well but most isn’t related to this and I would need to remove some stuff.

From the logs:
May 09, 2022 11:36:11.267 [0x7facf457db38] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /media/TV Shows/Halo (parent: yes)
May 09, 2022 11:36:11.275 [0x7facf457db38] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /media/TV Shows/Halo/Season 1 (parent: yes)
May 09, 2022 11:36:11.283 [0x7facf457db38] DEBUG - Directory had 7 files, database had 0 files, can’t skip.
May 09, 2022 11:36:11.291 [0x7facf457db38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 0dbf92da-2d05-48c6-bd37-a598d4e74c3c - completed 50.0% - Scanning TV Shows
May 09, 2022 11:36:11.291 [0x7facf457db38] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /media/TV Shows/The Simpsons (parent: yes)

Then later on:
May 09, 2022 11:36:20.561 [0x7facf457db38] DEBUG - Updating directory ‘’ (ID 2026) to time 2022-05-09 11:35:34.
May 09, 2022 11:36:20.570 [0x7facf457db38] DEBUG - Updating directory ‘Halo’ (ID 3679) to time 2022-05-09 10:06:32.
May 09, 2022 11:36:20.570 [0x7facf457db38] DEBUG - Updating directory ‘Halo/Season 1’ (ID 3680) to time 2022-05-09 09:48:45.

And finally:
May 09, 2022 11:36:50.015 [0x7facf446bb38] DEBUG - Content-Length of /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/PhotoTranscoder/ee/ee4c1e851b3467a464085a062cf4befc8128793a.jpg is 25446 (of total: 25446).
May 09, 2022 11:36:50.017 [0x7facf2ddbb38] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /media/TV Shows/Halo (parent: yes)
May 09, 2022 11:36:50.021 [0x7facf2ddbb38] DEBUG - Skipping over directory ‘Halo’, as nothing has changed; removing 0 media items from map.
May 09, 2022 11:36:50.023 [0x7facf2ddbb38] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /media/TV Shows/Halo/Season 1 (parent: yes)
May 09, 2022 11:36:50.026 [0x7facf3115b38] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.200.104:50096] 200 GET /photo/:/transcode?width=240&height=360&minSize=1&upscale=1&url=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F23752%2Fthumb%2F1652046993%3FX-Plex-Token%3Dxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (19 live) TLS GZIP 23ms 25446 bytes (pipelined: 6)
May 09, 2022 11:36:50.030 [0x7facf2ddbb38] DEBUG - Directory had 7 files, database had 0 files, can’t skip.
May 09, 2022 11:36:50.037 [0x7facf2ddbb38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 7fce3aa3-c3b5-4bd4-be8e-429ea74dccbd - completed 50.0% - Scanning TV Shows

[dbirch]

Can you copy/paste one of the file names that isnt showing up?

[sipheren]

Sure, Halo [S01E01].mkv

Its all managed by Radarr and Sonarr so the naming is uniformed, and like I was saying, they were showing just fine a while back, just seems when some extra eps got added yesterday the whole folder got ignored.

[dbirch]

That is because you are not using the proper naming format. anything in [ ] get ignored. See Naming and Organizing Your TV Show Files | Plex Support ShowName – s02e17 – Optional_Info.ext is the recommended format or in your case Halo S01E01

[sipheren]

That can’t be right, all my shows are named like that…

[dbirch]

@sipheren

That can’t be right

Wanna bet? About 2-3 releases ago plex starting enforcing the [ ] ignoring more aggressively. remove them and rescan

[sipheren]

Just doesn’t seem like the solution, I will try it but when I have hundreds of others shows and eps named the same and they all show, seems odd, plus this show was showing also before it decided not to…

Example of others:

[sipheren]

Oh right, so for some stupid reason the people that run Plex have decided to crap on my entire library for no real reason?

Meaning I now have to go rename all my content? Why on earth would they do that?

[dbirch]

@sipheren

Why on earth would they do that?

That format has never been the correct standard, As part of the scanner upgrades they implemented a way to add information to a file name and have plex ignore it. IE using square brackets. If you Want an easy way to rename your files, I would suggest ReNamer « Products « den4b.com and then remove [ ] from the filename, should make it a LOT faster to update. I got caught by the same issue, I renamed thousands of files in a couple minutes.

[dbirch]

IE if you wanted to include the format and resolution in the file name you could add [1080p Bluray] without confusing the plex scanner/matching agents

I will also note that the SxxExx format has been the recommended standard for at least 10 years.

[sipheren]

Yeah ok, I set all this up years ago, so iist just been running without me doing much. That change works, so thank you very much. I will have to go through and make some changes to the naming and the current names.

Cheers