I’m using a third party application that automatically downloads subtitles for me.
However, I have to manually click on the “Refresh Metadata” for the subtitles to show up on Plex.
Is there a way to automate this ?
I know Plex has a scheduled task called “Refresh local metadata every three days”, but 3 days is a pretty long waiting.
If it does work - and your storage isn’t local - or if you spin down your storage drives - do NOT enable ‘Empty Trash Automatically’ 'cause that’s exactly what Plex will do - and if you sleep your storage - you’ll be unhappy when Plex has to “Re-index” your entire Plexiverse every day.
If it does work - ONLY new items or their ‘bits’ - like subs - will automatically be detected and indexed. Old Items (Movies in Folders specifically) that haven’t changed won’t be scanned at all. There’s no need to scan items that don’t change.
I have those settings indeed enabled, and each time a new subtitle gets downloaded Plex starts a library scanning.
But after the scanning, the subtitle is not available, I have to manually go and click on the “Refresh Metadata” button for the subtitle to show up.
However, when a new episode is added the automatic scan works great and Plex pick it up.
The problem happens when I add a local media asset such as a subtitle, the automatic scan doesn’t work, and the subtitle doesn’t show up until I click the “Refresh Metadata” button.
My files are stored on an external ExFAT HDD.
@JuiceWSA does the automatic scan work for you when adding a new subtitle?
This sounds problematic - @ChuckPa@OttoKerner should have a peek at us and see if they can offer some important info I am unaware of.
Yes, My storage is all Local, the feature works great.
I drop in something new - a full item or make one minute change in either the file itself, or adding a file - like a sub file - in a few moments of it’s arrival, Plex wakes up, Yawns, Farts real loud and finds all the new stuff - then goes back to sleep.
apart from the wind - it all works exactly as expected…lol
Normally, Plex will look for new side car subtitle files as soon as you enter the preplay screen of the movie in question.
Make sure that this process doesn’t take too long. By storing each movie and its associated side car files in a separate folder. That way, only this particular subfolder is inspected.
Whether MacOS has an issue with exFat, I cannot say. I haven’t used fruity PC hardware in about 25 years.
@pshanew responds well to Mac Questions. Let’s hope he responds well to this one. @BigWheel would probably know how to direct the traffic - if he didn’t handle it immediately.
Well, that’s pretty much everybody, but the cleaning woman.
Get her in here!
At step 4 Plex detected something changed and automatically imported the newly added subtitle in no time!
Conclusion: Plex is having a hard time automatically importing local media assets on change (at least on my MacBook Pro 2017) because:
I’m using an external HDD
I’m using an external HDD formatted as exFAT
@JuiceWSA if I follow your gut, it’s #2.
I’m going to test this again with an external HDD formatted as something else then exFAT and if it works then it’s definitely #2.
Instead of specifying a directory for it to refresh, try specifying the show’s item ID. You can find the Id by doing something similar to the following:
Plex Media Scanner --list --section XX
This will list all the shows and their item IDs in that section. You could then do something like:
Plex Media Scanner --refresh --section XX --item YY
This should cause the metadata for the specific show to be refreshed. You can try adding --scan and --analyze in there too, but I don’t think they should be necessary.
@JuiceWSA your gut was right it was indeed #2, I tested those 4 steps on an external HDD formatted as something else then exFAT (Mac OS Extended Journaled to be precise). Again at step 4 Plex detected something changed and automatically imported the newly added subtitle in no time!
So the final conclusion is: exFAT is evil and I will avoid using this in the future with Plex, the only benefit of using exFAT on a Mac is the ability to switch between Mac and Windows easily, but I don’t need this for my dedicated Plex HDD.
So I guess I’ll just export all my files to that non-exFat HDD, I’m lucky I’ve a relatively small library for the moment and it should be done overnight.
So for people using a third party solution that downloads subtitles automatically and are stuck with exFat you can write a script that will force refresh a specific TV Show or Movie, most of those subtitle management solutions allow you to run a script once a subtitle gets downloaded.
Many thanks to @JuiceWSA and @pshanew for helping me out with that issue!
