Plex Keeps Unmatching Movies In My Library

[allout916]

Server Version#: 1.25.3.5409

Everything has been working fine until the last week. I added some new movies and went to update my library by scanning library files. It unmatched over 3000 of my movies. I manually fix all of them. Then today, 01/15/2021, I added a few more movies and re-scanned library files. This time it unmatched another 1000+ of my movies. Anyone have any ideas why Plex keeps unmatching my movies that I had already matched on my server?

[Elijah_Baley]

Naming and structure??

9 out of 10 times matching problems is the result of naming/structure issues.
In general Movies should be named:
Movie Name (year).ext (The year in parenthesis is important)
You can also put anything in the file name you want if it is enclosed in square brackets. Enerything enclosed in square brackets is ignored by Plex. So from the above example{
Movie Name (year) [this can be anything you want].ext

Another place for problems is using internal tags (That is using local media assets.)

If you do not get correct matching it is most often due to using file names as presented by some download sources.

I understand it is possible to lock all metadata fields in Plex so that Plex never changes anything. However I have noted that there are a LOT of posts bemoaning that Plex changes fields that are supposed to be locked.

Also: Just because bad naming used to work does not mean that it always will.

[allout916]

I’ve been running my Plex server for the last 1.5 years the same. I manually match all my movies so that I know they are the correct movies. It just now in the last week that Plex started unmatching all the movies that I already manually matched on the server.

[Volts]

Have you upgraded Plex in the last few days?

What version of Plex Media Server? You listed the version of the Web Client.

Do you have Plex Media Server logs available? It’s worth grabbing and saving them if they cover a time period when this happened.

[Snowknight26]

Same thing happening here. Ever since one of the later versions of Plex Server (tested on 1.25.3.5409 but it happened with a few previous builds), Plex unmatches existing movies.

This is reproducible by creating a 2nd copy of a movie (for example, remuxing/copying a movie into the same folder).

In my example, I had the following folders/files:

• [Movies root]\Stargate\Stargate 1994 1080p Blu-ray H.264 FLAC.mkv
• [Movies root]\The Great Escape\The Great Escape 1080p Blu-ray H.264 FLAC.mkv

Creating a duplicate file (such as when adding subtitles to an existing mkv) causes the existing file to unmatch, while the newly-created file matches but shows up under ‘Recently Added in Movies’, which it shouldn’t, since it should be a duplicate match.

Fixing this is tedious and requires running SQLite queries to fix the added_at time in the metadata_items table, but that still doesn’t fix the watched status due to the unmatching shenanigans/new database IDs.

Attached are some verbose logs of the issue.

Plex Media Server Logs_2022-01-16_01-30-37.zip (4.1 MB)

[drzoidberg33]

@Snowknight26

some verbose logs

Thanks, but please never enable verbose logging unless specifically asked to, it just adds noise 99% of the time.

I’ve tracked down the issue here and I will work on a fix this coming week. It’s due to your folder names not having the year in them along with some recent server changes.

[Snowknight26]

Thanks for looking into it. I had verbose logging enabled for a separate reason that I hadn’t seen any posts about nor posted about myself since it happened so infrequently (Plex server stops responding to new incoming network requests, be it external, local, or loopback, etc.).

Outside of that, they’re typically disabled.

[allout916]

I always update to the newest version of Plex. My server is currently on version 1.25.3.5409

[Unknown_User]

Yeah I have the same issue since 1.25.3.5409. Every day about 10 movies get unmatched. After refreshing their methadata it is matching them again.

[suprnova74]

It looks to have happened since 1.25.2.5319 as that’s what I’m currently running and experienced the same thing. I thought scanning library files just looks for new/changed files and doesn’t reassess all metadata, but that’s what it seems to do as a ton of my movies/tv shows are unmatched as well. I typically rename files but apparently a bunch were manual matches.

I find it odd that if it found a match (whether automatically or manually) that it would rather unmatch them then leave them matched.

[Snowknight26]

Although no fix was specifically tested in the new beta, I decided to see if it was fixed, but unfortunately it was not.

Tested by creating another duplicate and seeing how Plex behaves. Once again, original file became unmatched and the new file was matched.

In case you’re interested @drzoidberg33, debug logs are attached (not verbose).

Plex Media Server Logs_2022-01-20_07-33-53.zip (3.7 MB)

Afterwards, I checked the list of unmatched movies and found a whole slew of them there too. Doh.

[drzoidberg33]

The fix is not in this beta, only the version after that.

[gregor.smith]

Happened to me a couple of weeks ago, unamtached everything, removed metadata and even play count

Adding files erases the metadata and play count of other files in same folder

Server Version#: 1.25.3.5385 I’m using the Stand-Alone Movie Files method as a directory with a handful of subdirectories for collections I like to keep together and movies named in accordance to the “moviename (year).ext” naming scheme. In 7+ years I’ve had no issues with this, but recently (well, noticed yesterday) that when I’ve added a few new files and scanned the library, it finds the new file and proceeds to show the red delete trash can icon on files in the same directory, it then re-ad…

I was told to do a “Refresh All Metadata” as apparently something was broken in the transition to the new agent, even though I’d been using the new agent for 6+ months

[Manujito]

Thanks for the quick fix. Any idea when it will go live? I updated my server a couple days ago and I keep getting a few movies unmatched randomly every day. Or do you suggest downgrading in the mean time?

[mike4001]

Same question when can we expect the fix?

Problem is also happening to me.

Thanks

[Snowknight26]

To confirm, is the fix supposed to be in 1.25.4.5468?

[Insomnic_1]

ServerVersion 1.25.5.5492 still getting movies randomly unmatched.

Once the fix is released, will the scheduled task for library scan take care of re-matching and will the fix impact the movies I specifically unmatched manually?

Additionally - looks like the “unmatched” filter for a library doesn’t work if a movie is in a collection set to hide contents making it tricky to find the unmatched movies (particularly if the title\art has been set manually).

Edit: 26+ unmatched again today and I noticed the “watched” flag gets reset which then kinda throws off my smart collection for tracking movies that aren’t recently watched. This time I noticed a mix of “unmatched” filter success\failure with collections so I have no idea why some unmatched in collections don’t come up in with that filter and others do.

[TehRiehlDeal]

I am also noticing this as well. Only seemed to start happening a few weeks ago. I’ve been running my plex server for many years and have never run into this issue before.

I will say I have my Movie library sorted in separate folders for each letter of the alphabet and it seems like any time a movie gets added to say folder ‘S’ the only movies that seem to get affected are the movies contained in that same folder, all of the other movies in other folders seem to be just fine.

To fix this issue I just run a refresh all metadata, yes it’s a crude and heavy fix, but it works for me. Just hope this bug can get figured out and squashed.

[Volts]

@TehRiehlDeal

separate folders for each letter of the alphabet

Are those letters folders each added to the Library?

Or is just the parent folder added to the library?