Sorry I didn’t mention it. They are all in a Parent ‘Movies’ folder. So the parent Movies folder is what is selected as the library folder.
You can guess why I asked. 
Add each letter folder to the Plex Library instead.
I have same setup as @TehRiehlDeal where individual movie files grouped by letter based subfolders in my library folder. This used to be an “approved” half way alternative between all movie files in one top level folder and each movie in its own subfolder. The sub folders would keep scans\refreshes to just those subfolders reducing some load. What does adding each subfolder individually do differently? I’m honestly curious if I should change things up.
I hadn’t noticed that but I usually add a few movies at a time so that pattern never stuck for me. Makes sense though.
I’m fixing them manually because I also need to reset the “watched” flag.
The intermediate folder confuses the scanner.
Right. Movies are more likely to be grouped with their neighbors. Or considered as alternate versions. Or considered as possible extras.
I’m not assigning any “value” to any particular way of organizing things. It just doesn’t work as smoothly in Plex.
Not that I can recall? Plex tries really hard to scan whatever you give it, but I think movies files in per-movie folders has always been the ideal, and movie files in one folder is the half-way alternative.
“It used to work this way” is how I feel when something is annoying me, before I give up and do what works, instead of what I think should work.
I like that idea, but I’m genuinely unsure if it’s true in a “mixed depth” Library.
If reducing scan load is a priority, put every movie in its own folder. M:\Movies\Moviename (YYYY). That reduces scan/refresh load quite significantly - only files in the immediate folder are scanned if one changes.
If you want to keep per-letter folders on the filesystem, add each letter to Plex, and remove the parent. Mixed levels of nesting can cause inconsistent weirdness.
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If you’re looking for an easy way to rename/cleanup your file structure, Ill copy/paste my standard suggestion:
If you want to save yourself a lot of time I would recommend using Download - tinyMediaManager and use ${title} (${year}) {imdb-${imdb}} as the new name format.
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Hey @Volts …yeah, not official (used to be in the documentation), but was regularly recommended by Plex representatives for years as an alternative option between all movie files in one folder and all movie files in their own folder.
The media scan is per subfolder so only the letter folder I add new movie files to scan when the “automatically scan on changes” is enabled.
For me it’s a nice balanced option for my library size and management. I was curious if adding the letter folders to the library directly would be better but wasn’t sure if it was a real impact or just perceived impact. Even switching that around would be a “moving library content” task which is a bit annoying too.
Someday I’ll probably have to buy FileBot (or @dbirch recommendation of TinyMM) to rename\rebuild my entire movie library as it seems Plex is getting more and more strict about that structure.
Going more proprietary in the structure also makes it a bit trickier to swap between media server software in the future so that was another reason I was holding off in case I need to switch someday.
As you can see I’m mostly just trying to avoid extra work.
If you want to do \A\ and \B\ directories you can, however you need to add those folders to the library (aka ~26 directories) instead of the root Movies folder. Its when you both use the \A\ structure and use Movies as the root that is problematic.
Ill also note that using TMM you can rename/restructure thousands of movies in a couple hours. Ive been using the same title structure for my movies ${title} (${year}) ${imdb}.<ext> for years without issue (not the technical format that Plex asks for but close enough.
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Mostly I’m avoiding redoing it at all if possible because either way I’m moving content as far as Plex is concerned and that can get tricky\risky - particularly on a server that has limited space.
Sorry this went a bit off topic but it does highlight that if this bug is losing matching because of subfolders then that’d be another instance of the strictures on following the official naming conventions even if other naming\organizing was working just fine for years.
I’m 86% sure that Plex won’t see it as a move.
I can confidently recommend that you try it. After all, you’ll be the one with a problem if it goes wrong, not me. lol
Make backup of DB
Disable Automatically Empty Trash
Add all of the letter folders && remove the parent folder in the same step
I think it will detect that the files have matching hashes and be seamless.
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This does usually work for me but I’ve had a few hiccups before so I get nervous either way - some of those hiccups were my own fault. I tend to go with “if it’s working, don’t touch it” process when possible.
At the very least I should probably get rid of “subfolders” as a thing and only have top level folders added to the library (unless the subfolder is the individual movie folder) so I’ll work on that for now.
Edit: Did it… worked as advertised.
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Confirming that 1.25.5.5492 still doesn’t fix the issue of duplicates unmatching.
@Insomnic_1 one of the hiccups I’ve noticed in the past when I move media around either from one location to another or like you done Add all of the letter folders && remove the parent folder in the same step that --analyze-deeply seems to want to be done on everything that was moved again.
Look for stuff like Debug — [JobRunner] Job running: FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS='/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/62cc2bc-4226-linux-x86_64/' X_PLEX_TOKEN='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' '/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Scanner' '--analyze-deeply' '--item' '30526' '--log-file-suffix' ' Deep Analysis' and see if you see this during nightly maintenance. If so its being regenerated and will take some time to complete depending on your content.
I had a thread on this in the past Regeneration of `intro markers` after moving plex media server from one System to Another which was somewhat related.
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Thanks for that info … I’m gonna have a changing hardware situation in the future and I’m gathering all the little tidbits I find so this is very helpful (bookmarking your other thread on it too).
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Oof… my collections are all messed up now after overnight tasks… randomly some collections are fine, some are missing all movies, some are missing some movies… The collection shows in the library and is hiding the missing movies so they’re flagged somewhere still. Though searching for the missing title comes up with no results.
Sigh. See?! Nothing good comes from making changes. I’ll start a new thread if I can’t figure out a solution.
Edit: Scan running and all my previous history is gone for these random movies that went “missing”. 100s of movies are being seen as new movies and all custom artwork and collection I setup on them is gone. I have no idea why some were fine and others weren’t. Guess I have a weekend project.
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That’s interesting. I wonder if what @Insomnic_1 did would result in changed media_parts. My guess was they’d be identified as identical files and would re-use the original media_parts entries.
I’ve been consolidating Libraries lately, moving folders from one Library to a different Library.
Intro detection and thumbnails have been preserved, no issues. (I did manually save and restore the added_at for each guid.)
But - I’m not changing the path on disk. That might be an important detail.
Think the path on disk/mount point/library path etc… If they change then this stuff kicks in again. That’s my experience anyhow
Here’s a good example to illustrate the randomness of this:
Back to the Future - 1 and 3 were missing, 2 was fine.
Conan the Barbarian? Fine. Conan the Destroyer? Missing.
Star Wars? All of them fine except for Ewoks Battle for Endor.
My custom artwork is still there, just not selected so the references still exist somewhere there.
My change was essentially moving up one level of folder and until the overnight tasks everything was working and fine.
It’s particularly annoying because it’s inconsistent. I’m gonna run some bundle cleanup and rescan to hopefully catch anything else and then move on…
BEWARE LIBARY CHANGES!!
Edit: Clear Bundles and optimize database cleared the rest of the collections from any titles so … starting over. Wee!
Almost sounds like a partial metadata load. I wonder would a full refresh of the metadata of your library help in anyway?
