Plex not playing videos and getting metadata

Okay here is my situation:

  • I just went from a windows to a Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS OS
  • All my movies and TV shows were very neatly organized (following plex guidelines) on 2 HDD’s and everything worked smoothly on windows when adding new movies and such
  • I did not copy over the complete server due to rather spending the time building my collections again from the ground up and adding new artwork etc.
  • I went in head first no thinking without having any prior Linux experience
  • Ubuntu and plex are installed on an 240gb SSD

Now after I got everything installed I wanted to add the movie and tv shows folders from the two HDD’s. However, I couldn’t find them until I eventually stumbled upon the /media/username/HDD directory. I clicked those and well and behold everything started working and ingesting.

Now comes the problem, because I thought plex was still going and retrieving metadata in the background, but it seems to have stopped, leaving me with blank unmatched movies. Also, when I want to change posters from movies or series that have actually loaded, it becomes a blank as soon as I change it.

  • Movies are not match. Plex movie and The Movie Database both can’t find links.
  • I cannot play the movies due to a “Conversion failed. A required codec could not be found or failed to install.” error
  • For the movies that have gotten a match, I cannot change the posters without them going blank again.
  • movies with loaded posters also do not have a match (which is odd)
  • Uploading my own posters directly from said HDD’s however, does work
  • I am seeing ALL of my movies and TV Shows, so no problems there. The problem is in playing and matching them to retrieve metadata.

As I mentioned before I have no prior linux experience so a little help there is always welcome.

Thanks in advance

Server Version#:
Player Version#:

I have just found my Plex is no longer matching new movie content I have added. Selecting match also has no solution as both also say No Matches found…it doesn’t even look like it is actually searching. Nothing has changed on my sever apart from the latest build so confused to why this is no longer working.

May I have the log file ZIP please?

There isn’t anything I can do without seeing what PMS is trying to do / how it is behaving.

Settings - Server - Troubleshooting - Download Logs

PS: If you have enabled VERBOSE logging, Please turn it OFF again. We only need & want DEBUG logging in almost all cases.

Probably want to mount those drives to some place other than /media to avoid permission conflicts.

3 posts were split to a new topic: Windows: Not getting metadata / playing videos

Plex Media Server Logs_2020-08-23_11-22-43.zip (650.5 KB)

Here are the server logs you requested.

The drives are now switching between /mnt/identifier and /media/user/drives without any reason. Even after my roommate mounted the drives yesterday according to these guidelines: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200288606-mounting-ntfs-drives-on-linux/.

Plex is still not finding matches for my movies even after giving the drives all permissions (owner, group and others all read, write and execute). Also, when I want to play something I get this error:

Screenshot from 2020-08-23 11-25-22

Even my roommate who has quite some experience in using ubuntu doesn’t understand what’s happening anymore so help is very very welcome.

Thanks in advance

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