PLEX not showing subtitles until I manually trigger Metadata Refresh

Server Version#: 1.16.3.1433 ( I tried going back to the latest stable and used the preivous beta with no diference)
Player Version#: 3.108.2 web app (irrelevant in this case)

Recently I have been reworking my subtitles with Bazarr and I have found that after bazarr properly downloads the subtitles and adds them to the same folder as the movie with the proper naming, I then have to manually trigger a “refresh metadata” for them to appear on plex.
This issue made me test if this behaviour happens if I manually add a properly named .srt file next to the movie, and it does happen. I always have to trigger “refresh metadata” for the subtitle to appear in plex

Any tip to make this so that the subtitles are automatically available in plex as I add them to the proper folder?

The butler task ‘Refresh local metadata every three days’ is made for cases like this.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201553286-scheduled-tasks/

The frustrating part of all this is that plex detects that something was changed in the folder if I delete or add something, showing this message on the console:
“Library section 1 (Movies) will be updated because of a change in ‘“D:\Filmes\Batman Begins (2004)”/Batman.Begins.2005.2160P.Bluray.Remux.Hevc.Dts-Hd.Ma.5.1-Fgt.pt-BR.srt’”

a couple of seconds after I see this message:
“Notification: Scanning the “Movies” section -”

And a little after I see this
“Notification: Library scan complete - Extra information may still be downloading from the Internet”

But in the end of all this the subtitles are still not there and that makes absolutely no sense

But what if I want it to search immediately and not every 3 days?
Should I disable that butler setting?

Test if the symptoms are the same if you use the language code .por instead of .pt-BR

I will do that but I think they are, it also happens if I use the .en for english subtitles and the .pt for native portuguese subtitles

Did you instruct bazarr to convert all text encodings to UTF-8?
Other encodings won’t work.

yes I did, but I also tried manually downloading a subtitle from opensubtitles and adding it manually with the same result

Is Run a partial scan when changes are detected enabled under settings/Library?

Then I guess you’ll have to tell your automated setup to trigger a refresh of the changed items after it is done:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201242707-plex-media-scanner-via-command-line/

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201638786-plex-media-server-url-commands/

I had it enabled and disabled, it made no difference to this particular problem

It really does feel like there is some caching issue. For example, if instead of adding a subtitle I remove one that is already detected in plex, plex will detect the change, do the same process as before and in the end the subtitle I removed will still show up as an option in plex, but if I play the file with said subtitle selected nothing shows up. If I click refresh metadata the subtitle then is removed from the drop down menu

My biggest question is this, how is plex not doing this automatically? Before I used sub-zero as a subtitle solution, but i felt like I had little control and the file structure wasn’t the best as it downloaded subtitles as metadata and not side by side with the video files.
But back then this wasn’t an issue, it always refreshed the subtitles almost instantly

I also notice this in the console that may or may not be related to this issue.

the entry right after:
“Notification: Scanning the “Series” section -”
is
“Scanning section 2”
and right after that is:
“Killing job.”
and right after that it’s the following:
Job running: EAE_ROOT=’\?\C:\Users\xside\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\Transcode\Sessions\EasyAudioEncoder’ FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS=‘C:\Users\xside\AppData\Local\Plex\ Media\ Server\Codecs\2144ff1-2376-windows-x86\’ X_PLEX_TOKEN=‘xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’ C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\Plex Media Scanner.exe --scan --refresh --section 2 --directory “E:\Series\24\Season 1”

Followed by 2 more attempts with the exact same command.

Does this look normal?

Is there no answer for this issue?
I know my use case may not be the most common but can’t help but think that my server has an issue. I don’t remember having to refresh metadata if I wanted local subs to appear in plex. I’m pretty sure the behavior wasn’t like this in the past, and that the normal “scan disk for changes” used to pick up new .srt subtitles added to the movie folders

Sadly note a Windows guy, so clueless here, and simply used the one bullet I had :wink:

1 Like

A little development on something I tried.
If I create a new user account in windows, install and setup a new clean plex media server, the subtitles are properly detected automatically when I add them to the library folder.

Now the question is: What do you think is wrong with my server? Maybe some folder or file is broken? Maybe permissions or Registry edit?

I have my entire family using my server so simply starting a new one from scratch will be problematic. If it comes to that I’m not sure I can keep the watch history for all users without copying the entire metadata folder and with that the issue probably comes back aswell

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