Plex scans correctly first time then rearranges everything on a rescan

General Discussions
1

I’m having issues with Plex identifying episodes of Doctor Who (2005). The only pattern I can find is that it fails and re-identifies items on a rescan. For example, season 2 moves to 2 or more special folders, other episodes pile on top of each other

Seasons 1, 4, 7, 9 and 10 are rock solid. Everything else is getting piled on top of itself and I end up with 2-3 episodes from different seasons and folders being identified as the same episode.

Here are the steps to reproduce it.And I’ve done this 3-4 times.

  1. Remove seasons 2, 3, 5, 6, 8
  2. Do the plex dance, including clean bundles
  3. Add Season 2. Wait for plex to do it’s thing. It works correctly.
  4. Add Season 3. It works correctly but all of season 2 is now split across 2 “Specials” folders.

In this next screenshot I’ve added back Seasons 5, 6, 8. Season 3 has now disappeared into Specials as well. The first Specials shown, with 12 episodes, is effectively Season 3. The second contains some season 2 episodes but they are misidentified. Where the rest are I have no idea. You can see the naming convention for Episode 26 of specials. Not even close.

At this point, seasons 5,6,8 are behaving themselves – that is until I add the proper Specials folder back in.

Here we have a Season 5 episode as a special. The previous Season 2 “Specials” have gone somewhere. The real specials are nowhere to be seen.

In all cases, episodes are named according to season

E:\TV Shows\Doctor Who (2005)\Season XX\Doctor Who (2005) - SXXEYY - title.ext

I don’t know where to look next. Any help appreciated. Have not seen this behaviour with any other show.

2

First, let’s rule out the influence of embedded metadata from your m4v/mp4 files:
Go to Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB
In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase

Now, clear out the local agent cache:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202967376-clearing-plugin-channel-agent-http-caches/

Now try again with the Plex Dance

3

Thanks Otto. The agent didn’t stay at the bottom of the list in each case but is the lowest checked item so I assume that’s okay. There was one case where it was on top.

I deleted com.plexapp.agents.localmedia

And then I danced. And did a second scan to be sure as that’s when most of the problems seemed to occur. The result is better but still not quite right.

Specials is still missing. I was monitoring the show screen as it loaded everything. Specials was initially there with an episode count of 81. Then as it processed, I saw it remove all items (the count fell) until there was nothing there and the Specials season was removed.

4

There is another anomaly here that may shed some light. Showing 12 seasons on the All > TV Shows > By Title page. When clicking through, there are only 10.

5

Still working on this. Did the dance with the Specials folder only. All hell broke loose again. I now have 5 x special folders, and lost seasons 2, 3, 5, 6, 8! Back to the steps from Otto earlier.

6

Don’t erase just the localmedia cache.
“Treat” thetvdb and themoviedb as well.

7

Thanks again Otto. I think I’ve fixed it for now. When I moved the main Doctor Who (2005) out of Plex’s view so that I could dance again, I noted there was still 1 season showing on the list of TV shows. That was the 12th of 11 seasons shown above. I “deleted” that season within Plex (there were not files matched to it) and then pulled everything back in. It seems stable now.

Somehow Plex seems to have created an extra season somewhere.