I’m running unRAID with the “Cache Directories” plugin and the linuxserver Plex-Docker.
Like 2 versions ago Plex spins up data disks when updating metadata. It happens when metadata is refreshed during maintenance, but also when I click on a movie poster to get the “summary page”. The summary page opens with no information, the circle is spinning where the poster should be and after the disk is spun up it shows the “old” metadata and the circle continues spinning until Plex finished updating the metadata (whysoever the metadata needs to be updated “on the fly” when it should have been done during maintenance). The metadata of course isn’t located on the data disks, it’s on so called “Cache” SSDs. The “Cache directories” plugin itself seems to be working, e.g. performing a library scan takes a couple of seconds and no disks spin up. When I check data disk access, I can see that Plex “opens” the e.g. movie data files when doing a metadata update.
I already did a manual update of all metadata for all libraries to make sure there’s no old metadata that could cause an update.
We see this behavior on two Plex servers with more or less the same setup (unRAID, Cache Directories etc.). Do any of you experience this (changed) behavior, too? Does anyone have an idea how to solve this problem?
In the Library’s Settings → Advanced, is Prefer local metadata enabled? That might cause Plex to re-read certain metadata out of the media file itself.
Or Use local assets? I believe Plex scans and reads local asset files during metadata refresh.
Both were/are disabled on the library we experience the behavior, but they were enabled on another library. I disabled these and also made sure it’s disabled in Settings → Agents (everywhere, except for Personal Media).
Nope, this doesn’t help. I also tried enabling and disabling local assets and metadata.
Not only is it spinning up the disks when refreshing metadata for older movies, it’s even happening for movies I added 4h ago. I don’t even get the point (besides accessing the disk) why the metadata needs to be updated after 4h where it was done the last time…
Btw. it’s not happening for series, just tested it. Clicking the movie poster shows the seasons, clicking the seasons shows the episodes…no metadata update.
Any time there is a change in the folder where a movie resides we’ll mark that folder as changed. If all your movies are in one big folder then anytime you add or remove a movie then we’ll think something may have changed and check the files for the movie you’re accessing.
If your movies are in their own folders then only changes inside its own folder will trigger this behaviour.
That Plex searches the whole folder when a movie is added or deleted is ok, that’s what I expect and have configured.
But why is it updating the metadata when I’m clicking on a movie poster in the overview for a movie that I added 4h ago? Or why can’t it update the metadata without accessing the movie file itself (which it maybe did before, when disks weren’t spun up)? I mean this should be something between the agent and the database/metadata-directories and not the agent and the movie file. Maybe I’m getting “metadata” wrong, totally possible, since I totally rely on Plex for this stuff and normally don’t care about it.
That Plex needs to access the movie file before I hit “Play” just by clicking the movie poster in the overview definitely is a new behavior to me. It’s also totally possible that Plex always behaved like that and I just didn’t recognize it, because I implemented a workaround with caching directories and that’s the part that is no longer working.
Before I spend weeks on troubleshooting my server (which I of course already started) I just want to make sure that there wasn’t anything changed on the Plex side.
I just wanted to give feedback: After moving every movie to its own folder, the problem is gone. Why it was working for years without being in separate folders…I have no idea.
