I use Sonarr to manage my TV series. I noticed that Plex stopped matching lots of The Daily Show episodes with metadata. I have Sonarr managing this show using the “daily” or airdate format which has worked perfectly fine up until now.
This is what my directory/file structure looks like:
The file naming is consistent across the entire show but matching episodes with metadata (thetvdb) is completely hit or miss. I have tried refreshing the data from individual episodes and have tried unmatching + rematching the entire show but the issue still exists. Any idea what could be going wrong?
One thing I notice is that Plex is adding Season 21 episodes as Season 22 so it’s almost no wonder that no metadata is coming up. These files are organized correctly in the file structure and they match in Sonarr perfectly. Why does Plex detect these episodes wrong?
I’ve done this plex dance multiple times with the daily show, and most recently with Vice News as well. It’s getting really frustrating. I’ve tried switching the show naming (I use Sonarr) from YYYY-MM-DD to SxxExx episodic, and that sometimes works for a while, or switch it back, and that some times works.
Not only does it categorize the season incorrectly, but sometimes it merges completely separate episodes as the same episode. Vice News is having things shuffled into the Specials season. This happens with The Daily Show as well.
I have both mp4’s and mkv’s. The mp4’s are converted from mkv’s using sickbeard_mp4_automator (more recently I’ve been converting to both reduce load on transcodes of random formats, as well as to add subtitles). When I watch Plex add the show, it’s actually originally adds the show as Season 2016 or Season 2017, then as the metadata flows in, it reassigns them.
It’s possible the mp4’s have embedded metadata during the ffmpeg conversion. I can try stripping that out and see if things get better.
A neat thing right now is that if I hit refresh metadata on this show, every time I get a different result, sometimes it will put them in Season 1, sometimes I’ll get two Season 1’s, sometimes I’ll get all in Specials, sometimes I’ll get two Specials.
And as to the merged episodes, if I move them all out of the folder, than bring them back in one at a time, they seem to get scanned correctly as individual episodes, but sometimes I can come back later and find them merged again. I’m guessing this is related to the above mentioned random metadata wonkiness.
I get the impression that Plex categorizes seasons based on the filename, not so much on the directory its in.
Here, from the time of the screenshot above, all I did was click refresh metadata on this show.
(seems mostly correct this time, a rare occurance)
So, that’s interesting, looks like I am indeed embedding metadata, is this actually interfering with plex’s own scanning? given that the meta data is correct, wouldn’t both actually end up in the same place?
Title : Episode 161
Album : Vice News Tonight, Season 1
Genre : Documentary
Track Number : 161 of 210
Disk Number : 1 of 0
Content Rating : us-tv|TV-14|500
Cast : .
Cover Art : (Binary data 172916 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Media Type : (Binary data 1 bytes, use -b option to extract)
TV Show : Vice News Tonight
TV Episode ID : Episode 161
TV Season : 1
TV Episode : 161
TV Network Name : HBO
And right now, Plex is showing me two “Episode 161”, and the embedded metadata clearly has one marked as 161, and the other as 159, with the appropriate filenames to match.
Title : Episode 159
Album : Vice News Tonight, Season 1
Genre : Documentary
Track Number : 159 of 210
Disk Number : 1 of 0
Content Create Date : 2017:07:10
Content Rating : us-tv|TV-14|500
Cast : .
Cover Art : (Binary data 172916 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Media Type : (Binary data 1 bytes, use -b option to extract)
TV Show : Vice News Tonight
TV Episode ID : Episode 159
TV Season : 1
TV Episode : 159
TV Network Name : HBO
For giggles, I removed all mp4s from the directories, and the weirdness of refreshing picking it for specials, or season 1, remains. The mkvs have embedded audio meta, but no TV related meta.
You will have to do the PlexDance for any you removed the meta on.
You will need to remove all bad apples from Plex. PlexDance, fix the meta(if that’s an issue here) then add back to Plex.
I tell ya… I’d remove all the metadata from all files based on the information you posted above. That’s either going to be to much information for Plex to comprehend or not the correct information for Plex.
And it’s very easy to remove meta if on Windows. Right click all MP4 files, goto properties, click details tab, click remove properties and personal information. From there select all and remove.
@zolaster said:
is this actually interfering with plex’s own scanning?
Yes. It can and more times, does.
@zolaster said:
given that the meta data is correct, wouldn’t both actually end up in the same place?
Well, Not really. Plex will not know what season/episode each file is based on the metadata embedded in your files. Episode 161? Sounds good for us humans but how does Plex know? Heck, I ONLY know it’s episode 161 from season 1 of a show called Vice News Tonight because you told me.
If you want to tag your files then tag the title as such SxxExx
Plex would know the same way it knows any episode, the agent scans the file and matches it against the agent library, in this case, TheTVDB, which tracks episode number and air date. TVDB knows these daily offerrings as episodic.
But, see my later comment where I removed all files that had TV Show information, and the agent indexing still was random and failed.
I do see your point BUT Plex is not big on correcting any errors . For what ever reason Plex sees it correct. IF the files(media within Plex library) are wrong then you must take appropriate action to set them straight. That almost ALWAYS includes the Plex Dance with renaming files, adjusting metadata if needed, re-adding. Remember, Plex has already identified the files in question, wrong or not. It has the signature if you will.
That’s about the best advice I can give you. Anymore may require your logs and someone with better knowledge on reading them.
Good luck.
