Plex TV Series Metadata Source

General Discussions
1

Ok so I am baffled. I added a new TV Series to Plex and at a loss. All files are named appropriately (The.Vampire.Diaries.S02E01.The.Return as an example) which is located in a season 2 folder. Plex is correctly loading the general info about the TV series (ie. the info of the TV Series, Originally available, synopsis, etc.) for the whole series; however, plex will not load the season information/posters or episode names, etc. If i compare to TVDB, it seems everything is aligned; however, plex is just giving me “Episode 1, Episode 2, etc.” instead of the actual episode names. I’ve tried cleaning, optimzing, restarting, moving the file out of TV Series and back into TV Series (ie. the PLex Dance - i didnt skip any steps here) and nothing seems to be working. Any suggestions I am missing?

I know with TVDB I can easily cross check my titles (ie. S0XE0X) vs the website – is there a similar way we can see Plex’s metadata source info to see if it’s just plain missing for this tv series?

One additional item – I see that it gives me the Tidal “Tracks from Episode 1” so it does well enough to identify that; however, doesn’t pull in actually season/episode metadata?

2

With the new agent, Plex is sourcing and combining information from different sources. Unless you manually change it, it’ll e.g. use the episode ordering from The Movie Database.

It can be helpful to check out Plex’ homepage for the English metadata

That being said… there should be metadata for those episodes.
Did you already do a metadata refresh for the entire show as part of your troubleshooting?

3

Thanks. I agree based on your resource, I should see Metadata. I did do a metadata refresh on the entire series (ie. clicked “The Vampire Diaries” and clicked the … then metadata refresh. I see where it goes through each Season presented and shows the orange circle/tag icon very quickly but no changes. I did the same for a specific episode of a season and still no change and still nothing. Naming conventions are exactly the same as used for other shows.

4

What agent/language are you using for this tv-show library of yours?

From the library context menu (⋮ > Manage Library > Edit...):

  • Language on the General tab
  • Agent on the Advanced tab
5

Scanner and Agent are both “Plex TV Series”

Language is English

6

Do you have a DNS based “internet filter”? (Privoxy, PiHole etc.pp.)

The new agents use a different subdomain of plex.tv than the old ones.
If you have only a “whitelist” of allowed domain names in your filter, you must inspect the DNS queries and unlock the new subdomain. Or whitelist all subdomains of plex.tv in general.

7

No DNS based internet filter. Also, I seem to load other metadata for tv series just fine from recorded shows through live tv, etc. Only seems to be an issue with this specific show’s episodes

8

Are you using mp4/m4v files perchance?
If so:

  • Edit your library
  • go to the “Advanced” tab
  • clear the checkbox “Prefer local metadata”
  • “Refresh Metadata” for this whole show
9

I have encoded these files from original source as .mkv files.

Also, the “Prefer Local Metadata” box was not checked for this library.

Also - thanks for taking the time to reply and offer solutions. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this.

10

Could you copy & paste the first ~20 lines from the Plex XML info of one of the affected episodes?

12

I believe this is the same issue as reported here: The Great (2020) season metadata not pulling through - #11 by drzoidberg33

We hope most of the affected shows should get fixed this week.

13

Thanks!! I’ll look forward to it. Appreciate your response!

14

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.