I’ve been battling an issue with Plex for the last few months where Plex will not automatically re-analyze files if they change after the item is first added to Plex. For example, if a movie is added to Plex, then is re-encoded to h265 from h264 after the fact, Plex will not re-analyze the media to detect the codec change. Plex recognizes the file changed because I see it show up in the “Alerts” that is was processed but until I manually click “Analyze” on the file or run a full library Analyze, Plex will not detect the codec change. This is obviously a huge issue since the file will not be playable until this manual intervention since the codec will not match what Plex thinks it is.
I’ve tried every configuration possible from Plex auto detecting library changes (all my media is local to the linux server Plex is running on), to using autoscan to detect these changes with inotify and sending the scan updates to Plex. I’ve tried creating a whole new Plex library in case there was some residual garbage from years of metadata agent changes, etc. No matter what, Plex will not re-analyze the file after the fact.
Has anyone seen something like this and can recommend a solution? My PMS is running on the following platform:
Server OS: Debian Buster Plex: docker container Storage: Mergerfs pool local to the machine.
The automatic or scheduled library scans don’t re-analyze existing items. Those are solely about recognizing media in the first place. If you want Plex to pick up on changes/upgrades/re-encodes of your previously added media, you can achieve that via the scheduled maintenance tasks.
Open Settings > [Server Name] > Scheduled Tasks
Enable Upgrade media analysis during maintenance
Optionally enable Perform extensive media analysis during maintenance
We do extensive media analysis on every file to ensure correct playback across the huge range of devices and apps. Occasionally we fix a bug in media analysis, or update things to capture some additional data. Similar to local metadata, this is computed on the fly when needed, but it can add a delay when selecting an item. This task ensures analysis is always up to date.
Perform extensive media analysis during maintenance
This does an extensive bitrate analysis on each file in your library to help with bandwidth controls
So you’re telling me if a file changes codecs the change won’t be picked up by plex until scheduled maintenance which means it’s unplayable until then? That doesn’t seem to make any logical sense.
No, that’s not what I was saying. It’s perfectly playable as Plex will also analyze files on the fly when you start playback – that’ll just take a brief moment (as per the description in the linked support articles). Alternatively you can always manually trigger Analyze for your library or specific items.
Same issue here, though I have already had the mentioned options enabled. Plex is definitely not analyzing these files when playback starts, and the codec displayed is only updated to HEVC after manually analyzing these files.
Yup, Plex definitely does not re-analyze the video on the fly, at least in terms of checking for codec changes in the files. If my audio of video codecs change after the file is first added, plex does not pick them up until I manually analyze the files. It’s a real problem.
