I’m not sure of exact numbers but I’ve got around 8 collections that have all had their artists lose the tag to be part of their collection(s). Spent a lot of time on those and still had more to do. It appears to be dropping them based on some time frame–the last ones left now are only a few things I’ve added days after the initial filling-out of the collections.
What is causing this? Huge headache. And I’m not seeing any other reports of this problem. Except for one post here where it was happening to someone’s playlists. Suggested in that thread was unchecking “Empty trash automatically after every scan” on Library settings… I’m not sure what that has to do with anything but can someone please give me a hand here?
edit: For clarity: I have not moved these files around or altered them in any way in Windows or in the library.
The recommendation about unchecking “Empty trash automatically” is based on one of the root causes why Plex might loose manual edits in general (incl. manually assigned collections).
If you have configured your server to do automatic or scheduled scans of your libraries (e.g. to search for newly added files) it can happen that Plex removes existing items if it can no longer find the underlying files. This can be about files on a drive that’s not connected to your server at that time or files on a drive that’s just too slow to spin up (making Plex believe it’s not there).
With the “empty trash automatically” option enabled, Plex will delete items it no longer finds in your library. Therefore… if your disks might not be connected at all times or might be slow to react, it’s good to disable that option.
When Plex rescans the same library again after such an incident, it’ll re-add the files (assuming the drive is connected / fast enough to spin-up) – however your manual edits will no longer be available.
If you disable “empty trash automatically”, Plex will keep the library record. There’ll be an indicator that this file is currently not available (trash icon) – however, the important thing is… if the record remains in place, so do your manual edits!
Side-note: that’s got nothing to do with Plexamp… it’s just how your Plex Media Server works and will affect all clients.
So I went ahead and recreated my collections after unchecking the Empty trash automatically setting. The same thing has happened again. From 358 artists in one collection down to less than 100 after one week. I know the numbers aren’t relevant but yea… and the funny thing is the 3 album collections I made a while before my 1st post have remained unharmed. I understand this is perhaps more of a general Plex problem… but it’s in my usage of Plexamp that this is effecting me so I’m not informed on who handles what problems and I’d say it’s unclear just what the problem is exactly anyways.
If the problem is based in the library recreating the entries for the files… and as I said that setting is unchecked… wouldn’t a solution be for Plex to have some sort of config file that retains the metadata changes made by the user separately from the library entry themselves?
Unchecking the Empty trash automatically after every scan option will do exactly that… it’ll keep the record in your library.
Based on my experience this has been working quite reliably in the past and I’m not aware of an issue with that at the moment.
As for that issue… can you upload your server logs so somebody can take a look?
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-07-07_18-24-47.zip (5.4 MB)
Here’s my logs. I really have no idea why it’s not working having unchecked that setting. Thanks for the help. And here’s before and after pics of my collections for the sake of it:
Let me rephrase my question: are the missing artists gone/deleted inside your Plex library too?
Your screenshots were showing the change in those collections; I just wanted to verify if this is only about the collections or if the artists are no longer showing inside Plex at all.
It seems those logs don’t go far enough back to see the actual event/incident where the items get dropped from your collections. Can you please keep an eye on this and share a new set of logs when you see it happen again?
No problem.
Here’s where the collections are at right now. Not a lot have dropped off from the last picture yesterday, but some have. Here’s the current logs also. Plex Media Server Logs_2021-07-08_15-01-10.zip (5.4 MB)
