PLEX's Media Watched Status is IGNORANT!

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: latest
Player Version#: latest

I’ve been using plex for years. I have a massive library on a drive farm.

My methodology for storing media is .. newer gets higher bandwidth. The older it gets the less bandwidth I afford to the media. I accomplish this by use of my FFhevc script which re-encodes media based on directory configurations.

This has worked out great for me over the years with regards to managing media and drive space. The only problem I consistently run into is when I migrate media to a new directory to get archived or vaulted with new encoding settings, PLEX loses the media’s WATCHED STATUS!

I don’t know what or why this made sense to the developers to store the watched status in the media’s storage location.. but please fix this. RETHINK IT FROM THE GROUND UP! It’s lazy logic.

2

This is definitely not how it should work.

Watch state is stored independently by the item’s GUID, removing the files should not affect this. The only reason an item should lose its watch state is if it gets identified as a different piece of media completely, this could maybe be because it was previously matched with a different agent and never had its metadata refreshed, or it was manually tagged as a different edition before.

The only other way is if the watched state was removed from the database, but this data is retained even after deleting a piece of media so it would have to get removed manually for this to happen.

Also if you have watch state sync enabled then this will persist your watched states even if you create an entirely new server, as long as you’re signed in with the same account.

Maybe you could reproduce the issue and then grab the server logs so somebody can take a look why this is happening.

1 Like
3

I’ll reproduce it with screen grabs and logs. I hear you loud and clear and agree with your sediment. Yet it persists.

4

Another thing, watch states will not persist after files get removed if you’re using the personal media agent as this doesn’t do any unique matching.

5

Perhaps that’s the condition. I tried to reproduce it this morning but it retained the watch state. It is possible that a directory scan occurs in transition to it’s new drive and subsequently loses it’s watched state..? I don’t know what’s causing it… but it happens.

It would be VERY helpful to me if there was an option for the watch state to PERSIST even if the media has been moved, removed, or otherwise temporarily unavailable.

6

This would be unnecessary and wouldn’t do anything as that’s what it already does by default.

If you were seeing this behaviour it would be because of one the scenarios I listed above.

7

Typically, it occurs when I’ve added a new media directory and move media to it.

I’m looking into the Agents (Legacy) settings and notice that each media type has “Local Media Assets” enabled. Are you saying that if I disable that – this problem will go away?

8

The legacy agents settings are not applicable any more at all unless you’re specifically using them still.

If this is for a movie library, the agent should just be set to “Plex Movie” and not “Plex Personal Media”.

9

I looked through the library’s advanced settings and can confirm that “Plex Movie” is the Scanner and Agent (unchanged).

As I mentioned, the issue arises when I add a new directory to the library and move media to the new.

Based on what you’ve stated. In the future, I’ll add the new directory/folder to Plex BEFORE moving the media as to avoid it being assumed DELETED. Hopefully this will work.

10

If it happens again, grab the server logs immediately and add them to this thread.

Without that i cannot really tell you why this would happen as it’s not normal or expected behaviour.

11

I’ve been experiencing at least a variation of this problem which started when they moved over to the new modern plex agent/scanner. I outlined in this thread Plex Episodes changing from played to unplayed due to online metadata source change (anon5074910 is my previous forum username) which unforunately like a lot of things around here got ignored.

Basically what I think maybe happening for you is …

  1. Years ago you add a show, match it, watch it and all is good
  2. Then years later you rip the show again and want to replace it however the show has had the episode order change from one of the online metadata sources (this happens more than you would think over at tmdb, especially for older shows)
  3. Now when you migrate the media to its new directory / location plex re-matches is, refreshes the metadata and as its now new the internal plex guid for the episode has changed and boom your watch status is gone …

Would you have an actual example of a show which this happened for you, I’d like to see what changes may have happened over the years for that show.

12

Move media that is marked “watched” to another location that is not recursively included in the configured “Library Paths” in Plex. ReEncode them with Archive or Vault compression levels (not a real level but imagine a bit rate that fits the bill). Then add the new Library Path to the appropriate “existing” Plex Library. When the media gets picked up.. all watch history is lost.

I believe those are the misfortunate steps I’ve been doing that is causing this issue for me.

The next time I add a new drive to the library’s path configurations, I’ll do that BEFORE I move the media and reEncode. … maybe that will prevent it???

13
  1. ensure that the library in question has “Plex Movie” set as Scanner and Agent in its properties. (without “Legacy” appended to it)
  2. Refresh Metadata on a movie before re-encoding it.
  3. add the re-encoded file to a library which also uses “Plex Movie”

Does this yield a different outcome?

14

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