PMS Adding movie to recently added when upgrading/replacing file

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Server Version#: 1.20.1.3252

For maybe the past year or 2 I have been using Radarr to upgrade movies/redownload better quality versions of existing movies.

I have unchecked " Empty trash automatically after every scan" so that whenever a change to the FILE is detected it does not remove the movie and then re-add it. Which has worked perfectly.

Recently, maybe in the past month or two I have noticed that whenever Radarr has upgraded a movie and replaced the existing one (in the same folder as the “old” version) it now appears in the “recently added” section. I used to have the duplicate copies icon on the movie, and also the red trash can - which would both disappear whenever I manually emptied the trash. But now it seems like Plex is automatically emptying the trash whenever it detects a change of the file, even tho this option is unchecked.

Anybody else having a similar issue?

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I am also seeing this in movies, as well as TV. For one TV show, all I did was move it up a folder level, and it was detected as a new show again.

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And I’m assuming you have “ Empty trash automatically after every scan” checked?

The thing is this used to work flawlessly. I’m not sure what changed… was it a PMS upgrade?

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That sounds like it might be the same bug I was experiencing. If so, it’s a known issue and a fix is on the way.

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Thanks for the info! I don’t know why I didn’t see that thread when I searched. But glad to know it’s not a fault on my end. That issue sounds exactly like what’s happening with me.

Thanks again.

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yes, I have that checked.

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I’m not sure if this is related or not, but the end result is similar:

I often manually download upgrades of movies I already have in Plex.

Before deleting the old version of the movie, I’ll run a Plex scan of the database, and in the past what always happens is that the two versions of the movie will get associated (in Plex it’ll show the “2” indicator showing I have 2 copies of the film)…

In terms of “recently added” placement, the movie stays were it was originally since Plex correctly recognizes it as a second copy and not a new movie.

Then I’ll delete the old version of the movie so only the new copy remains. Run the scan again. Plex now correctly sees that I only have one copy of the movie, but still respects the original “recently added” placement (e.g., doesn’t treat it as a new addition).

That was all working until a couple of days ago when I finally made the switch from the Legacy metadata-scanner to the new Plex Movie scanner…

However, after upgrading my database to use the new scanner and running “refresh all metadata” across the entire database…

Now every time I download an upgraded copy of a movie I already had, the new copy appears as a separate entry – rather than appearing merged with the original film with “2” indicating there are 2 copies of the film, it appears as its own separate search result.

If I think click on the original version of the movie in Plex, the working-indicator starts spinning, as if it’s checking the metadata again…

After that the new and old copies do get merged together with the “2” indicator showing there are 2 copies of the movie…

But the end result is that the movie is placed as the newest item in the “Recently Added” list, even though I may have had a copy of the movie for years.

If I delete the old copy of the movie and re-scan, it stays as the most recently added item. And even if I delete the new copy of the movie and just leave the old copy in place, it still stays as the most recently added item.

I haven’t tried unchecking “Empty trash automatically after every scan” yet… But I’m thinking the trash isn’t the issue since the “Recently Added” problem starts before I’ve deleted anything anyway.

Any way around this? Or did the upgrade to the new Plex Movie meta-scanner make it so that every time I upgrade a media file that I had on file pre-upgrade it’s gonna be seen as a separate new item that was “recently added”?

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That sounds like exactly this same issue.

I think it was fixed in the beta PMS released 20 hours ago. :slight_smile:

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I’m on Version 1.20.2.3343 – but regrettably the problem is still occurring…

Newly added files that already have an existing version in the database are still coming in as “recently added” items, separate from the original version, no duplicate-copies icon; they can be recognized as “duplicates” if a metadata-refresh is run on the original copy of the movie, but then the two copies are both given the “recently added” placement of the newer item.

Anyone got this this working? Am I missing a step to get this right with the new logic/new Plex Movie scanner? Does having Trash set to auto-empty on scan on or off make a difference?

Interestingly it DOES seem to work fine if both of the copies were added recently… e.g., If I add Copy A of a movie to my Movies folder that I don’t already have in Plex and scan, it ends up in Recently Added like expected. Then if I add Copy B of the movie and scan, then it correctly gets associated with Copy A as a duplicate…

The point of failure seems to be with every movie I’d added prior to switching from the Plex Legacy scanner to the new Plex Movie scanner. Which is a lot of movies :dizzy_face:

I wonder if part of the issue relates to if the Plex Legacy scanner was used for the metadata on Copy A and the new Plex Movie was used on Copy B, if that’s when Plex sees them as separate movies… I’d ran the “Refresh All Metadata” option on my entire library after upgrading to the new Plex Movie scanner, but perhaps that never completed or didn’t have the intended impact.

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I think that’s a different issue, especially because you describe it working with “new” media.

Did you Upgrade matching or did you manually change the scanner and agent to the new one? (I’m not sure if that did more than a Refresh.)

If you look at the XML on some of these duplicates, what’s the first guid in the first “Video” section on each?

<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="2" librarySectionTitle="Movies" librarySectionUUID="58dc7d7a-4ebe-4833-8877-ad5e9206ec97" mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1600766530">
<Video ratingKey="99269" key="/library/metadata/99269" guid="plex://movie/5d776c80fb0d55001f589651" studio="Bold Films" type="movie" title="Above Suspicion" librarySectionTitle="Movies" librarySectionID="2" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/2" contentRating="R" summary="The chilling true story of a newly married FBI poster boy assigned to an Appalachian mountain town in Kentucky. There he is drawn into an illicit affair with an impoverished local woman who becomes his star informant. She sees in him her means of escape; instead, it's a ticket to disaster for both of them." audienceRating="5.4" year="2019" tagline="The devil always comes as everything you wanted" thumb="/library/metadata/99269/thumb/1601160948" art="/library/metadata/99269/art/1601160948" duration="6275861" originallyAvailableAt="2019-07-04" addedAt="1594327618" updatedAt="1601160948" audienceRatingImage="imdb://image.rating" primaryExtraKey="/library/metadata/128621">
... snipped ...

I’m betting the new one is plex:// and the old one isn’t.

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Relevant:

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Yep, I’d done all that – upgraded matching, refreshed all… But after checking the meta again, per your clues above, it turned out that the metadata-refresh of the library must not have completed originally – some had the old meta, some the new…

So I re-ran “Refresh Metadata" on the entire library again and waited overnight… Everything seems to be working swimmingly again now. Thanks!

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