DSM Version: DSM 6.2-23739 Update 2
Server Version#: 3.57.1
Player Version#: All players?
I recently bought a Synology NAS DS918+, and installed Plex Media Server on it. Initially, it scanned my libraries and everything worked fine. Recently, I moved some folders 1 folder up, still keeping them in the same library, Therefore, the relevant movie was unavailable in plex as expected. However, when I rescan any of my libraries, be it movies or shows or music, it keeps on scanning forever and never stops. I am not putting them in the shared plex folder.
I have a shared folder video, containing 2 sub folders Movies and Shows. In these folders, I have a folder for every movie or show. Plex has been scanning my Movie library for around 8 hours with no results, while my movie library is only consisting of about 180 movies.
Any help as to why this might be happening is appreciated!
Please explain in greater detail what you moved, providing actual Share/TLD names where possible.
“I moved the folder 1 folder up” doesn’t really give us much to go on.
Also, after making the change in physical structure, did you remember to reflect the change(s) in PMS ?
Ofcourse, I wasn’t sure which info to give so I figured to wait to see what you asked.
For my music and showshave a shared folder called ‘video’. In this folder I have 2 sub folders: “Shows” and “Movies”. The folder I moved, was of a specific movie. Initially the structure was like this:
Volume 3 > video > Movies > American Pie (1-7) > American pie (1-7) > a folder for each american pie movie
I changed this to
Volume 3 > video > Movies > American Pie (1-7) > a folder for each american pie movie
My movie library is linked to this folder: ‘/volume3/video/Movies’
The way I moved the folder was by going in file station in DSM, cutting the folders, and pasting them one folder level up, at the location specified above.
The only thing I did in PMS, was to right click my library, and press rescan. I am quite new to PMS, so I am not sure if there are other things I have to do to reflect these changes made?
It looks like you tried to manually create a ‘Collection’ for American Pie ?
PMS will do this for you if enabled in the Library settings’ “Advanced” tab. It is enabled by default.
The proper structure for you is to continue listing them individually at the top of Volume3/video/Movies with one directory for each movie.
PMS will automatically see the collection and generate it for you. You will see the “American Pie” collection and, when you open it, each film will be listed.
That sounds good, and I will try that. I mainly moved the movies one folder up, because I had a useless folder to go down in.
Should the same structure be followed with shows? It seems to me like it could get very chaotic if there are thousands of folders under ‘Shows’ Is creating a folder for each show, with a subfolder of seasons discouraged and known to break things?
Does manually creating a folder break the rescanning of a library though? That is currently my main issue, since the american pie movies simply aren’t found, and scanning my Movies library of 180 movies makes no progress over about 8 hours.
I would like to see your log files (Settings - Server - Help - Download logs) … attaching the ZIP here please
in order to see what it’s complaining about… It could be permissions but not very likely.
As for naming, Here’s a look at my naming. All of these exist in /volume1/Movies (which is the Top Level for PMS)
PMS finds the James Bond movies and Star Trek movies with ease. It should NOT take 18 hours to match media unless your file names themselves are gibberish.
Brainstorm (1983)/ Sister Act (1992)/
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)/ Sister Act 2 Back in the Habit (1993)/
Brewster's Millions (1985)/ Sky High (2005)/
Bridge of Spies (2015)/ Slipstream (2005)/
Broken Arrow (1996)/ Snow Dogs (2002)/
Caddyshack (1980)/ Spaceballs (1987)/
Caddyshack II (1988)/ SpaceCamp (1986)/
Carlin on Campus (1984)/ Space Cowboys (2000)/
Casino Royale (1967)/ Spider-Man (2002)/
Chain Reaction (1996)/ Spider-Man 2 (2004)/
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)/ Spider-Man 3 (2007)/
Chicago and Earth, Wind Fire Live at the Greek Theatre (2005)/ Spy Game (2001)/
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)/ Stardust (2007)/
Clear and Present Danger (1994)/ Stargate (1994)/
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)/ Stargate Continuum (2008)/
Clue (1985)/ Stargate The Ark of Truth (2008)/
Coming to America (1988)/ Starman (1984)/
Con Air (1997)/ Star Trek (2009)/
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)/ Star Trek First Contact (1996)/
Conspiracy (2001)/ Star Trek Generations (1994)/
Contact (1997)/ Star Trek III The Search for Spock (1984)/
Coyote Ugly (2000)/ Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan (1982)/
Crimson Tide (1995)/ Star Trek Insurrection (1998)/
Crossing Over (2009)/ Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)/
Dana Carvey Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies (2008)/ Star Trek IV The Voyage Home (1986)/
Dances with Wolves (1990)/ Star Trek Nemesis (2002)/
Dark Star (1974)/ Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979)/
Das Boot (1981)/ Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country (1991)/
Dead Poets Society (1989)/ Star Trek V The Final Frontier (1989)/
Deep Impact (1998)/ Star Wars (1977)/
Defiance (2008)/ Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)/
Déjà Vu (2006)/ Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)/
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)/ Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)/
Die Another Day (2002)/ Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)/
Die Hard (1988)/ Star Wars Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)/
Die Hard 2 (1990)/ Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)/
Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995)/ Stealth (2005)/
Dirty Dancing (1987)/ Superman Returns (2006)/
Doubt (2008)/ Surrogates (2009)/
Logs uploaded: Currently the server is very busy with indexing etc, so it might not scan properly because of that. I’m sure you will find your way around the logs regardless.
While I agree that this is a sensible thing to do for movies, do you do the same thing for shows? I imagine that thousands of episodes, or hundreds of the same show taking up a lot of folders would create chaos and make it more difficult to manage if not using the plex GUI. I will definitely do this for my movies, but am hesitant to do so for my shows. If it doesn’t break thingsm I would prefer still using:
Show name > Season number > Folder per episode
If this breaks things however, I guess I will have to put them all directly under Shows
Series /
Season n /
Series - SnnE01 - optional title.ext
Series - SnnE02 - optional title.ext
.
.
.
Putting them further down in subdirectories is going to cause naming problems because it will look for a match using the Episode directory, thinking it’s the Series name.
This is where FileBot or TheRenamer come in handy.
They both make very short work of putting your media in perfect order, having looked up the exact names first.
They allow you to verify the names (with full path name) before you commit to the changes.
If any ambiguities arise, it makes you resolve or skip that file for later manual touch up.
As added benefit, if files need moving, It will do so and clean up the empty old directories for you.
All done with Drag & Drop.
I use it here and, should i need, i could change the naming style and storage location in about 2 minutes. It would then take time for the media to move of course but FileBot takes care of that for me
I see, thanks for the tips. Did you find anything in the logs that shows why my PMS is not rescanning my library, or do you suspect it could be because my movies were not always at top level?
If PMS misclassifies them, they will need to be moved out / trash emptied / bundles cleared, and ultimately moved back. It might be easier to simply recreate the library seciton.
