Problems with Metadata Refresh and Subtitles

Hello,

I was originally in this thread discussing how to get Metadata refresh to work but it seems that by refreshing it only served to exacerbate my problem of my media missing subtitles for movies and shows. My starting point was media that included a mish-mash subtitles: some included the subs that was in the same directory as the media, others which had subs that were automatically downloaded from OpenSubtitles, and others not having any subs at all. My goal was simply update my metadata for all my media so that all media that had subs available would have them as an options. (For reasons I won’t get into, this is actually important for my needs.

I previous had the Plex agent configuration set up so that subtitles which were on file would be used when available for media, but when they weren’t, Plex downloaded them from OpenSubtitles so that no mater what, pretty much all of my content has subtitles (unless they really didn’t exist or they couldn’t be found) based on the aforementioned priority… The problem is that when I did a full metadata refresh with the help from of some folks on that thread, any and all subtitles which were previously added from OpenSubtitles have been removed completely. Only subtitles that were on file are now included for media. What’s odd is that I am using the same agent configuration as before so the only thing that actually changed was that I had recently upgraded Plex Server to 3.37.2 so maybe things don’t behave the same way as before. I thought this would “help” things, but no such luck. Is it possible that Plex naming has actually gotten “stricter” so that metadata like subs don’t load unless naming is perfect, where before things were more forgiving? (On second thought, I’ve noticed that titles which previously had subs that now don’t are in fact named according to the strict naming conventions, but they still don’t have them. Again, they did before I attempted a full Metadata refresh for ALL data. I will note that other metadata is there, so something’s “funny”.

Here my agent settings for TV shows, for instance, none of which have subtitles anymore which previously a fair number had them:

From this, assuming I fully understand how this settings panel works, I’d have assumed that Plex would first look for subtitle files on disk with the media, skip TVDB (since it doesn’t have subtitle) data, then go to OpenSubtitles, etc… however I have to admit that even after reading the support page, I have never fully understood how each media type has subcategories and why they are separated as the Plex documentation really doesn’t explain this very well. I get that the order of each agent can be changed to give sources priority over others and that you can enable/disable them as you choose, but why are their the subcategories for each media type? It’s a little baffling.

Aside from the missing subtitles problem (and this may be the fact that all of my movies are not perfectly named yet) I am seeing some other weird stuff with my movie titles which I cannot explain since the refresh. there is a strange jumbling where sequels of movies are also appearing as the original movie as well. For instance, “Aliens” also appears under “Alien” but with the same poster as ‘Aliens’. The media is ‘Aliens’ but the IMDB data seems to be missing for it. This seems like a bug of some sort as I get the same sort of thing with “Anchorman 2”. Also, “Avengers: Age of Ultron” now has three versions, two of which are different metadata from the original ‘Avengers’ movie but with different posters. Very odd!

Anyway, any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

One thing thing I found was for “Shows” that moving “OpenSubtitles” above “The TVDB” seemed to improve the chances of getting the OpenSubtitles to be loaded for a show.

However, after my last run on metadata, it seems like my library has gotten messed up completely. I think the next thing I need to do is finally use that tool that cleanly renames my media files per the Plex standard. I think that has something to do with this.

I can’t help you, but I did want to thank you for some of your information. I recently created an Open Subtitles account and set it up in Plex, and when I refreshed the Metadata on one episode of a Korean Drama my daughter and wife watch… the Subtitles I had in the same directory as the show suddenly was no longer an option!

The other episodes worked that I had prior to setting up the Open Subtitles… so I took your advice and changed the order in the Agents, and after I refreshed, it gave me the option to choose the local subtitle file again!

I’m curious to get more information on Plex’s own subtitle features that they mentioned in their most recent email… anyone have information on that?

Thanks!

  1. replace the opensubtitles agent with SubZero

  2. if you have external subtitle files, you need to keep the ‘Local Media Assets’ agent activated.

  3. The on-site demand subtitle download is described here
    https://support.plex.tv/articles/subtitle-search/

but in its current form it won’t help you much, because the downloaded subtitle is only available for your own user account and it will get deleted as soon as you deactivate the subtitle or download another one.
This may get improved with a later server update.