Some movies recently went missing ... until I destroyed and recreated that specific library

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Server Version#: 1.41.2.9134
Player Version#: N/A

I am a Plex Lifetime Pass holder. After updating from 1.40 to 1.41, I noticed that some of my movies disappeared from the library. They’re still on disk.

Additional detail: the affected media is on a NAS, and the file share is mounted as NFS, not SMB.

For example, I have “Back to the Future” parts 1-3 in both 1080p and 4K. I have separate libraries for my 4K-HDR titles vs. the non 4K, because it’s more convenient than choosing “Play version…” every time. The 1080p versions are my own transcodes from the 4K, because I share my Plex library with family members who might want to watch remotely. The 1080p versions are easier to transcode on the fly, and in most cases just play direct without transcoding.

In the non-4K movies library, Back to the Future I and II are listed, but Part III is not. The same thing happened with the 4K library: Part III was missing. I suspect there’s some issue with the metadata matching on the backend, but I could find nothing obvious in the logs.

Prior to the recent update, Back to the Future III was definitely in the library; I’ve scrolled past it many times on the Apple TV and iPhone.

I tried multiple things to resolve this: removing the movie and rescanning the library, then putting it back and rescanning the library again; restarting Plex; refreshing all metadata. Nothing would make the movie reappear. I can’t switch back to the legacy Plex scanners because the library has already been “updated,” and any attempt to do so gives me an error (!) “Library Update Required.”

The only thing that resolved this issue was to completely delete the 4KHDR library from Plex, and recreate it from scratch. Since I only have a few dozens titles in that folder, it wasn’t a big deal. But I did lose the “watched” status for those movies.

I’m really not looking forward to doing this for the main movies library, which has over 1,000 titles. And if I can keep it in this ‘broken’ state, maybe the logs will help Plex figure out what’s wrong?

Has anyone else encountered this bug on the 1.41 release branch?

Plex employees: please let me know if this is a known issue.

2

Odds are it was merged as a duplicate with another movie. Naming can help, and there is a duplicate movie filter.

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Plex Docs → Your Media → Naming & Organizing Your Movie Files

Make sure naming conforms to Plex requirements.

For movies with multiple parts (Back to the Future, The Godfather, etc.) it is important to follow the guidelines, so Plex does inadvertently consider them a Movie Split Across Multiple Files. Placing each movie in a separate folder and adding the release year is usually sufficient. If not, you can add the TMDB/IMDB ID to the folder and file name.

With respect to Back to the Future, this works on my system:

/movies  <-- folder added to movie library
  /Back to the Future (1985)
    /Back to the Future (1985).mkv
  /Back to the Future Part II (1989)
    /Back to the Future Part II (1989).mkv
  /Back to the Future Part III (1990)
    /Back to the Future Part III (1990).mkv
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