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Some Episodes sometimes get no Metadata, for example S07E02 of The 100s has no Ep Title, no Plot outline even though it is available on thetvdb: https://www.thetvdb.com/series/the-100/episodes/7682640
Log says this:
May 28, 2020 12:05:51.255 [0x7f729ffff700] WARN - Unable to load episode file [“seasons/7/episodes/2.xml”]
May 28, 2020 12:05:51.255 [0x7f729ffff700] ERROR - Error parsing XML: Empty or non-existant file…
May 28, 2020 12:05:51.255 [0x7f729ffff700] ERROR - Error parsing XML: Empty or non-existant file…
No, I wish I did… so I could tell ya, but we can’t do anything about it anyway.
I just used Filebot to grab an episode name for the latest The Good Fight and all it got was “TBA” (to be announced) and I don’t know if that’s TVDB or P-TVDB and it really doesn’t matter.
You’ll have to refresh metadata tomorrow - or hope Plex does it for you, but in my experience - it never will.
I sometimes “Age” items for 24 hours.
It improves the flavor…
Take that one off the list - complain about something you can do something about (until you find out ‘your lips move, but they can’t hear what you say’)
The underlying issue - Plex causes TVDB a LOT of traffic. Enough that would bring them further down to the knees (ankles or hips?) - so Plex, not wanting to get booted for burning TVDB to the ground - run a Proxy that updates only once a day and we access that one.
It is a necessity I suppose, but it doesn’t make any more fun.
Doing the Plex dance alone did not work.
Doing the Plex dance and deleting the agents cache and restarting the server helped, plex has now metadata for the show.
I kinda doubt it’s simple a “proxy does not have the data yet” issue.
Kinda the same as Good fight worked for me but not for you, maybe?
Right now Filebot is going through outer mongolia to reach TVDB and Plex is bypassing that apparatus - so it’s hard to tell what’s going on over here.
Clearing that cache often - isn’t a bad idea.
For all we know, while you were dancing P-TVDB updated.
The fact is - we don’t know - but I do know - from time to time you’ll get to the proxy ahead of the data.
To provide some info. Plex grabs the data from TheTVDB. This may list episodes in the future, which you can see they do from their site. This is then saved onto your PMS agent cache. As long as the episode you are adding is included in this cache, the cache will not update so you get the same info regardless if the data changed on TheTVDB or not.
A Manual refresh of the show should update that cache. This didn’t work in the past, it’s a change that was made some time ago, maybe 6month-1yr ago. Doing the Plex Dance also updates this cache since the dance clears out this cache.
The only time PMS will update the cache (obvious if you think about it) is if you add an episode that is outside of the cache.
@anon18523487 The main issue in this thread seems to be very similar to a thing I reported a few days ago (although received no replies yet), but your answer seems to indicate that running the “Refresh Metadata” command manually should work.
Would you have any insight into why it doesn’t seem to work for me, and doing the “Plex Dance” is the only way to refresh metadata for recently aired episodes that originally fetched incorrect/incomplete metadata, as described in my topic?
Well, for the episode that I mentioned in my thread, it’s actually still happening, so I was able to trigger the “Refresh Metadata” functionality in one browser tab while keeping a look at server logs in other tab. Actually, twice – once with debug logging on, once with verbose logging on, since I’m not sure which one is more useful – perhaps verbose?
The two outputs are available here. In both cases, I can see one warning message that might be relevant (Unable to load episode file), but not sure if I can spot what actually caused the warning.
Do I understand you right that refreshing metadata should update the cache and tat it should have gotten the Ep Title, in my case?
The Plex Dance was also not enough for me, i had to manually delete the cache on the FS lvl and restart the server. This is not the first time that happened, it’s rare, like once every 3 month or so, but it does happen regularly.
I got the “unable to load episode file” that @Cellane mentioned as well in those cases.
Interestingly enough, I just checked my Plex instance and noticed that one week after the episode in question originally aired, the metadata finally updated to correct values. I can’t exactly explain why the incorrect/incomplete data survived multiple cache clear and server restarts, but I’ll keep an eye on future cases of this issue happening (for example, with this week’s episode). If it resolves itself after a few days without me having to do the Plex dance (and even that sometimes doesn’t help, just like @Orko mentions), then I suppose that it’s kind of okay… okay-ish.
Never use verbose unless told to. You only provided PMS logs, which are not what I need. Just upload the entire zip package you get from Settings \ Troubleshooting \ Download logs.
Yes that’s the intent. Refresh of a single show should gather all new data. Keep in mind this onyl clears your local cache. You still need to wait for the Plex’ proxy to update if there was a change on TheTVDB’s end.
I see! Sorry! I’ve never been asked to look at or upload server logs before, sorry for doing it wrong.
I requested “Refresh Metadata” on another episode (same show with TVDB ID 354198, this time Episode 8) and downloaded the logs a few seconds later. Here is the ZIP file I got: Plex Media Server Logs_2020-06-02_04-00-35.zip (4.7 MB)
Looking at it, yeah, this definitely feels way more useful, especially with info in the com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb.log file. Two requests in there seem suspicious to me.
A request to https://meta.plex.tv/tv_e/354198/kaguya+sama+love+is+war/2019 fails (likely due to a 404 Not Found), but perhaps that’s not really as much as an issue as the next bit.
A request is sent to https://tvdb2.plex.tv/series/354198/episodes?page=1 which succeeds, and when loaded from the browser, you can clearly see the episode data for Season 2, Episode 8 (episode ID 7702459, title Miko Iino Wants to Control Herself / Kaguya Doesn't Scare Easily / Kaguya Wants to Be Examined). Yet the data is still not refreshed, instead, the log follows with a bunch of entries along the lines of No media for season 2 episode 7 - skipping population of episode data for nearly all episodes – nearly all but not all – Season 2 Episode 8 is not mentioned, even though that is the one that is currently missing any metadata.
As for episode 8, I can see that a separate request to update just that episode data is issued at https://tvdb2.plex.tv/episodes/7702459?lang=en, but since this endpoint can’t be explored from the browser without authorization, I’m not sure as to what the response would be. I’m not sure what the Season Extra XML is empty - therefore, no episode XML log line means precisely, but it seems to indicate that something required in the response is missing and thus the episode data won’t be updated, isn’t it?
“Refresh of a single show should gather all new data.”
You need to refresh the entire show, not just 1 episode. The cache is on a show basis, so refreshing 1 episode won’t do anything. It’s reusing the info already obtained.
User Logic dictates Verbose is better than Debug - 'cause it’s Verbose.
Unfortunately User Logic falls apart 'cause Verbose is way too Verbose to do much good.
Everybody does it. It’s not your fault.
And unless reminded not to - will continue - 'cause it makes sense to users.
The “Reminder” should be under the place where you put your check mark.
Not in every single forum post after the wrong logs have been generated.
