I am on server Version 1.18.1.1973 on Windows 10. Getting very frustrated with the new Music Scanner released recently. I have a very large music library including English and foreign music. Even a slight change in the folder or adding a new folder for the new Album, the scanner starts scanning everything and then takes like 2 hours to complete it. Yes I have played with the two flags. “Scan my library Automatically” and “Run Partial Scan when changes are detected”. If I uncheck the Scan my library automatically, and only select Run Partial scan, then it does nothing when I add or remove folders. But when I select both, then it starts scanning the entire library.
This has been working so well for the longest time. Not sure why its suddenly broken. Plus it doesn’t seem to recognize certain folders no matter how many times I add or remove them. So I cannot play those albums.
Also, in the library “Advanced Options–>Scanner” what is the difference between “Plex Music” and “Plex music scanner”? What a bad choice of names. They both look the same. And which agent to pick? I have set both of those to “Plex Music”.
Anyone? Plex staff can you please comment? Is there a setting I need to change? This is really annoying. All I am looking for is some way to stop the full scan when new albums are added. What would be the setting for that? Currently it does a full scan that takes hours to complete.
I posted about this annoying bad habit a few days after the new music system came online over a month ago. I included several sets of logs, asked what settings need to be changed, and why the whole library is scanned if all I do is change one metatdata tag in one file.
Initially, I got a few suggestions, which didn’t help too much. This included looking for folders with more than 50 files, looking for tracks not placed within an album folder, turning off some of the automatic scanning options and the fact that I’m using windows, which can generate hidden “thumbnail” images. Well, there are no folders over the 50 file limit, no tracks outside of an album folder, and no hidden images have been generated. (those were created by the old Windows Media Player, which has been deleted from my system quite some time ago) Turning off automatic scan seems worthless to me, because then I have to manually scan, which by definition, scans the whole library, which I’m trying to avoid.
The fact is, all I have to do is navigate to a folder within the music library with windows explorer, and most times, a scan of the library is set off. Plex is scanning the entire library right now because I wanted to make sure I had added the album art on a particular album. No files were touched, added or deleted. Just lookin’
I doubt you’ll get an official response. It appears Plex is in a state of denial that this happens, and if it does, it’s a self-inflicted problem.
I’m not aware of anyway to open a ticket. We can only hope that someone with that ability will see the problem, and agree it may be a bug and submit it for investigation, or help us resolve the problem if it isn’t a bug.
I can help a little, but only from the recommendations that are from other threads. “Plex Music” is the new scanner, and it’s probably the correct one to use in most cases. I believe the other scanner will eventually not be available once they get all of the bugs out of the new version, so eventually it will likely be your only choice anyway.
Maybe we’ve just been placed in the Ignore or Hopeless Case category.
Finding it as well. Even when the scan finishes it seems to update metadata for hours after.
This now more than 50 files per folder is a bunch of garbage if you have boxsets. Why a file limit at all?
There needs to be a proper “MUSIC” section on here with someone from PLEX actually monitoring it. We still don’t have gapless playback, there doesn’t seem to be a way to have your embedded folder art used and have it look for art if it’s missing.
Does anyone know how to open a ticket? This is a bug that needs to be addressed not a feature request. Clearly it was working just fine before and broke after the recent so called (make Music better update.
Is there any update on this? I am afraid my PMS is killing my NAS drives by doing constant scanning. I have now removed half of my library just so that this ends in reasonable amount of time. I don’t understand how come other people are not complaining about this? This should be a universal problem. Plex staff if you are watching this thread, please offer some comments to help resolve. Thanks.
Support on Plex is awful. The forum is ruled by moderators who are not part of the team. Nobody answers. I’m quite regretful of having bought a lifetime Plex Pass. I have HUGE problems and nobody even answers. I’m REALLY disappointed.
As far as I can tell, any thread that even suggests that the new music scanner and/or agent is not perfection at it’s peak, gets ignored. Occasionally, we get some suggestions from forum moderators, which may or may not help, but nothing from the developers. Nothing.
My experience has been that the music scanner will re-scan and try to match all unmatched albums and artists every time new media is added. For me personally, that’s about 300 albums. Sometimes, it appears that it even re-does the “audio finger print” on previously added music in order to get that match.
The excessive and repetitive scanning is unnecessary. Try and match the new stuff, definitely, but stop there. Search for matches only during the regularly maintenance period, not every time I change or add one file to the library.
There’s a few brick walls that will respond sooner than we see an “official” response.
In my case, it scans everything, every time, period. Even if I add just 1 song, the entire library is scanned. And nobody can tell me (not even the moderators) that this is how it has been all along. I have had this sever for over 4 years now. I used to just scan and match the new item and then stop. Now, it just doesn’t stop. It goes back and then starts scanning the entire library again. I have painfully built my library over the years which includes tons of foreign music. So I know what I am talking about in terms of scanning stopping after the new stuff has been scanned.
Just wanted to add a “me too” here. Got ~45k tracks across ~3.5k albums here and it never seems to stop scanning along with what looks like an associated memory leak.
Scan on changes is disabled and I’ve got scan periodically enabled, because I want movie and TV libraries to auto-update. Can we please just get the option to disable automatic or periodic updates altogether for libraries we choose, and only force manual updates? That would be perfect. Second best would be to allow separate update schedules for different libraries, then I could schedule music library updates for overnight when load is low.
I did manage to get the music section to stop scanning by going into settings-manage(libraries)-cancel scan libraries. It has seemed to stop the repeated music scan. I have nearly 90000 songs in my plex music category and it has kept the other sections from updating because of the continued scanning.
Hello, I tried that but not sure how that helps. BTW there are multiple ways to stop the scanning. But the issue is not that. If I add some new files, I do want it to scan. But then I want it to stop after the new files have been scanned. So maybe what you are saying is that I should wait for it to scan the new files and then just manually cancel the scan instead of waiting it to complete. I guess that might work however, for some reason in my case, it scans for a long time before the new files show up. It could be the directory structure. I can try to move it up and see if that helps. I guess we can limp along with this until there is truly a fix.
This is clearly a Music issue. This does NOT happen in movies and they work just fine. If I add a new movie, it just scans it and stops. Which is how the music used to be as well
I find it very discouraging that this issue has been reported in quite a few threads, and there is no “official” response from anyone. I’m pretty sure I’ve read every thread hoping for a fix, or at least some sort of recognition that there is a problem.
Even more discouraging, that despite the scans, the scanner/agent doesn’t seem to do update metadata or match albums that I have added to the MusicBrainz database. I have to match them manually if the albums was not available on the initial scan.
It doesn’t look like anyone has posted logs in this thread, so I’ll post some from a day or two ago where the scanner basically did 4 scans of the unmatched albums and artists in the library. I don’t think anyone has looked the dozen or so sets of logs I’ve uploaded in other threads, but maybe this time… Plex Media Server Logs_2020-01-04_08-24-34.zip (5.7 MB)
Well, I can only tell you it fix my issue. Make sure all of your music is located in file folders. I had the exact issue you had for months. A little over a week ago I just went to the area I reported earlier and pressed stopped scan. It has fixed everything. Now when I add new music, everything works fine. It finds the new music and adds all details without the continuous scanning. Everything you complained about as an issue was the same issue I had. What I did worked. If you don’t t want to at least try it to see if it works, then I can no longer be a resource for you.
Thanks for posting. Actually, I did try yesterday. But it did not make a difference for me. Perhaps something is different about my environment. Can you please confirm if you are on a Windows server? Also, are all your files on a NAS drive? I will try again tonight and see if that makes any difference. Thanks again.
