My workflow involves me tagging every media file (using the Subler utility on macOS). I have Plex set up with two libraries that point to the same folder - one library is set to scan for movies and the other set to scan for tv shows. The vast majority of the time, the Plex scanner is able to detect the type of media and update the database fine.
However, in some situations it detects the tv show episode as a movie (and cannot find any metadata through the Plex Movie agent). Once Plex thinks it is a movie, I cannot unmatch it and then manually match because it will only assume I am trying to match with a different movie.
This is all in spite of the actual file metadata explicitly having the Media Kind set to TV Show. For example, the first three episodes of Season 11 of Curb Your Enthusiasm have this issue.
Is there a way to force Plex to allow me to match a file it has already determined is a “movie” so that I can match it using the “tv show” search?
Are you saying that for your folder structure you have one folder, we’ll call Media for clarity, and that houses both TV shows and Movies? You then point both the TV library and Movie library to this Media folder.
If that is the case, you need to change that structure as that is strongly not a recommended setup by Plex.
If you haven’t, read one of the support articles about organizing and naming your media, Naming and organizing your Movie files | Plex Support, which talks about the structure.
The method that you are using, which is hinted at in that article, states failure to separate content such as movies and TV shows may result in unexpected or incorrect behavior, which you are experiencing.
For best results, you are going to want to create a file structure like this:
Media/
Movies/
Movie 1 (Year)/
Movie 1 (Year).ext
TV Shows/
Show 1 (Year)/
Season 01/
Show 1 - s01e01 - Episode Name.ext
Show 2 (Year)/
Season 01/
Show 2 - s02e01 - Episode Name.ext
Basically, “Movie 1 (Year)” represents a folder with the movie name and year and then the actual media file is under that. For TV, “Show 1 (Year)” is the folder with the series name and then under that you have your season folders and within your season folders you have the media file with the series name and the season and episode in sXXeXX format. The episode title is optional.
After you do that, you would then point your movie library to Media/Movies/ and the TV library to Media/TV Shows/ and then everything should match better without having the issue you are experiencing.
Do what @shark2k recommends. Separate your media with Movies and TV Shows in separate directory structures.
Follow the Plex documentation and it works 99.9% of the time. Don’t follow the docs and it works until it doesn’t, and then you get to spend time correcting things.
Ok, so I took the advice and separated the Libraries into separate folders - one for TV Shows and one for Movies. Then I rescanned the files, refreshed the metadata, emptied the trash, and did an analyze on each.
The Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes have now completely disappeared and Plex doesn’t present them as detected. In fact, it doesn’t even show a log entry that it detects the files. There are three other files - episodes from three different shows - that get detected and matched. I’ve moved the files out, rescanned, then moved them back and rescanned. Nothing gets Plex to even detect the files.
I continue to be confused why the Plex developers do not feel the first method for identifying and representing metadata is if the metadata is already present in the file. The use of a folder and file naming convention is fine as a last resort, but to completely ignore the details in a properly tagged file is perplexing to me. And selecting “use local metadata” for the library’s agent simply is ignored by all indicators I’ve seen.
