@sha256 said:
You were able to help me out, and I appreciate that. I didn’t really like that the solution was basically to scrap my current library as permanently corrupted, but it showed me that the problem is contained to the TV Shows library. What I really wanted was a proper method from Plex to fully delete all metadata from a show, but I learned from you that apparently this isn’t possible, as things like watched-episodes-count are contained somewhere that no one but devs know (and they’re not telling). So thank you for helping me test all that. I guess I’ll just have to deal with the shows I have in my TV Shows library being broken forever, unfortunately, because I can’t scrap the entire library; it would take me weeks to go through painstakingly on every episode and set the proper watched status, change the artwork I set manually, that sort of thing.
But at least, with your naming scheme that you showed me, I can make sure that all future tv shows I add to the library don’t have the problem. That seems to be all set.
Weeks? Would you do it if it happened in Seconds?
To my horror I recently discovered that every single episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (5 seasons at 36 episodes per season) were out of compliance! They had matched years ago when I added them, but they sure wouldn’t match now. I dragged the entire show, folders and all, out of the library to a place out of Plex’s view. I updated the library, emptied the trash, cleaned the bundles. I then fired up FileBot and dragged the entire show, folders and all, into the left pane of Filebot, clicked ‘Match’ then clicked ‘Rename’ and in 2 seconds it was over - everything perfectly named. I already had a compliant folder structure, but FileBot can do that too if you let it. FileBot link in my signature.
It took WAAAAAAAY longer for Plex to regenerate those preview thumbs for 5 seasons of AHP (an hour at least) than it did for FileBot to fix all their names (2 seconds).
There’s no excuse for remaining non-compliant with the excellent tool available to you.
Instead of stripping metadata out of MP4 files (not a bad idea, but time consuming - no other files require that, BTW, unless your OCD requires it like mine does) just drag Local Media Assets to the bottom of every Agent list you can find, under every tab, everywhere. Leave it checked, just demote it. It will still do what is required of it when you need it:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200241558-Agents
Here’s the full Plex Dance® I eluded to earlier in part:
- remove show from library (all of it)
- update library
- empty trash
- clean bundles
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200392106-Library-Actions <— update libraries, empty trash, clean bundles
- FileBot Baby! - and fix those folder structures if you don’t have FB do it for you.
- replace show into library
- update library
Stripping metadata from MP4 files is notoriously easy if you enable the details pane in your Windows Explorer. Highlight the file and Title Fields, Genre ‘guesses’ and Comments are editable right in the pane. Delete, Save, Done. You can also drill into ‘Properties/Details’ and there’s a button there that will strip everything out, but by that time I’ve already done it in the Details Pane.
Annoyingly that only works for MP4/M4V files. MKVs require MKVToolNix, but I keep a fresh version of that right where I can get at it.
As long as Plex doesn’t provide a way to download or export a watched status config file, or that sort of thing, it would take me a very long time to make TV Shows Two as good as the original TV Shows library I made in 2014 is. Or rather, was, until this random glitch started affecting me a couple months ago.