TV Shows not finding ANY matches

General Discussions
1

I have been perusing the forums for the past 2 days, I have a remote Plex server that I just started adding my episodes to. And it is NOT finding any matches for any of the TV shows. Running on Ubuntu 18.04LTS, with Plex Media Server ver 1.18.4.2171 (up to date, per the general settings).

I have tried clearing cache, and most everything that I can find in the forums. (Reordering agents in Settings-Agent, disabling certain agents, scan library, delete cache and rescan) However, it has been met with absolutely no matches. This is most frustrating as my local Plex server (Windows) finds matches quite quickly.

What am I missing?

2

Can you share a screenshot or directory listing of how you have the show named/organized?

Plex is picky with TV shows. Make sure you closely follow the naming and organization guidelines.

See Your Media. Specifically, Naming and Organizing Your TV Show Files.

If there are multiple versions/reboots of the show, it may help to put the show year in the folder and episode names.

1 Like
3

In addition to @FordGuy61 's suggestions/questions, can you share how you have your media mounted on your Linux system? If PMS is running as user ‘plex’ (it will, by default), it must have at least read and execute permissions on the directory in which the media files are stored. You can do this in several ways, most often by changing ownership, group membership, and/or permissions.

4

To add to the above, please do the following:

  1. Verify DEBUG logging is checked (ON), VERBOSE logging unchecked (OFF)
  2. Scan files
  3. Wait for completion.
  4. Make certain (the activity indicator - upper right) all matching activity has also ended.
  5. Settings - Server - Troubleshooting - Download Logs.
  6. Attach the ZIP file.
5

Plex listing
Plex listing1333×119 6.93 KB

Items are using rclone for attaching to my remote Google Drive. (The server is remote from me, with files loaded on a Google Drive.)

Logs Plex Media Server Logs_2020-01-18_12-58-27.zip (23.4 KB)

6

The Plex server can see all of the files in the gdrive, and it works flawlessly for the movies. I just added the music and episodes a few days ago. Music loads correctly, but not the TV shows.

7

Plex Media Server Logs_2020-01-18_13-06-09.zip (59.6 KB)

8

I think you need to add “Planet Earth” to the beginning of the filename so they’re
“Planet Earth - S01E01 - From Pole to Pole.mp4”

Also, make sure any Metadata is scrubbed from the files as well, or that your “Local Media Assets” is moved down below somewhere, I move mine to the bottom as I have no LMA in my tv library, only in my movies library.

1 Like
9

I had requested the entire ZIP file contents please.

Those files are insignificant to the larger issue, sorry.

Of particular interest to me are Plex Media Server.log and its rollover files.

Screenshot from 2020-01-18 19-02-56
Screenshot from 2020-01-18 19-02-561042×240 19.8 KB

10

Jason Nalley, these exact files load just fine into my Windows version of Plex Media server.

Here is the full ZIP: Plex Media Server Logs_2020-01-18_16-49-56.zip (7.2 MB)

11

To be fair, I don’t claim to know anything about the differences between the plex media servers, nor file systems between windows and linux. However, I would suspect that there’s something different about it that makes it require “Planet Earth” in the beginning of the file name… That is the recommended plex naming scheme, and therefore it’s something you should at least try. If it fixes it, then we know where the problem lies.

12

First… JasonNalley is right… you might have been lucky with your naming – to be formally correct, the show name should also be the prefix of the episode file names.

Second… that doesn’t seem to be what’s giving Plex the hiccups in your particular case. It appears all the requests to the TheTVDb agent are timing out. Are you by chance having any kind of outbound firewall / network filter / security software running on your server that could interfere with Plex communicating with those online databases?

Also… do you have similar issues with movies or any other kind of media in Plex?

13

Thank you for the logs.

  1. Please turn VERBOSE logging back OFF. It is only used in extreme cases. During normal operation, it causes far too much information loss than it’s worth because logs are fixed-size

  2. There are no file access errors in the logs provided.

  3. I see it scanning music. If you added TV episodes while it’s still working on music then episodes will wait until music is completed or cancelled.

  4. I see many timeouts while working with gdrive. They are on the border of being excessive but prefer to wait before drawing any conclusions.

  5. The CPU isn’t the fastest (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+L5420+%40+2.50GHz&id=1259) and, from all indications I see in these logs, what’s holding you up.

Question: Have the television episodes been added to their own library section?

1 Like
14

1 - Turned off
2 - okay
3 - Music was added about the same time, but scans just fine
4 - Hmmm…
5 - Yes, true. Not much I can do about it. (Don’t have direct access to this server, it is one I purchased through OneProvider.
6 - Episodes, Music, and Movies are added to each their own sections.

I made sure that I have resolvconf loaded, and the DNS servers for google are utilized (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4). - Perhaps to verify, what address should I attempt to reach from the server to make sure that it is resolving the DNS correctly?

I went through my folder for ‘Planet Earth’ on the Google Drive and quickly renamed everything to: ‘Planet Earth - S01E01 - From Pole to Pole.mp4’. (Added the series name to the title.) Deleted, the series from Plex, and rescanned to add it back. No success. :frowning:

Not sure what else I can do.

15

I did see something in the logs:
Exception caught while attempting to match metadata on item 12181: Error parsing file

Hmmmm… does this mean something?

16

If I may make a suggestion about the naming I see,

/mnt/gdrive/episodes/Stargate SG-1/Season 9/S09E04 - The Ties That Bind.mp4

By Plex standard naming rules,

  1. The series name is to be included with the episode to guarantee the accuracy of the lookup. The structure above it is for grouping but the episode file itself is where the match is performed.

if you’re going to keep the SG-1 then another delimiter is needed, as in

[chuck@lizum Season 01.178]$ ls -la
total 11744232
drwsr-sr-x.  2 chuck chuck       4096 Aug  3 03:33 ./
drwsr-sr-x. 12 chuck chuck       4096 Aug  3 03:33 ../
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck 1082737181 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E01-E02.Children of the Gods.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500842669 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E03.The Enemy Within.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500995200 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E04.Emancipation.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  501234811 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E05.The Broca Divide.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500633028 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E06.The First Commandment.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500594633 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E07.Cold Lazarus.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500266630 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E08.The Nox.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500761448 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E09.Brief Candle.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  501096344 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E10.Thor's Hammer.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500736995 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E11.The Torment of Tantalus.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500705264 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E12.Bloodlines.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck 1428156843 Jul  5  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E13.Fire and Water.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500795018 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E14.Hathor.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500765474 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E15.Singularity.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500441849 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E16.Cor-Ai.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500852763 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E17.Enigma.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500401417 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E18.Solitudes.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500717089 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E19.Tin Man.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  501090908 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E20.There But For the Grace of God.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  501300511 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E21.Politics.mkv
-rw-r--r--.  1 chuck chuck  500779219 May 27  2018 Stargate SG-1.S01E22.Within the Serpent's Grasp.mkv
[chuck@lizum Season 01.179]$

I use FileBot for media naming. It’s the defacto standard tool because

  1. It looks up the file names given
  2. It allows you to verify the match before performing any actions
  3. It then moves the files into perfect structure while renaming them.
17

I did the naming convention as stated for the folder Planet Earth, but nothing was coming through

Any ideas of what I can do to increase the timeouts for rclone to gdrive?

18

I also did the naming structure as suggested using FileBot for the folder 24, but so far no such luck on that one.

plex listed 2
plex listed 2793×449 12.5 KB

19

Don’t use NxM anymore. It used to be reliable but hasn’t been in a long time.

SxxExx is the official naming rule.

When you rename files after they’ve been scanned, you must also remember to “Dance” the files

(move out, scan, empty trash, clean bundles, move back, scan again)

Ref: https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/

20

So, I did all of this, updated the names of the files, moved all of the files to a location that Plex doesn’t monitor, did the “File Dance”. Only moved one directory back. (Angel), scan again… and nothing…

Any other ideas?

Plex listing 3
Plex listing 3800×449 15.6 KB

Plex Media Server Logs_2020-01-19_19-49-53.zip (5.7 MB)