What is the correct way to Plex Dance?

General Discussions
1

What is the real, correct order for the Plex Dance? I have seen it posted 100’s of times, and almost every time it’s emphasized to make sure you do all the steps, in the correct order. Problem is, steps 3 and 4 switch places, depending on who is giving the advice…

  1. Move the files out of view from Plex
  2. Update the library
  3. Empty trash or Clean Bundles?
  4. Clean bundles or Empty Trash?
  5. Move the correctly named files back
  6. Update the library

I always empty the trash first, then clean bundles. Somehow, that seems the logical way to me. Maybe it just doesn’t matter for those steps.

:smiley: … not posted to begin or continue a discussion on why we should ever have to put on our dancing shoes, but just the right order. And maybe a reason why that is the correct order, if possible…

2

The order of 3 & 4 matter not at all as far as I know. Since they do different things and touch different parts of the database and, at that point, are operating on a static database I cannot see how the order could matter.

3

Logic is in the eye of the logical. I am challenged in that area, but to me you clean your bundles, putting bundledust into your pillowcase, before throwing it out the window. If you throw your pillowcase out the window before you clean your bundles you have a lot of bundledust on the floor.

It probably only works that way in my mind, but that’s the way it works in my mind and now no matter what you believe (or know) to be true you’re probably thinking about it. With no in-depth support documentation for a ‘Work-Around’ it’s a roll of the bones.

The highly skilled Plex Developers may know how it works, but to date they haven’t been able to fix the reason we have to Plex Dance® in the first place, so again, it’s a roll of the bones.

:slight_smile:

4

Nope, emptying trash comes first.
Because only when the items are removed from the trash, their metadata ‘bundles’ get removed when issuing the command to ‘clean bundles’.
Otherwise they will remain, rendering the whole exercise futile.

Here’s a link you can use:
Plex Dance

5

@OttoKerner said:
Nope, emptying trash comes first.
Because only when the items are removed from the trash, their metadata ‘bundles’ get removed when issuing the command to ‘clean bundles’.
Otherwise they will remain, rendering the whole exercise futile.

That’s pretty much where my logic was headed. I can’t remove the bundles until I have declared the files associated with them is no longer in my library by emptying the trash. The trash can shows that Plex can’t find the file, but all of the metadata remains, so when it finds the file no matching is required.

I also noticed in the server settings, that “Clean Bundles” is a once a week option, while you can Empty Trash automatically when a file goes missing. If you have those options enabled, Plex will dump the trash, and at some point in time (maybe a week later) clean the bundles to get rid of everything associated with the file.

6

Now to teach my brain a new method (searching for the user manual).

7

[Feature Request]: Auto Plex Dance Metadata Refresh

8

Can’t we put a .plexignore file in the show we don’t want plex to scan instead of moving everything?

9

I had a very similar experience to leelynds, doctor who MKV 2005 S1 was showing as classic. identical naming to the rest of 2005 which was recognised correctly, I did the plex dance a couple times would re-scan as original series, following the logic above I

  1. Moved the tiles

  2. Clean Bundles

  3. Empty trash

  4. killed the Plex server process

  5. Moved files back with Plex down

6 Scan

S1 correctly recognised, it looks like in some instance you need to cycle plex server after dance B4 re-scan