Plex only seeing some movies

[carleycr]

I'm running the latest version of Plex. I just got my jail/plex fixed to read media folders from multiple datasets. Only some movies from one of the datasets are coming in. The permissions on the dataset are correct, as some of the movies are coming in. The naming convention is correct. I've tried "Moviename (year)" and "Moviename(year)", with no luck in Plex picking them up. Some files do not live in a folder, some files do lie within a folder with the proper naming convention. I've tried switching to folder view in Plex app and still same results.

I was told by some other users on here to not upgrade my ZFS pool that FreeNAS is prompting for until I fix some of my issues. I'm hesitant to do so, and hesitant to upgrade to 11.1 stable as it's prompting me to do, as I feel like it will just cause more issues rather than fixing them. Screenshot below is referencing the volume upgrade.

Thanks in advance.

 

[nightshade00013]

I have the same issue with my step daughter's FreeNAS. It doesn't find new stuff. Not sure what it is that is doing it but is likely an issue with the plex install or the permissions. Has nothing to do with the zfs feature upgrade.

Do a ls -l in the mount where the movies are and see what the permissions of the files that are not found are and my guess will be they are not readable due to the permission. I suspect the same thing with my step daughter's system but right now the single drive in it is full anyway so it's not worth dealing with until I can afford to either upgrade my drives to a larger size and give her four old ones or buy four of them to put in her system.

And as far as permissions if you don't understand them https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction-to-linux-permissions can help.

 

[carleycr]

I think you're right nightshade. Here is a screen shot of two movies that appear to have different permissions. Not sure how that happened. "A Single Shot" is appearing in Plex, but the other is not.

Any suggestions on how to fix? I'm not sure what the 1 or 2 denote

Another good example. The haunted house movies do not show up in Plex, but a good day to die hard does.

 

[danb35]

Here is a screen shot of two movies that appear to have different permissions. Not sure how that happened.

The difference is that the ones with d as the first character are directories. And, at least in the small sample size we have, it's the movies in directories that aren't being seen.

The permissions also indicated windows ACLs, which are probably relevant here, but are generally beyond me.

 

[Nick2253]

Can you provide the screenshot for the files in one of those directories? For example, "A Haunted House".

 

[carleycr]

Can you provide the screenshot for the files in one of those directories? For example, "A Haunted House".

Is this what you're looking for?

 

[carleycr]

The difference is that the ones with d as the first character are directories. And, at least in the small sample size we have, it's the movies in directories that aren't being seen.

The permissions also indicated windows ACLs, which are probably relevant here, but are generally beyond me.

I tested this theory thinking the same thing, but when I move the file outside of the directory (the folder) and re-scan with plex, it still doesn't pick it up.

 

[styno]

Is this what you're looking for? View attachment 22745

Can you show the permissions from the shell/unix side?

 

[carleycr]

Can you show the permissions from the shell/unix side?

Sorry about that. Here you go.

 

[Nick2253]

Is this what you're looking for?

This was what I was looking for.

Your files are not named in a Plex-compliant way, which is probably why you're not seeing them. The folders are named correctly, but the movie files underneath need to match that format: <movie name> (<year>).<ext>

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200381023-naming-movie-files/

 

[Jailer]

Your files are not named in a Plex-compliant way, which is probably why you're not seeing them.

His naming convention should be fine, that's exactly how all my movies are named and they are all picked up by Plex without issue.

 

[carleycr]

Those movies used to be picked up Plex with that naming convention, so I agree with Jailer that it isn't an issue. For giggles, I did rename and rescan, and still did not pick it up.

 

[Nick2253]

His naming convention should be fine, that's exactly how all my movies are named and they are all picked up by Plex without issue.

Interesting. I struggled with this exact issue until I renamed my movies exactly to <movie name> (<year>).<ext>. I was never able to get Plex to accept my movies if they were not named with the year.

The fact that he copied them to the top level and they still were not picked up by Plex also seems to point to some kind of naming issue.

EDIT: Now that I look at the earlier screenshots, I see that you did have the sans-year naming convention on the files in the top directory, and they were working. What's fascinating is, like I said, I dealt with this same issue, and as soon as I renamed something to the exact Plex convention, it starting working.

 

[Nick2253]

OK, I have a suggestion. Can we just copy over a few files to a completely separate directory, and have Plex scan that? I'm wondering if something might be breaking with the scanner.

As I reflected on my previous experience, I realized I used a renaming tool to rename my entire library, and part of that was to clean up other misc files that I had stored in with the movies (like posters and screenshots). I'm wondering if it wasn't the rename action that fixed the problem, but actually this cleanup that did it.

 

[carleycr]

OK, I have a suggestion. Can we just copy over a few files to a completely separate directory, and have Plex scan that? I'm wondering if something might be breaking with the scanner.

As I reflected on my previous experience, I realized I used a renaming tool to rename my entire library, and part of that was to clean up other misc files that I had stored in with the movies (like posters and screenshots). I'm wondering if it wasn't the rename action that fixed the problem, but actually this cleanup that did it.

Are you suggesting just move the movie file outside of the directory and re-scan with plex to see if it sees it that way? Assuming I would keep the recommended naming convention to plex can pick it up.

 

[Nick2253]

Are you suggesting just move the movie file outside of the directory and re-scan with plex to see if it sees it that way? Assuming I would keep the recommended naming convention to plex can pick it up.

Sorry, I wasn't exactly clear. I was thinking about making something like a "Movies 2" directory, and only copy over a couple movies. I would suggest a couple known working movies and a couple non-working movies (not too many, because we want a small sample). Then, scan this new "Movies 2" directory.

At best, we'll get Plex to see all of the movies, and we're golden. That tells us that something in the main "Movies" directory is likely causing a problem.

If it doesn't work, we can use this as a minimal working example to fix the problem.

 

[carleycr]

Looking into this further, I'm noticing all directories in the movie folder in the media dataset are not pulling into Plex. The other dataset I have movies on just has files, no directories.

I tested copying 1 directory to this new movies2 directory in the same media dataset.
i.e.- existing file path of directory not being recognized by plex. /mnt/Vol1/media/videos/movies/8 Mile (2002)
new directory being recognized by plex after copying and scanning. /mnt/Vol1/media/videos/movies2/8 Mile (2002)

I did not change any naming convention to the 8 Mile directory or file within the directory before or after copying.

 

[carleycr]

Bump

 

[Nick2253]

Can you post ls -la for both the working and non-working directories?

 

[carleycr]

Ask and you shall recieve

Non working directory

Working directory