Plex Media Server, Not Detecting Media

[shat]

I have read numerous posts, guides and various threads on the PlexApp site, but still having an issue with Plex Media Server not detecting the majority of my media. 

 

Anything couch potato has downloaded shows up fine, but the other media I have (99% of it) is not seen.  The naming convention I use for television shows is:

 

Show Name/Season XX/Show Name - sXXeXX - Episode Name.mkv * where XX is Season number and episode number.

 

Movies are very simple:

 

Movie Title/Movie Title.mkv

 

I've added both to Plex Media Library via the manager and again, couch potato movies show up fine - but everything is missing.

 

At first I thought it was my naming conventions, so I tried renaming to the new naming convention (above) from my previous.  I did all the forced refreshes I could find, clicking refresh while holding SHIFT, then holding ALT - etc.

 

Nada.

 

I had a quick PM with Influencer and he mentioned modifying permissions ("open up your permissions") but I have no idea what he's referring to except chmod 777 everything.  Possible to just have plex launch as nobody:nobody like everything else?  Anyone else run into this problem and have a solution available?

[batt01]

If your naming convention does not include year you will have a problem. They should ideally be in individual folders. The folder name is key. The actually .avi or mkv is not critical.

 

D:\Movies\First Movie (2007)\

                        movie.avi

 

D:\Movies\Second Movie (2008)\

                        bm-cd1.avi

                        bm-cd2.avi

 

D:\Movies\Third Movie (2009)\

                        third movie [Good Version].avi

 

Release date

The year between parenthesis in the folder name is optional, but will allow proper conflict resolution in cases where there are two movies with similar names. Any text between [brackets] will be ignored, you can use this for comments, versions, etc.

It is recommended to always include the year in parenthesis as this will improve the automatic detection of the correct movie.

 

If you have a lot of items to rename, doing it manually would be a complete PITA. You might need to massage your media. For movies I used Media Center Master. It will scan, rename and match you media to the IMDB #tt. In any case you can quickly determine if you indeed have a naming problem.

 

Example:  Search IMDB for The Dark Knight Rises the tt# will be in the url.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/ Paste the number in MCM and it will then fetch the metadata and rename accordingly. Maybe your naming convention is not the issue, but MCM will quickly confirm that it is not.

 

It also works on TV Shows, but I have always used Sickbeard, so I never had a problem. If you use Sickbeard, I would try using the renaming function and see what happens.

 

Show Name/Season XX/Show Name - sXXeXX - Episode Name.mkv * where XX is Season number and episode number.

 

Below is the structure I use.

Show Name/Seasonxx/sxxexx

D:\TV Shows\Great Show\Season 1\

                            s01e01 - Episode 1.avi

                            s01e02 - Episode 2.avi

 

My actual structure from Windows Explorer: \\TOWER\Media\TvShows\American Horror Story\Season 01

This is not the only way to do it, you dont have to use season folder at all, but it does keep things neat.

 

http://www.mediacentermaster.com/

[Benni-chan]

read this naming guide on the plex wiki: http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/PlexNine_PMS_Naming_Guide

a year is not really necessary (only, if there is a movie with the same name but different release year).

 

if there is a problem with permissions, run the new permissions script in the unraid webgui. (or run it via telnet: newperms /mnt/user/YOUR_MEDIA_SHARE )

 

what it your config in plex? how did you set up your sections?

[shat]

@batt: thanks for the MCM link. Will it Auto search or do i have to look uo every movie with imdb first?

 

@benny: trying that now. Will update.

[batt01]

@batt: thanks for the MCM link. Will it Auto search or do i have to look uo every movie with imdb first?

 

@benny: trying that now. Will update.

 

It will auto search, and automatically fetch and assign. Sometimes it will present you with a choice of several movies and you click the right one. Only if it has no idea, will it ask for the IMDB number.  When it scans your media you can set filters to show only those titles that lack metadata.

[shat]

Will give it a try. Newperms fixed television shows. Theyre showing up now.

[aptalca]

If your naming convention does not include year you will have a problem. They should ideally be in individual folders. The folder name is key. The actually .avi or mkv is not critical.

 

D:\Movies\First Movie (2007)\

                        movie.avi

 

D:\Movies\Second Movie (2008)\

                        bm-cd1.avi

                        bm-cd2.avi

 

D:\Movies\Third Movie (2009)\

                        third movie [Good Version].avi

 

Release date

The year between parenthesis in the folder name is optional, but will allow proper conflict resolution in cases where there are two movies with similar names. Any text between [brackets] will be ignored, you can use this for comments, versions, etc.

It is recommended to always include the year in parenthesis as this will improve the automatic detection of the correct movie.

 

If you have a lot of items to rename, doing it manually would be a complete PITA. You might need to massage your media. For movies I used Media Center Master. It will scan, rename and match you media to the IMDB #tt. In any case you can quickly determine if you indeed have a naming problem.

 

Example:  Search IMDB for The Dark Knight Rises the tt# will be in the url.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/ Paste the number in MCM and it will then fetch the metadata and rename accordingly. Maybe your naming convention is not the issue, but MCM will quickly confirm that it is not.

 

It also works on TV Shows, but I have always used Sickbeard, so I never had a problem. If you use Sickbeard, I would try using the renaming function and see what happens.

 

Show Name/Season XX/Show Name - sXXeXX - Episode Name.mkv * where XX is Season number and episode number.

 

Below is the structure I use.

Show Name/Seasonxx/sxxexx

D:\TV Shows\Great Show\Season 1\

                            s01e01 - Episode 1.avi

                            s01e02 - Episode 2.avi

 

My actual structure from Windows Explorer: \\TOWER\Media\TvShows\American Horror Story\Season 01

This is not the only way to do it, you dont have to use season folder at all, but it does keep things neat.

 

http://www.mediacentermaster.com/

 

in my case, plex only uses the filenames for the movies and it is useless. Because I have the folders with the movie name, and the filenames are the scene file names. Plex didn't find anything. (Plex was originally a Mac product, and it shows that it is with the lack of advanced settings)

 

I use xbmc mainly, which has a setting for using folder names in the scrapers. So I exported my library in xbmc to individual files (nfo). then used xbmc nfo importer as the plex scraper (search plex forums). It worked.

[ammar577]

I'm Having a similar issue.  Plex is not detecting my movies and tv shows. Even though they are named correctly.  I dont use xbmc. I have plex clients on my macs, ipads

 

And previously had plex server runing on my mac but I wanted the unraid to manage it for me

 

Can anyone please help

[karldc]

It's probably a permissions issue

 

sudo chmod 755 -R "<plex media directory>"