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Any recommendations for identifying missing media on a Plex install?
I think I have some local files on my drives that aren't showing up on my Plex server - does anyone know of any good 3rd party apps that would be able to identify what is missing?
1.) Update to 1.32.7100+ as there was a bug introduced in 1.32 that prevented some media from being added
2.) Make sure your media follows the naming scheme exactly.
Disable auto empty trash in the settings before making any changes.
3.) If the media is available on TMDB or TVDB then you can add the ID to the filename to help with
4.) Last resort would be to try adding a .plexmatch file
Thank you so much for your response! So as it turned out, the issue was that I had a lot of films (~2000), and didn't want to go through them all manually (and the same for TV shows etc.) - I definitely knew some were not named correctly, but I just wasn't sure which.
I was using a tool called WebTools-NG which was doing its job perfectly, but my setup was flawed - I had all my files in the root of my drives (some drives are just for films, others for TV) so it made sense to do it this way - but a really helpful user on GitHub pointed out this is bad practice (I had no idea), and as such creating a folder at root and moving all files into that solved the issue, and allowed the tool to scan properly.
Depending on the media type, I turn to Sonarr (shows) and Radarr (films) to do that for me.
People using Plex generally tend to use them already but if you aren't it's generally advisable to use either (or better yet, both) for your media management since they have excellent media discovery built in, but they also allow manual searches of files it can't detect.
If it's confirmed in Sonarr or Radarr that the file exists and is processed, you can check within your Plex libraries if the right folders are scanned for media files. Force another scan if necessary.
That should probably resolve it. If it doesn't, I may need some more info to help.
Thanks for taking the time to reply - I was using WebTools-NG, which wasn't working due to how I had my files laid out, but fixing that solved the issue (see my other comment).
I have been debating using Sonarr and Radarr, but I thought they were solely for media acquisition - are they generally useful addons for Plex in general, then?
No, you are right, they are mainly for acquisition. You can set them up to name all files acquired to match the requirements of your media server.
Not really relevant to your question, but I would encourage you to have a look at Jellyfin as an alternative to Plex. It doesn’t do anything better, but is free and open source.
You’re the second in this thread to recommend jellyfin - I’m going to check that out, thanks!
I prefer them for both acquisitions and management. Sonarr and Radarr do allow for some sort of folder structure and file name management, which tends to take care of any nesting folders causing issues. Hence the suggestion.
There are other tools that may be better suited for your specific needs, but both Sonarr and Radarr have an intuitive UI that helps identify existing and missing files as well as give some options to manually dig through your filesystem and assign a film/show title to the file which it can then rename into your preferred filename and folder structure.
It tends to get the job done.
That’s really good to know, thanks! I’ve ended up using filebot for renaming and organising my awful server structure haha, but I’m definitely going to check out Sonarr and Radarr.
My issue tends to be that I’m overly paranoid about all this stuff, so I haven’t automated anything at all - all my downloads are even done on a different computer and I manually move them over 😅 someone else mentioned about split tunnelling so that I can use my main PC without affecting Plex/Steam, so I’m going to look into all that
My go to for media library management if things seem off is TinyMediaManager.
It's written in Java, but don't let that put you off. It's great at finding and renaming media. You can let it best guess or help it along. It'll fix folder names and structures for TV shows and Movies, including adding all of the meta data.
I think there's a free version and now a paid for version. I've always used the older free one and never had an issue. It's not rocket fast but it gets the job done.
Just to add, I moved from Plex to Emby To Jellyfin and I cannot rate Jellyfin enough. Their media identification is pretty darn good too!
I've been using Plex since I became a lifetime member in 2015 and I've been pretty happy with the plex experience except for the occasional laggy transcode from an outside mediashare- what's the major difference with Jellyfin?
I have lifetime Plex as well and still moved to Jellyfin. My two main reasons were privacy and the annoying ads of plex features I didn’t want.
Plex calls home about your media gallery, playback, and login, which I didn’t like. They had a security breach a year or two ago and that was when I changed.
I had also been increasingly annoyed by Plex constantly trying to add their own / third party media streams into my menu / home screen.
The mayor downside for me with Jellyfin is that I have to use a third party player on AppleTV to get most Dolby Atmos playback working, but I could have just used Nvidia Shield instead.
Interesting, thanks for the tip! :)