Plex Sync BETA

@justin per the request of @kcador I am going to quote what I wrote here: 📚 The Library on Trakt: What It Is and Where It’s Going - #25 by CajunRob

One thing that I’ve noticed as I am going through my list of collected items in my library is that Trakt appears to be classifying digital items as BluRay after syncing from Plex. I’m not sure whether this is because it’s picking up the source from the filenames used or what. But surely anything synced from Plex should automatically be considered digital, no? Even if it isn’t necessarily playable because of App permissions. It also seems to me that much of the reliance of being “playable” from some site is based on Justwatch finding where (if anywhere) something is currently able to be streamed. That negates anything we might have purchased digitally or own through a service already.

ETA. After downloading the CSV files for my Library, I can now definitely see that anything imported from Plex that had the source of the file set as a BluRay in the filename (e.g. move.title.year.BluRay.resolution.audio codec.video codec) is currently being tagged as Media type=1 in the watch list instead of media type=0). Unfortunately from what I can see there’s no way of uploading an edited version of the Library to accurately fix the items to be correctly displayed. Am I honestly expected to manually one by one edit >1000 items?

While it is incredibly helpful to see it listed on Trakt that the original source of a digital file was a BluRay, DVD, or Web, it clearly is going to play havoc with the new Library in the future if Trakt assumes that because something was encoded or remuxed from a physical copy that it isn’t a digital file. Every file I have tagged through naming something with the words BluRay in the title are for some obscure reason being tagged as BluRay (media type=1) in my Library. That simply makes no sense seeing as (a) Plex can’t handle physical media, not even from a folder base or .iso file, or even ifo/vob, and (b) as it was synced through Plex Sync it clearly is digital.

To my knowledge there’s no tagging at all being done by Plex ever. So does this mean that Trakt is scraping and processing file names?

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How do I force the first sync to happen immediately? It always says “queued” whenever I click Sync on the Server I want to sync, but nothing happens. When I switch from one page to another the “queued” goes away.

I am just trying to sync my movie watched status from my old server to a new server. Literally subscribed to Trakt VIP just for that. I just need the old data to export to trakt immediately so I can then import it to the new server.

I’m going to reply to myself as a bump as there seems to be no progress or status change on this issue I highlighted. And In fact this issue continues to be making assumptions upon syncing from Plex to Trakt which will complicate matters here immensely going forward.

My “Custom” Library seems to continue to grow, not just from incorrect tagging by Trakt of the items, but also because of the continued failure of Plex Sync to be consistent and reliable. Any manually added Library item using the “old website” needed because Plex Sync failed to perform a sync becomes a new item in “Custom”.

The normal operation of a BETA app would be for input from those users testing something to be investigated and used to solve problems going forward. The utter silence in this thread is frankly worrisome. But even more concerning is that the new V3 website relies on this BETA item to manipulate OUR data without us being able to adjust or amend errors made by this BETA feature.

I am back in the office now and going through this thread to look into reported issues.

I plan to re-enable more error logging so you can see why a sync is failing. It usually fails if we’re not able to connect with your Trakt server (could be offline, DNS issue, port issue, etc).

If you’re using both, there will likely be duplicates since the timestamps are going to be different between what Plex saves as the watched date and when Trakt receives a real time webhook. My suggestion is to only use 1 plex option for “watched”. It sounds like this is what you ended up doing already.

“Start watching” is to only indicate what you’re playing. That shows up on your dashboard, apps, etc to indicate what you’re actively watching. The “watched” setting is what actually commits it to your watched history.

No, it’s only from Plex to Trakt currently.

When you watch 1 episode of any show, it will automatically be removed from your Trakt watchlist. This is how things work in general for your Trakt watchlist, no matter how the play is tracked.

Does the item remain on your Plex watchlist? I wonder if that is causing the show to be synced back your Trakt watchlist, even after Trakt automatically removed it.

It looks at the filename to “guess” on some of the library metadata. If it fines “bluray” or “remux” it tags it as “BluRay” in the library. It does something similar for HDR to detect “Dolby Vision”, “HDR10+” and “HDR”. It will also use the filename for “3D”.

It uses Plex file metadata directly for the video resolution, audio coded, and audio channels.

This could be up for debate, but that is how it currently works.

That should be all you need to do. My guess is some error is being encountered, such is an unreachable Plex server. I am looking into exposing more detailed errors.

I realize this. But in conjunction with the new “split” Library for the new V3 website this is not a working solution. At least not for me. Anything it identifies as having been ripped from a physical source is getting labeled as a media type=1 item and put into a “Custom” folder and not into the actual digital library. The fact it’s imported the metadata through a Plex Sync instance indicates it’s obviously a digital format file.

Seeing as this Plex Sync is the foundation on which Trakt V3 will continue this seems rather silly tbh. Like I’e said, it’s incredibly useful to see the source and info of the file, but to have it split into a different Library makes a mess of things.

Tagging @kcador into this as I’d raised an issue on GitHub about this.

That’s a technical detail still to be figured out. I assume the distinction is more automated vs. manual. Automatic library creation is going to by nature be digital items. Manually adding to library is would be used for physical discs/tapes you have on your shelf. It’s for sure good feedback to add to that discussion.

Hi I’ve been using Plex Sync for a while now and overall it has done its job rather well, aside from initially having to connect and reconnect the server several times before it actually did a data sync.

Now I’ve recently noticed that my recent plays haven’t been showing up anymore, while I haven’t changed anything in the settings of Trakt or Plex and I don’t really know what to do to resolve this.

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I feel like I’m talking into a vacuum, The vast majority of items in my “Custom” Library are items that have been synced to the Library through automation from Plex Sync. The exceptions are when the sync failed to happen, I needed to fix a “match” on Plex that had synced here before I corrected the mismatch, movies / series that were too new or not yet in the TMDB database thus couldn’t be added through syncing.

In fact I’d guesstimate at least 95% of them have been added through automation. Obviously the very fact that they synced from Plex, a service that can NOT handle physical media, by default means they are digital media.

They cannot be anything other than that because no method exists for a Plex user to add anything other than digital media. And I can’t stress this enough. Unlike Kodi where one could mount a drive, or use a folder structure of the physical item, those types of files aren’t recognized by Plex and would never even appear.

I would 100% be willing to give you access to my Plex server so you can for yourself see that every single item that’s ended up in my “Custom” Library is in fact playable and present on my servers and should be classified as digital and in the regular Library.

It’s truly time to give up on this split Library idea. I fully comprehend the desire to make the Library a “playable” item. Something that while not so useful for my viewing habits as I tend to watch on an a Smart TV, it probably would appeal to some users.

However the reality is, I’d be pretty sure there’s far more people who are facing this misidentified type of media because of splitting it than there are Trakt users who are using the Library for their physical media items. Those users most likely have them listed in a List.

ETA to give you an idea of the scope of this problem, seeing as there’s no way to see the total number in my “Custom” library that I can figure out, I used a simple “Blu-Ray” filter on the original website library and it shows 2,353 items tagged as BluRay in there… all items that are digital and are present in my Custom library by mistake.

I’m not quite understanding the issue. Nothing was moved from your library into a “custom” list, that was just a discussion point in the original announcement. Your full library is viewable at https://trakt.tv/users/cajunrob/library.

@justin Sure it’s visible on V2, but how about:

https://app trakt.tv/users/me/library?library=other (link broken to show formatting)



And the problem is, that Sync for me has been busted since Wednesday so I now need to add the new items manually again which shoves them into the Custom Library not the Plex library.

Clearly the first 3 items are currently airing series (Murdoch Mysteries, Maine Cabin Masters and Madame Blanc Mysteries) so shouldn’t be in a section for “physical media” as that obviously doesn’t even exist.

I got more info on this. Anything added by Trakt’s official Plex Sync or Plex Webook is displayed under your Plex library. It does not matter what format (digital, bluray, etc) is selected, we filter based on the app that added the data.

Are you using a 3rd party Plex app such as PlexTraktSync to add this data?

No I am not using a third party tool. I was exclusively using Plex Sync but I have now disabled it because tbh it simply doesn’t work consistently and response time to acknowledge issues with it has been abysmal. It failed to Sync a single item for over a week so I’ve reverted to the Webhook. If I am going to have to manually fix items, I might as well only limit myself to fixing new series added in bulk which is the only item the Webhook has issues with.

But I will also point out that what you’re saying is fundamentally wrong. Whoever told you this is simply incorrect. If it were true I wouldn’t have a split library at present as per the above screenshots.

Other than items I have manually added, the “Custom” library is filled with media where my naming format includes BluRay as the source.

ETA: And FWIW 2 items that got added today through the Webhook (Hudson & Rex S08E11 and S08E12) are also in the Custom library too. Something somewhere is totally busted.

The most recent 2 things I see in your library add from Plex Sync are:

The 74 items before that were added directly in the website. Can you post screenshots of your Plex and Custom libraries so I can see the first few items on each?

Is plex sync broken? I read it’s supposed to sync every hour. Mine hasn’t synced since midnight and my now playing doesn’t work anymore.

I’m only using Plex Sync, but my library has 1639 items that are Blu-ray. When I use v3 to watch, they are categorized in the custom library.