Library health check

The library health check looks over a whole folder of videos and lists what would make Plex play the wrong track or fail to match a title. It changes nothing. It’s a way to find out where the work is before opening anything in Organise.

Opening it

Click Tools in the header. Once files are loaded it sits at the right-hand end of the tab row, just before Add files; on the start screen, before any files are loaded, it’s beside Add files. Tools is separate from Compress, Organise and Queue: opening it leaves any files you have loaded, and the queue, exactly as they were. Click a stage tab, Back, or Tools again to leave.

Choose Library health check, then Choose a folder…. Every video in the folder and the folders inside it is checked.

A quick overview, not a full scan

Note

The health check reads only each file’s tags and track labels. It never reads what’s inside the tracks, so it can miss problems, and it can flag some that aren’t really there. Treat it as a first glance. For a full, accurate check, open the files in Organise, which reads the subtitles themselves.

A track called “English” might be the full dialogue or a forced track with a few dozen lines, and only its contents can say which. Organise opens each track to find out, which on a large file means reading the whole file (see Scanning speed). The health check skips that and goes on the labels, the flags and the counts in the file’s header. That is what makes a whole library a matter of minutes, and it is also the limit of what it can know.

What it checks

Everything is judged the way Organise would judge it, using your settings in Settings > Naming & Tracks: your preferred language and the track rules there.

Problem	What it means	Example
Default audio	The track a player starts with isn’t the one Organise would make the default	Default audio is audio track 1 (English, commentary). Should be audio track 2 (English).
Default subtitle	The wrong subtitle is marked default, one is marked when none should be, or none is marked when one should be	Subtitle track 2 (French) is marked default. No subtitle should be.
Duplicate subtitles	The same subtitle track stored more than once	Subtitle tracks 3 and 4 look like the same English track stored twice.
Commentary	Commentary tracks are still in the file. Only checked when Remove commentary tracks by default is on	1 commentary track: audio track 3 (English, commentary) “Director’s Commentary”.
Name	A filename Plex is unlikely to match	Still has the name it was given when the disc was read. Plex can’t match it.

A few details:

• Duplicates are spotted by language, format and the number of entries the file’s header gives each track, since the check can’t compare the lines themselves. Only checked when Remove duplicate subtitle tracks is on.
• Names are flagged when they are a disc’s own title name (_t04 and the like), or when they carry no year and no episode number. A year in the folder name counts, as in Some Movie (2015)/movie.mkv, and Plex’s own extras (a Featurettes folder, a name ending -trailer) are left alone, because Plex matches those by where they sit.

Worth a look

Some findings are shown as worth a look rather than as problems, in amber rather than red:

• the check isn’t sure, because Organise would hold the verdict behind it as Suggested, or a duplicate is too short to be sure of;
• or it may not matter: no subtitle marked default, which leaves Plex to choose by the viewer’s own settings, or a name with no year.

These are hidden to start with, because in most libraries nearly every file has one, and they would bury the real problems. Tick Also show things worth a look to see them. It says how many more files that will add.

The report

Files with nothing to report aren’t listed. Above the list:

• the headline counts the files with a problem;
• a filter button for each kind of problem, with how many files have it;
• Couldn’t read, if any file could not be opened at all.

The report stays while you go back to the other stages, and a check keeps running if you do. Stop ends a check early and keeps what it has found so far. Check again runs the same folder again, and Choose another folder starts over somewhere else.

Fixing what it finds

The health check fixes nothing itself. Each file has Open in Organise, and the button at the bottom opens every file currently shown, so picking a filter first opens just those. FileVerdict switches to Organise and scans them properly there, subtitles and all, so the verdicts you review are the full ones. Opening more than 25 files at once asks first, because a full scan of that many takes a good deal longer than the health check did.

Files already loaded in Organise are left as they are rather than scanned again, so nothing you have decided about them is lost.

How long it takes

About a seventh of a second a file on a local drive, measured one file at a time. FileVerdict checks several at once, so a library of 2,000 films takes a few minutes. A network share is slower, since every file has to be opened across the network.

Nothing is looked up online. The check works entirely from the files on your PC.