# Unmatched media (surveyed 2026-08-15)

An unmatched item carries a `local://` GUID instead of a real agent GUID
(`plex://movie/...`, `plex://episode/...`). Plex will never give it a title, summary, or
artwork, and no amount of poster repair will help — there is no metadata record behind it.

## Why the top level is not enough

**A matched parent can be full of unmatched children.** This is the finding that matters:

- `Battlestar Galactica` the *show* has a real GUID, a poster, and looks completely
  healthy in a show-level audit.
- All **74 of its episodes** and all **5 of its seasons** carry `local://` GUIDs. They
  display as "Episode 1", "Episode 2"… with no titles and no artwork.

An audit scoped to shows and movies reports this library as clean. `plex-health` checks
show, season, and episode level for exactly this reason.

## Current state

| Level | Unmatched | Total |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Movies | 1 | 1059 |
| Movies 4k | 0 | 79 |
| Shows | 0 | 283 |
| Seasons | 7 | 954 |
| Episodes | 97 | 11531 |

Episodes by show:

| Show | Unmatched | Of total | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Battlestar Galactica | 74 | 74 | every episode |
| Louis Theroux | 19 | 19 | every episode |
| Hellsing Ultimate | 3 | 13 | partial |
| Ancient Aliens | 1 | 205 | single episode |

## Battlestar Galactica: three copies, none of them right

Worth understanding as a whole before changing anything:

1. **`Movies` → `Battlestar Galactica the Mini Series`** (`19798`, `local://19798`)
   `/data/Movies/Battlestar Galactica - The Mini-Series (2003)/…Bluray-1080p.mkv`
   94 min, 1080p, 11.06 GB. **Unmatchable in a Movies library** — Plex's movie agent has
   no entry for the 2003 miniseries, which is catalogued as television. All 20 candidates
   it offers are documentaries or the Razor/Plan films. Accepted in
   [../known-issues.conf](../known-issues.conf); the structural fix is to move the file
   into the TV library, which needs filesystem access to odin.

2. **`TV Shows` → `Battlestar Galactica (2003)` → `Season 2003`** (2 episodes)
   `/data/TV/Battlestar Galactica (Miniseries)/Season 2003/…S2003E01…`
   576p, ~2 GB per part, 94 + 89 min. The same miniseries, at lower quality but complete.
   The `S2003E01` filename is what created the bogus "Season 2003" — the agent expects
   specials as season 0 (`S00E01`).

3. **`TV Shows` → `Battlestar Galactica (2003)` → Seasons 1–4** (74 episodes)
   Filenames are correct and carry real episode titles
   (`… - S01E01 - 33.mkv`, `… - S01E02 - Water.mkv`), yet every episode is `local://`.
   The show matched; its episodes never did.

Note that (1) and (2) are **not** interchangeable copies: the Movies file is higher
resolution but 94 minutes against the TV pair's 183, so it is likely part one only rather
than a complete alternative.

## Not yet attempted

Re-matching the 97 episodes. A forced metadata refresh
(`PUT /library/metadata/<key>/refresh?force=1`) is the obvious lever, and for a show whose
filenames are already correct it would probably match them.

**It carries a specific risk here:** a forced refresh rebuilds the item's metadata,
which is precisely the operation implicated in the poster failure documented in
[tv-poster-incident.md](tv-poster-incident.md). Running it across the library could undo
the poster repair. If it is attempted, do it on **one** show first, then re-run
`bin/poster-audit` to confirm the posters survived before going wider.