Ministra stores an address, not a file, and nothing checks that the address still leads anywhere. Rename a folder or re-encode a film and the catalogue goes on offering an entry that fails the moment somebody presses play — discovered by a subscriber, never by the portal.
The Missing files screen is for exactly that.
Finding them
Open Missing files and press search. It walks your catalogue and checks whether the file behind each entry is really on your media server. This is a real check of every file, so it takes a while — it does not run just because the screen was opened.
By default it looks only at entries vodmatic created. You can include what was in the portal before vodmatic, if you want to repair those too.
What it offers
For each entry with no file behind it, vodmatic looks for a replacement in your library — the same film, the same year, or the exact same series, season and episode. It will not offer a different episode or a different year; a near miss is worse than nothing here.
- Point it here — a replacement was found. The entry's address is updated to the file that exists.
- Take it out of service — no replacement. The file is unpublished so the portal stops offering it. The entry, its artwork and its category stay exactly as they are.
- Leave it — do nothing for now.
You choose per row, or set them all to one answer and then adjust individual rows from there.
Nothing is deleted, and everything can be undone
Unpublishing clears the flags Ministra serves on, and records what they were first — so an undo restores what was actually there rather than assuming everything should be visible. The old address is written down before it is overwritten, because the moment Ministra's address is changed, the one it had exists nowhere else.
Every batch appears under History and can be undone as a whole.
Empty entries
A second list shows programmes still published with nothing playable behind them at all — a series whose every episode has gone, for instance. Same choices, same record.
When it happens a lot at once
A large number of missing files usually means one thing changed:
- A folder was renamed or media was moved.
- The URL template was changed — existing entries keep the address they were written with, so they all break at once. Missing files is the tool that brings them across.
- The media server's hostname changed.
- A disk is unmounted. Check this before repairing anything. If the files are simply not mounted, they are not missing, and unpublishing them all would be a bad afternoon.
A file that exists but still will not play
Then the address is reachable by us and not by the set-top box, or not playable. Use Preview to fetch the URL and look at what comes back — a 403, a login page, or an HTML error page served with a 200. See Getting the playback address right.
