A way to force PLEX to use ONLY my metadata?

General Discussions
1

I’m new to PLEX and am wondering if there is anyway to force PLEX to use ONLY my metadata for my flac audio files. I have seen numerous examples of PLEX overwriting my accurate metadata with it’s inaccurate Album Art, or Artist information. Frustrating …

2

There is
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/227541/howto-configure-plex-to-use-embedded-metadata-music#top

But make sure your embedded metadata actually are correct.
Particularly the AlbumTitle tag which must not contain disc 1 and similar content
and the AlbumArtist tag which must be identical for all tracks of an album.

some more info:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1050849/#Comment_1050849

https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1093611/#Comment_1093611

3

Thanks for your assistance. The embedded metadata is correct. The AlbumTitle tag does not contain things like “disc 1”. And the AlbumArtist tag is the same for all of the tracks. And yet as you can clearly see in the screenshot the AlbumArt is not correct for his Album - even though I’ve verified in my tag editor. PLEX has superimposed this Album Art over my own. The Album Title is “Bach - Cantatas Vol 32”, the imposed Album Art is “Bach - Cantatas Vol 2”. Any suggestions?

4

Is your album art embedded in the tracks? If so, is there only one embedded image (I’ve found that Plex may pick the wrong one if there are more than one) in each track?

If it is not embedded, where is it located, and what is the filename?

5

Did you perform the agent reordering which is explained in the first link I set?
‘Local Media Assets’ needs to be in top position
under Settings - Server -Agents - Albums - last.fm

6

@beckfield said:
Is your album art embedded in the tracks? If so, is there only one embedded image (I’ve found that Plex may pick the wrong one if there are more than one) in each track?

If it is not embedded, where is it located, and what is the filename?

Yes, it is embedded in the tracks, and there is only one image in each track.

All Album Art is identical, jpeg, and around 350 Kb in size. Not only has PLEX caused the Album Art to be wrong for this album of Bach Cantatas, it’s placed the same erroneous Album Art in four other Bach Cantatas with similar titles: Bach - Cantatas Vol 02, Bach - Cantatas Vol 32, Bach - Cantatas Vol 44.

7

I’d check for ‘hidden’ album art files in the album folder. (and its ‘parent’ folders as well)

see https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1173370/#Comment_1173370

8

Thanks … I checked for hidden Album Art and all hidden files - there are none.

Is there a simple way to get PLEX to Only use My metadata?

9

@OttoKerner said:
Did you perform the agent reordering which is explained in the first link I set?
‘Local Media Assets’ needs to be in top position
under Settings - Server -Agents - Albums - last.fm

Yes, I did do as you suggested. Yet the issue persists. Any other suggestions?

10

@bjast
YES…
As was already mentioned…

@OttoKerner said:
Did you perform the agent reordering which is explained in the first link I set?
‘Local Media Assets’ needs to be in top position
under Settings - Server -Agents - Albums - last.fm

If your metadata tags are correct Plex will only use your tags

11

More accurately, if you configure as Otto mentioned, Plex will use your metadata first, and only resort to online sources when embedded data is missing. There’s no way to tell it to only use local.

12

LOL
Exactly what he said…
It will match on the metadata first… if found then matching is done!

13

@bjast said:
Yes, I did do as you suggested. Yet the issue persists. Any other suggestions?

After changing all that, you must perform the Plex Dance. (with music, you can omit step 4)

Plex will not retroactively switch back the cover motive.

1 Like
14

Just to be clear (so I don’t have to do this more than once) the PLEX Dance consists of:

  1. Moving all my FLAC audio files out of the PLEX folder on my NAS drive

  2. Updating my PLEX Library - using something like Safari on my Mac. Presumably, this zeros out all the data PLEX previously store about what was in this folder.

  3. Emptying the Trash - in the same browser as I Updated my Library

  4. Cleaning the bundles within the PLEX Library

  5. Double checking naming schemes within my FLAC audio tracks

  6. Moving my FLAC audio files back into the PLEX Music folder on my NAS drive

  7. Update my PLEX Library - in the same browser window as all commands above

Have I got this right?

Perhaps it might be best to only put a portion of my FLAC files back - test those and add more if all is well.

Hopefully PLEX won’t force feed its own Album Art in my FLAC files which already have Album Art embedded.

Again, have I got this right?

Thanks for your patient assistance.

15

@bjast said:
Just to be clear (so I don’t have to do this more than once) the PLEX Dance consists of:

Yes, you got it right.
You might throw in ‘check embedded meta data’ in step 5 as well.
And you can omit step 4 with music.

Tip: if you have a particularly high-resolution version of the album art (which would be too ridiculously big to embed), put it into the folder of the album and name it folder.jpg. This will then supersede all ‘embedded’ album art.
When you use a client like PMP, which displays album art very large, you’ll like this.