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The new Plex Movie Agent is ignoring the metadata Album tag in MP4 files for adding movies to Collections. Has anybody else noticed this issue?
Every movie I add is MP4, and has certain metadata embedded in the file (title, my preferred cover art, etc.). All the other metadata is found and used by Plex.
For movies I want in collections, I always used the Album tag, as recommended on Plex’s own Collections Support page (Collections | Plex Support). Previously, when I’d add a movie with something in the Album tag, that film automatically got added to a new or existing collection with the matching name. With the new Plex Movie Agent, that’s no longer the case.
I’ve got it so that automatic collections are enabled, and threshold count is low enough that it should work. I also tried disabling automatic collections in a “test” library and adding files to that library with the Album tag filled in, still no dice.
Is there just no longer a way to have movies put into collections based on local metadata? Most of the automatic collections are fine, but some things I prefer to collect based on a shared universe (like the MCU) and others I feel like should be in collections in The Movie DB but aren’t (like Cloverfield trilogy), etc.
EDIT: Just FYI, I once had to go about rebuilding my Plex library from scratch after an ugly computer mishap. If it happens again, I’d rather not lose all the manual changes made to movies and shows within the Plex web app, hence using metadata for everything.
I have this issue too and like you just had to recreate the library from scratch and I noticed my collections are not rebuilding. I rely on local metadata with the album tag populated for my collections. I do not like any automatic collections.
At least it’s not just me. I don’t mind automatic collections, since it makes browsing faster. I’ve got well over 1,000 movies (I think it’s in the ballpark of 1,350 now), but since I have it set to only show individual movies that AREN’T in collections, the number listed in Title view is nearly half that.
The problem is that some stuff isn’t in automatic collections but I want them to be (such as the Cloverfield films). Other stuff is in collections based on direct sequels but I’d rather the collections be based on shared universe (such as the MCU). And I hate to set that up strictly within the plex library, because more than once now, I’ve had computer issues that forced me to wipe the system clean and start over, including losing my plex library data.
I am at 1250 movies and while most of the automatic collections are fine but some are broken out too much like those I used to have in an MCU collection. I also had a Star Trek collection which is now 3 separate collections. Hopefully someone is reading this and can bring back the functionality of the album tag.
Hey while I have your attention I have a couple other friendly suggestions.
Using that Album Tag to code a file to belong to an automatic-created collection, what could be done to have it belong to two collections?
TV Show collections would be very cool. Last I looked this was not possible.
Something I am noticing this morning: I can’t seem to delete a collection. This was a system-created collection, if that makes a difference. I pulled all the media out of it (no movies in the collection) and it still will not delete. I’ve never seen this behavior before today. It gives me “There was a problem deleting this item”
I would love if the tag could be used to add a movie to 2 or more collections.
Regarding TV show collections, if you mean just the ability to have collections in general, then that’s already there. If you mean automatic collections like the new Plex Movie Agent does for movies, I doubt that’ll be possible any time soon. Right now, it pulls automatic collection info from TMDB, and as far as I know, that site doesn’t support TV show collections.
If you mean using tags in the TV show’s Metadata to add a show to a collection, I think that’s problematic. I mean, how would that work? What if one episode had something in the album tag and the rest didn’t? Or two episodes from the same same show had two different album tags?
As for your last bit about not deleting collections, I’ve seen something like that before. Not specifically written trying to delete a collection, but when doing other stuff like changing a movie’s Metadata from within plex. Usually the problem resolved itself in a little bit.
Is there an official place to request changes/features?
What I’d really love to see is the option to drop in a text file alongside a movie or show (or within the folder for a movie or show) that modifies Metadata. Plex already scans for things like poster and background art. But a lot of Metadata can only be changed externally if you modify it within the file of the video, and then only with MP4’s. That doesn’t help if you keep your files in a different container, like MKV’s, and it doesn’t let you do anything at the season or show level. And might I add, plex doesn’t seem to recognize the Forced tag on subtitles unless the file is an MKV, so if your movie has forced subtitles, you really can’t use MP4’s (and there Metadata) anyway.
A couple times now, I’ve lost a ton of changes made within plex itself due to computer issues, so it’d be amazing to keep those changes external, saved alongside the media itself. Plus, users could better leverage the new Plex Series Scanner with its ability to have titles and descriptions at the season level. And we’d finally have an external solution to putting shows into Collections without having to make the changes inside plex itself.
You could literally setup plex recognize any file called “Metadata.txt”, or maybe something like “[movie title]-Metadata.txt”. Then give us instructions on how to type up each Metadata field inside the file. Like have each field on a separate line in the file, and format it with the field name, followed by a colon or dash, followed by the value.
I did not mean automatic collections for TV. In fact I prefer to shut off automatic collecting entirely, so collections are only created by my album tags or manual edits. I should have been more specific. What I meant was the ability to create collections in TV media at a more granular level; to to add just one season or maybe even just one episode, into a collection. There are long-ran shows with a lot of seasons that would benefit from this. If that is already available it is news to me. Right now all it does is “collect” entire shows into collections with other entire TV shows, which is great but I’m trying to parse TV shows that are already too large as they come.
Ditto this. I want to be able to point a fresh plex install at my media and have my library look the same as I had customized it to look, and am willing to do the work to get there. There aren’t enough options available to allow me to do it though, as you point out.
Deleting a collection has thus far not automatically fixed itself. I saw another thread saying this is a known bug and they will fix it in the next go around. For now my temp semi-solution was to name them “ZZ delete me” so they scoot to the bottom of the library list, to purge later.
The day I decide to finally sit down and consolidate my (now, too many) libraries into larger libraries but with more collections is also the one day I’ve ever known collections to be broken. My luck.
I’m not sure i see why it matters if a show has a lot of seasons or not. I mean, it’s not like you’re seeing a list of all episodes for the entire series all at once, they’re still grouped by season. And with the new Plex Series Scanner, you can have individual seasons with their own names and descriptions, rather than just Season 1, Season 2, etc.
The closest thing they’ve got to that right now is playlists. For TV shows, you can add items to a playlist at the episode, season, or show level. You can mix in pretty much any videos from any libraries in the same playlist, including episodes from different shows or a mix of movies and tv shows.
Using playlists definitely has some pros and cons compared to collections. I think the biggest drawback is that you can’t look at the whole playlist and tell what’s been watched and what hasn’t. You’d have to click into each episode or movie to see what’s been watched, so it could be unwieldy for use with a lot of episodes.
Still, it’s not terrible. Plex’s Autoplay queues up the next item in the playlist when you finish an episode, even if the last episode watched was from a different show and that show has more unwatched episodes. It could definitely be good for crossovers between shows, such as on the CW’s Arrowverse (their Crisis event spanned episodes across 5 different shows). And you can rearrange the items in a playlist however you want.
I have a couple other friendly suggestions.