(I apologize, I originally posted this in the Western Digital NAS, but never got a response, and figured this is probably a better spot anyway. I tried to delete the original post, but it would not let me).
I have hundreds of CDs and I’ve ripped them all to my Western Digital EX2 Ultra (flac format). I often have multiple copies of the same tracks, so I will exclude them from certain folders. For instance, if I have a “Greatest Hits” CD, I might have some of the original albums also, so the Greatest Hits folder might have only tracks 1, 4, and 6. But when I do that, the Plex Library will show three entries, although the album title, artist, etc. are all identical.
I’ve discovered if I manually edit the tags to be 1,2,3 (or anything consecutive), it solves the issue. But that’s obviously a major pain.
That seems like a bug to me - is anyone aware of a workaround?
I was going to ask what Otto asked, but I’ll let him take that.
Just for future reference, rather than deleting the forum post in NAS and creating a new one here, you could have edited the original and changed the category. That would have moved the message to this forum.
But maybe I wasn’t clear. I’ve been doing this a long time, and my files are tagged exactly as you are showing. But in your example, what I mean is if I delete for instance the second track (“Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue?” Gotta love Zappa!), There will be an album entry in the library containing only Track One, and then another for all the following tracks.
I can’t confirm that. Please show me a screenshot similar to mine, detailing all the info for your files. I am particularly interested in the tags for ‘Album Artist’ and disc number.
Here is one album displaying the issue - I have discovered that not all are doing it where I’ve skipped a track, I’m trying to figure out why that’s the case, obviously something must be different.
If I do nothing other than change the Track Number from “1” to “2” (thereby making all tracks consecutive), the problem disappears.
I should also note I think this is a relatively recent phenomenon.
I do have that checked.
I’m going to dig into this some more when I get a bit more time. Again, not sure why some are doing this and some aren’t. I’ll let you know if I find anything else.
Which folder did you add to your music library?
Was it X:\Shared Music\flac
or was it X:\Shared Music\flac\Jazz?
I urge you to use the latter (and add all those other genre folders individually, if you have others as well).
What happens, if you select the two covers and then pick the ‘Merge’ command, under the ellipsis ⋮ on the top-right?
Yes, the former. Why would that matter? It’s the way it’s always been set. Is that a known issue? I do have a lot of Genre folders…
I can try this tonight and let you know - but even if it does fix it, I was more concerned with why it occurred in the first place.
Btw, in going through my collection last night, it really isn’t affecting as many albums as I feared, so it’s really not a huge deal. Since I realized it doesn’t always happen, I’m more curious about figuring out why it does it sometimes and not others, so I can be careful to avoid it.
Thank you very much for your time, I do appreciate it!
The new music code always tries to recognize the artist and the album. For that it requires a folder organization of Music > Artist > Album > Tracks
Your genre folders are an additonal folder level which at first may get interpreted as the Artist. It might be enough to offset the ‘probability’ values in the code to influence the matching, so that you get occasionally “fractured” albums.
Genre should be done by tags, not by folders. It is also not as clear-cut in many cases. Where would you place Zappa, for example?
He would appear in multiple folders (or in a genre category of his own)
Well, I first yesterday was prompted to install a new Plex version - ( 1.18.4.2171).
After I did that, it completely broke my library. Unless I sort by Albums → Title, I get no thumbnails, only some generic microphone icon. If I try to “Filter” on “Genre”, it only works with that sorting - but in that case, it only shows MP3s, no Flac show up at all (which is the bulk of my collection). If I’ve sorted on anything else (i.e., Artist → Anything), when I go to my filters, none are available - that is, selecting “Genre” in the dropdown says “None”.
With early versions, as I recall, I had to sort by Albums for the filters to work, but I think that was remedied at some point.
I tried removing all my folders, waiting for rebuild to complete, then re-adding, but that didn’t help.
This speaks to your question about my folder structure - I do it partly for organizational purposes - it’s much easier with 100’s of CDs to quickly locate an artist under “Jazz” than a TL folder with everything in it - both in Plex and in Windows File Explorer. But, one of the larger reasons was that I like to select all files in a Genre and Shuffle. Since it was something that seemed to only work intermittently when using the library in my experience, I could always select by Folder and then Jazz, and that always worked (although sometimes it choked on the number of files). Does that make sense?
That seems contradictory - I agree with your second statement, and I’m meticulous about my tags, there’s always a proper Genre, Artist, Album Artist, etc. The folder structure should be immaterial (I obviously don’t know how the “probability” thing you have in the code operates, or why it’s there). I even tried toggling the “Local”/“Plex Music” library settings, etc., (or whatever they’re called) but none of that seemed to make a difference.
Anyway, I didn’t have much time last night to experiment, but as of now I have only my MP3s in the library (yes, different folder…) and it still is exhibiting the symptoms I’m describing. I probably won’t get back to this until over the weekend, but if you have any other input about my larger issues I’d be appreciative.
I put Zappa in “Rock” for lack of a better choice, but you’re right, he definitely requires his own!
Hmm, it looks like you’re right. Awhile back when Plex wasn’t behaving when shuffling a Genre, I sometimes used the Roku Media Player, and another open-source DLNA player, maybe that’s what I’m thinking of? I don’t know.
Yeah, something is definitely wrong, When I tried to go to Settings → General, I get:
But maybe that’s typical from a remote connection? I’m accessing from work - Yeah, I know! - (via Chrome) - I opened up port 32400 on our firewall, is there something else I need to do to get to the server settings outside of the local network? I’m using the same login info.
Sorry for all the trouble! This has strayed from my initial post, maybe I should have started a new thread.
No, it’s not typical. I can access all settings of my server from remote just as well.
This kind of issue reeks of interference by your workplace’s firewall/DNS filter etc.
Try again while using a different internet connection, e.g. mobile data from your phone or the WiFi at a friend’s home (don’t draw conclusions from using public WiFi access points, those do often employ radical filters which affect Plex.)
Ok. I should point out this is the first I’ve tried this remotely, everything preceding in this thread was on my local network at home, either on my Windows 10 laptop or one of my Roku Premier+ (yes, I have two…)
I know this is long, and now I have about 3 separate issues - is it better to break them out into additional threads? Just tell me and I’ll edit this.
No, this wasn’t it. Somehow it must’ve choked on the library rebuild - I went into the WD NAS dashboard GUI and just toggled Plex Server off and back on, then it seemed fine. Go figure.
Also, rebuilding the library (i.e., deleting and re-adding the top-level folders) seems to have largely fixed my fragmented album issue.
But, I have discovered another issue with the folder structure if I have different tracks from the same album in different folders. I keep some tracks in a separate folder if, as an example, I don’t want them syncing to my iPod (yes, I still have one, don’t dis me!):
Plex Top-Level Folder
|
iPod nosync
| |
| Genre
| |
| Artist
| |
| Album
| |Track 1
|
Same Genre
|
Same Artist
|
Same Album
|Track 2
Sometimes (but not always, and I can’t figure out why), that will show up as two seperate albums. Yes, “merging” does work, however.
I’ve been organizing my files like that for a long time, and I don’t recall that being an issue before.
So:
Is there some way of making Plex completely ignore the folder structure and rely exclusively on the tags (I’ve set Advanced → Prefer local metadata, Genres → Embedded Tags, and Album Art → Local Files Only)
Plex also seems to ignore multiple genres if they’re on the same album. I have CDs with mixed genres - e.g., Jazz, Blues or Country, etc. I’m not 100% certain, but it seems all of the tracks for a given album are listed in whatever genre the last track is tagged as.
I’ve also found that .plexignore seems completely broken. I’ve had to move those files elsewhere. Has that feature been disabled?
If there are multiple Album Art tags, how does Plex decide which to display?
I think that’s all for now…thank you for being patient with me!
