I saved my music files in a directory called Music. I saved my audio books in a different directory called eBooks. There is no overlap between the two directories, Both the Music and eBooks directories follow recommended file and directory naming conventions.
Those directories were exactly replicated across 3 different NAS devices. These devices are Synology, QNAP and Terra-Master.
Each NAS device has PLEX server installed. On each PLEX Server, I created two PLEX music libraries; one for eBooks and a second for Music. The Music library points to the Music folder and the eBooks library points to the eBooks folder. The issue is that the audio books are appearing in my PLEX Music library and in the PLEX eBooks library on the QNAP and Terra-Master NASs but not on the Synology NAS. The Synology NAS presents the two libraries as discrete.
The version of PLEX Server is the same on all NASs and each NAS has all updates completed.
Can you clarifiy if the wrong files are actually appearing in the libraries when you navigate to the libraries themselves, or are you just seeing them all smushed together on your home screen?
I’ve never seen Plex looking outside of the assigned folders, but all music libraries are combined into one on my home screen in “Recently added music” etc.
Probably because Plex doesn’t have an Audiobook Library (Yet, we can dream).
Your Audiobooks are just “spoken word” music in the (aggravating) world of Plex.
You created and “Audio” Library that Plex just see’s as a Second “Music” Library, even if you go through the trouble of setting up the Audiobook Metadata Agent (Audible) (since abandoned I think) it’s just music to Plex.
But I highly suggest you hop on over to Support for Audiobooks Feature Request and please add your vote!
It is definitely not the intended or expected behaviour for a library to be pulling media from a folder that is not assigned to it, regardless of Plex’s support of audiobooks. What he describes sounds like a bug. It’s irrelevant what type of media it is, it shouldn’t be showing up in another library that is pointed at an entirely different folder.
@bruce_andrais_bamc_ca Double check that for the mixed library you really did point it only at one folder and not the root folder containing both your Music folder and your Audiobook folder. If you definitely didn’t, it’s a almost certainly a bug.
The folders on the NASs were created in an identical way. All folders were created under a folder called Multimedia. This folder contains discrete subfolders called Movies, TV Shows, Music, Audio Books, et cetera based on category. The naming convention of the subfolders under all categories is exactly the same across all NASs. The naming convention for multimedia content is consistent across devices, and consistent, with PLEX best practice. Each NAS is identical to the Synology NAS.
When the PLEX Server was set up on a NAS, each of the PLEX libraries are created and then pointed to the specific subfolder that contains the content on that NAS.
All of the other libraries besides Audio Books have acted in the expected, discrete way.
I agree with the intent of the question, the most likely cause is user error, which is always very possible. The fact it works on the Synology NAS is curious that the other NASs that do not function like the Synology. That may indicate that the PLEX Server install downloaded for those other NASs is different than what it is for Synology.
The other question is that, this may represent a potential security issue. For instance, a family may want to set up users based on age and keep age appropriate material for specific users in that family.
Please enter the library configuration of the music library on the affected NAS,
go to the “Add Folders” tab,
and verify that it actually points to the “Music” subfolder, and not just to the parent “Multimedia” folder.
Do also verify that it doesn’t point to more than one folder.
