cant find hints for naming media files that referes to cd numbers and album artist and track artist

General Discussions
1

According to this page a track should be put this in this directory&name structure:

Music/ArtistName/AlbumName/TrackNumber - TrackName.ext

but where/how to indicate that an album is from a specific cd number and has a different artist track, for example the track:

“Now & Later” from "Sage the Gemini " from “cd2” “track7” from “now that’s what i call music! 96” that is listed under “various artists”

i would say

Music/Various Artists/Now that’s what i call music! 96/2-7-Sage the Gemini-Now & Later.mp3

but I’m not sure.

And what if the name of an artist or track has an hyphen - in it?

Or is there just no way to catch these kind of info/exceptions in the naming structure?

Can anyone confirm either?

Thx!

2

File Naming doesn’t matter as much if your files are Tagged.

Meaning if you Have a file name that is: 01 - New Song (Featuring Artist-Artist).ext

In Plex it can show as: 01 New Song (Featuring Artist/Artist)

This is because Plex will use the title tag, so even if you have characters that arn’t compatible with file names. To ensure that this works, make sure you have the scanner set to use embedded tags.

Also for your discnumber, Plex reads the metadata and will sort the songs properly if you have the songs tagged with a disc number. Even if it isn’t in the filename itself. This also requires the use of embedded tags.

Recommendation:
Use Mp3Tag to fix your tags properly and it won’t be an issue :wink:

I can also go into more detail with examples later this evening…

3

Thank you, I plan on using Mp3Tag as well,

But I’m in the process of restructuring my directory structure, so I guess that I better do it in the official Plex way, so that is why I’d like to know it.

And I can imagine that not all special character exceptions are supported for file name based scanning, but still, I’d like to use it as much as possible.

4

Also just a side note, I highly recommend having your scanning with using the Embedded tags turned on. Because if you don’t, sometimes Plex will miss-identify a song and change the title to something completely different if you arn’t forcing it to use your tags…

I use the following structure:

Music/Artists/Album Artist/Album/101 - Title.ext (first number is discnumber, second two numbers is the track number)

FYI… I don’t believe Plex is smart enough to detect the discnumber based on the file name, so you must have it tagged in the file…

5

@RandomNinjaAtk02 said:
Music/Artists/Album Artist/Album/101 - Title.ext (first number is discnumber, second two numbers is the track number)

This will fail horribly if there are issues with reading embedded metadata.
Plex doesn’t understand the combination of disc number and track number.

FYI… I don’t believe Plex is smart enough to detect the discnumber based on the file name, so you must have it tagged in the file…

There is a way.
multi-disc albums
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1050849/#Comment_1050849

Some more tips regarding music

handling singles and EP’s
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1093611/#Comment_1093611

possible ‘side car’ files for music
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1319703/#Comment_1319703

soundtracks and ‘various artists’
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1472799/#Comment_1472799

6

Thank you RandomNinja and OttoKerner,

based on your info the last I still needed to know how to encode special characters of album/track/artist names in the filenames

turns out that Plex supports url-encoded characters prefixed by a percent “%” sign, so this directory name
Now That’s What I Call Music! 1981%3A The Millennium Series
is interpreted by Plex as:
Now That’s What I Call Music! 1981: The Millennium Series

so I’ll try to url-encode all special characters that are not allowed by unix/windows, and also use the hyphen “-” that Plex uses to separate info in filenames

< > : " \ / | ? * -

(now working on an url-encoded version of a mp3tag formatter string for multi disc albums and single disc albums…)

7

so I arrived at the following mp3tag formatting string, it supports encoding of all forbidden unix/windows filename characters and the hyphen sign “-” and the percent sign “%”, and uses the supported multi-disc directory structure

without url encoding
%albumartist%\%album%\Disc $num(%discnumber%,2)\$num(%track%,2). %artist% - %title%

with url encoding of characters < > : " \ / | ? * - %
$replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace(%albumartist%,'-','%2D'),'*','%2A'),'?','%3F'),'|','%7C'),'/','%2F'),'\','%5C'),'"','%22'),':','%3A'),'>','%3E'),'<','%3C'),'%','%25')\$replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace(%album%,'-','%2D'),'*','%2A'),'?','%3F'),'|','%7C'),'/','%2F'),'\','%5C'),'"','%22'),':','%3A'),'>','%3E'),'<','%3C'),'%','%25')\Disc $num(%discnumber%,2)\$num(%track%,2). $replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace(%artist%,'-','%2D'),'*','%2A'),'?','%3F'),'|','%7C'),'/','%2F'),'\','%5C'),'"','%22'),':','%3A'),'>','%3E'),'<','%3C'),'%','%25') - $replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace($replace(%title%,'-','%2D'),'*','%2A'),'?','%3F'),'|','%7C'),'/','%2F'),'\','%5C'),'"','%22'),':','%3A'),'>','%3E'),'<','%3C'),'%','%25')

for example, the directory for the album
Now That’s What I Call Music! 1981: The Millennium Series
will be translated into
Now That’s What I Call Music! 1981%3A The Millennium Series

same goes for albumartist,album,artist,title

8

@woutervegter said:
based on your info the last I still needed to know how to encode special characters of album/track/artist names in the filenames

While you can do that, you can pretty much leave it be and simply omit invalid characters from file and folder names.
As long as the correct title is present in your embedded meta tags, all is well.

9

Thank you, I understand that Plex can get the data from tags if the tag data is present, but I want my directory&file structure to be as complete as possible and still being compatible with Plex (irrespective of how complete the embedded tags are), so that brought me to this url-encoding thing…

P.s. a directory with url-encoded characters is automatically parsed by plex, so now in the plex interface it says that my directory is “Now That’s What I Call Music! 1981: The Millennium Series” while in fact the name on my hdd is “Now That’s What I Call Music! 1981%3A The Millennium Series”