I am trying to add metadata to my home movies. They are mp4 from my cellphone. I used a tag editor and added a title to the metadata tag. To be clear, I’m talking about the tag embedded in the file itself, not when you go to the library in Plex, click edit, and edit the info.
The library is an “other” type. I have the scanner set to Plex Video Files Scanner and the agent as Personal Media. I went to agent in the settings to put the local media assets as higher priority but it has movies, shows, artists, albums, and photos. There is no “other” listed. Still, I have local media assets for movies set as the highest priority. I’ve tried removing the file from the library and emptying the trash and moving it back but it didn’t help. I don’t have the “optimize database” and “clean bundles” options anymore. It still just shows the title as whatever the file name is.
How can I get Plex to use the metadat from my video files?
You’ll want to check out Movies > Personal Media in the Agent settings. That’s where Local Media Assets needs to be checked and treated with a high priority. This worked for me quite nicely… I’ve even got individual family members to show as „actors“ within Plex for filtering
Try the Plex dance again… including the clean bundles part… if it’s not available on the home screen you should be able to find it in settings > manage > librarsies.
I tried a few apps for the metadata. I tried tag&rename and mp3tag. I think I also tried dbpoweramp at one point. The server itself is a linux docker image.
Another thing, maybe it’s nothing but it doesn’t ever seem to match. If I match it, it still has the ‘match’ option in the menu, not the ‘fix match’ or ‘un match’.
(just noticed you added image of trying to find clean bundles. need to do that from the server name not the individual library. notice mine says Manage Server rather than library)
Well, that file worked just fine for some reason. I think Plex has a problem with the files themselves. I can change the tags on the file you gave me with mp3tag and they change in Plex. The file uses the same tags I am using. I even tried copying the tag of the working file and pasting it into the one that isn’t working but it didn’t work.
I’ve been checking out your video… it appears that Plex indeed has an issue with the video because the header isn’t optimized.
Action
Result
Added your file as-is
No metadata showing
Added Metadata (a lot of ) to your file before adding it to Plex
No metadata showing
Optimized the file ahead of adding it to Plex
All Metadata showing up nicely...
I’ve been using subler (macOS only mp4 tag editor)… they describe their Optimize function like this:
What’s the “Optimize” function ?
It interleaves the audio and video samples, and puts the “MooV” atom at the begining of the file, restoring the Quicktime “fast-start” (also known as “pseudo-streaming”) ability of the file.
When you edit the metadata… did you actually use mp3tag as proposed by Otto? According to their documentation this will also optimize the file header / structure (supposedly automatically; optionally via the context menu – however I cannot confirm this at the moment).
