Change music folder without loosing library information

General Discussions
1

macOS 10.15 Catalina brought big changes to music. iTunes no longer existis, we now have music app and it behaves different in many regards so we all have to adapt.

I consolidated my music files, removed legacy itunes files and now have a new music folder. I need to re-assign the plex music folder to that new folder. What I would like to prevent from happening, is having to go through thousands of albums and fix all the details I already fixed.

How would I go about that? The file structure and files themselves have not changed but the location has, as I no longer am using the “iTunes” folder.

Any input would be very welcome.

2

There is no easy way in Plex to do it. There is a way by manually editing your database. See [HowTo] Plex database modification - Moving media the right/wrong way for details.

3

That is a thread with 62 replies. Not sure where to start or what to do. Maybe I am too stupid to do this.

I am willing to take the layman route, but I am worried about Plex still being unable to pick the correct album cover: Plex using wrong cover art for albums

Is any work happening to make plex understand what either the first image of all images (in iTunes / music app) is or what the image is that is tagged as “Front Cover” as shown in the linked thread?

@anon18523487 do you have a suggestion? Probably faster for me to just start fresh with music instead of messing up my library on a database level.

4

IIRC the steps are…

Before you do anything, make a backup of the database…

  1. Create the directory where you are going to store the files. Do not move them yet!!!

  2. Add this empty directory to your current music library… Scan library…

  3. Move (do not copy!!!) the files from the old directory to the new one… Scan library again…

  4. Remove old empty directory from the library and scan library one last time…

1 Like
5

I think will only work if the server has been configured to ‘watch’ for changes and auto rescan.

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alternatively, you can do the opposite (copy) if you have ‘empty trash automatically’ disabled.

in place of #3

  • uncheck this,
    image
  • copy files to new location
  • rescan (you should then have duplicates of everything) note this assumes that everything matches the same as existing
  1. clean trash manually

image

6

The actual steps are towards the end of the thread that @anon18523487 referenced in an above post… I even confirmed the steps when I moved one of my libraries to a new bigger drive…

1 Like
7

The exact post is here:

8

See post 43, it’s basically a series of SQL commands. I wanted to point to the whole thread because manually editing your database can be risky and that thread discusses that and alternatives.

1 Like
9

Took the idiot route and started fresh. I am able to confirm the issue, where Plex chooses the wrong image as cover image, when more than one image existis in the music files, is persisting.

Fear not - I am already at letter “C” of fixing the covers for a few thousand albums. Not all are affected but still much more than to be able to call this a “fun process”.
:see_no_evil:

10

If you have more than 1 image, PMS should pick the first image. Not sure how else it would know which is the right or wrong poster. Is it not picking the first one?

11

@anon18523487 no that’s not the case for me. It seems fairly random to be honest.

12

Can you PM me a file that this doesn’t work work. Let me know what poster you get and I’ll see if I can reproduce and figure out why.

13

Done.

14

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