Completely remove ALL metadata from videos

Hi all,

So I used Plex for a while now and it’s amazing. I recently got a problem where Plex incorrectly named certain TV Series. All I did to fix the problem, was to right click the video in Windows >properties>details>remove properties and personal information and performing the Plex Dance. However, I now have a TV Series where there is some Metadata hidden somewhere which I can’t find in MP3tag or in VLC Media Player.


Please see the picture attached

Can anyone please help?

Kind regards
Robbie

Try this instead:
Go to

  • Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB

In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under

  • Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
  • Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
  • Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase

Afterwards, Refresh Metadata on the whole show.

Which file container is used by these videos?
Inside of mp3tag, did you try a right-click onto the file and then ‘Remove tag’?

1 Like

I tried modifying the Agents in the server settings, and it does work, however, I really want to strip the metadata from the video.

The videos use an MP4 container, but the last one (Episode 23) uses an MKV container. All of the files originally came from an MKV container which I encoded using Handbrake in order to avoid transcoding. I thought encoding removes the metadata, but apparently not…

Yes I have tried that as well and refreshed the metadata, still the same, unfortunately.

Here is a screenshot of what the video file looks like in MP3Tag.

Thank you for helping
Kind regards
Robbie

This is a MKV file. Plex doesn’t read any metadata from MKV files. Except the language tags of the audio and subtitle tracks and their titles.

Is this what you want to change?
see How to remove tag spam and set language in several MKV files at once

I don’t know where it gets that info then. I have tried using MKVtoolnix and performed the Plex Dance and adding episode 23 again. But it gets the same Title. Also, if Plex doesn’t read metadata from MKV files, why does it incorrectly identify the episode, but when I change the ‘Local Media Assets’ in Settings - Server - Agents - Shows it correctly identifies the episode?

Can I upload the episode for you to maybe check for testing and troubleshooting purposes only to keep things legal?

Yes, but I think there are hidden metadata somewhere

Sorry for my late reply, I have had a hectic week

Kind regards
Robbie

Please post the content of the Plex XML info of an affected episode.
(Don’t post the URL to it!)

Are there .nfo files in the same folder, beside the mkv files?

Thank you for the reply, there are no .nfo files besides the MKV
Please see the screenshot

Please see the attached Plex XML info as requested.

<Video ratingKey="538" key="/library/metadata/538" parentRatingKey="423" grandparentRatingKey="326" guid="com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb://257655/6/23?lang=en" parentGuid="com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb://257655/6?lang=en" grandparentGuid="com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb://257655?lang=en" librarySectionTitle="Private TV Shows" librarySectionID="5" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/5" type="episode" title="Arrow S06E23 - RMTeam, RMZ.cr" grandparentKey="/library/metadata/326" parentKey="/library/metadata/423" grandparentTitle="Arrow" parentTitle="Season 6" contentRating="TV-14" summary="Encoded By RMTeam, http://RMZ.cr" index="23" parentIndex="6" rating="7.6" year="2018" thumb="/library/metadata/538/thumb/1566670166" art="/library/metadata/326/art/1566670167" parentThumb="/library/metadata/423/thumb/1566670167" grandparentThumb="/library/metadata/326/thumb/1566670167" grandparentArt="/library/metadata/326/art/1566670167" grandparentTheme="/library/metadata/326/theme/1566670167" duration="2503488" originallyAvailableAt="2018-05-17" addedAt="1566670015" updatedAt="1566670166">
<Media id="906" duration="2503488" bitrate="719" width="1280" height="720" aspectRatio="1.78" audioChannels="2" audioCodec="aac" videoCodec="hevc" videoResolution="720" container="mkv" videoFrameRate="24p" audioProfile="lc" videoProfile="main">
<Part accessible="1" exists="1" id="906" key="/library/parts/906/1566404066/file.mkv" duration="2503488" file="/mnt/md0/Plex/Private TV Shows/Arrow/Season 06/Arrow.S06E23.720p.HDTV.x265_MeliMedia.INFO.mkv" size="224963590" audioProfile="lc" container="mkv" videoProfile="main">
<Stream id="1737" streamType="1" default="1" codec="hevc" index="0" bitrate="719" bitDepth="8" chromaSubsampling="4:2:0" colorRange="tv" frameRate="23.976" height="720" level="93" profile="main" refFrames="1" width="1280" displayTitle="720p (HEVC Main)" />
<Stream id="1738" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="aac" index="1" channels="2" profile="lc" samplingRate="48000" displayTitle="Unknown (AAC Stereo)" />
<Stream id="1739" streamType="3" default="1" codec="srt" index="2" language="English" languageCode="eng" displayTitle="English (SRT)" />
</Part>
</Media>
<Directo

And thank you for helping me @OttoKerner

I see you have my setlangs.bat file there.
Did you modify it before using it? Because it won’t do anything with your files in its original state. (your files only have 1 audio track, but since my script is expecting 2 of them, it won’t change anything).

You probably want this one instead: setlangs2.zip (443 Bytes)

I removed the additional audio tracks in the script, but I don’t know if I am doing something else wrong. I just tried using your new setlangs2.zip and performed the Plex Dance again and still it didn’t work. If I understand correcly, I don’t have to change the new script, just run it as long as it’s in the same folder?

Yes, this version will work with files which have only 1 audio and 1 subtitle track.
You should see its effect if you inspect the ‘language’ flag on your audio track. After the script has been used, it should show ‘English’ instead of ‘Unknown’.
(In plex, you will need to trigger Analyze before you can see the change.)

I just used the new script, but it didn’t remove the metadata. Do think I might be doing something wrong? Or maybe the guys who encoded it has some form of protection against editing the metadata?

I doubt it.

Drag the file into MKVtoolnixGUI
Does it still show those “global tags”?

I just checked, and no it doesn’t show global tags

Then the file doesn’t have any embedded metadata anymore.
And you can see that my script worked, since the audio track is nor properly flagged as English.

It is time for extreme measures:
empty the cache folders of the agents
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202967376-clearing-plugin-channel-agent-http-caches/
Sorry, I cannot tell you exactly where to look for it on a Terramaster NAS. But it should be somewhere below of

/home/plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server

Perform the Plex Dance with the whole show.

I performed the steps above again, and still the same unfortunately :frowning:

By now I’m almost out of ideas.
Have you checked your database file for damage?

  1. activate debug logging (not ‘verbose’!)
  2. quit Plex Server
  3. wait 1 minute
  4. start Plex Server
  5. wait 5 minutes
  6. fetch log files and attach them here

Or inspect them yourself. Take a look at the Plex Media Server.log file and seek for messages about database corrupt or malformed.
If you find these, you may have to repair your database.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201100678-repair-a-corrupt-database/

I have had a look at the logs but were unable to find any words like corrupt or malformed.
I have attached the log file for you to see if you want.
I honestly am also out of ideas…
Plex Media Server Logs_2019-08-25_14-50-09.zip (1.1 MB)

I don’t see any signs of database corruption either.

What I do see is an invalid entry in
Settings - Server - Network - ‘Show Advanced’ - “List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth”
Change it to 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0
and make sure not to put any space characters in there.

But this is very unlikely to have any influence on your metadata issue.

Do you have set the episode order to ‘DVD’? Put it back to ‘Aired’.

Did you encounter any stange error messages during the Plex Dance?
Did you perhaps leave out any steps of it or performed the steps out of order?

I can see that a lot of files of Arrow are indeed in mp4 format. Do you have perhaps several versions of Arrow, with different quality levels and different file containers?

I fixed that now.

Mine is set to Aired

No, I did not

I tried all the steps above again, ensuring that I did everything in the correct order, but still the same issue

Yes, I pirate it for now so there will be different quality levels until I can afford to buy Season 6 on DVD. I do encode the MKV files to MP4 H.264 to avoid transcoding. Shall I encode the latest episode and upload the XML info for you?