I’ve been on Plex for years, and it used to work the way I liked. But something changed some time ago to retain the played position of Video library files just like Movies.
Turns out I collect thousands of 80s music videos - and sometimes when I’m in the middle of a 3-minute video, I want to skip to the next one. Unfortunately, Plex remembers exactly where I left off playing the video I skipped. So the next time it comes up to play, it doesn’t start at the beginning of the music video, it starts right where it was left off weeks or months earlier - usually halfway through or near the end. For movies, this is great; you want to have the option to return to where you left off. For music videos, it’s not.
Years ago, video libraries didn’t keep track of how far each video had been played. With the way it works now, over time, this ‘memory’ of where you left off in a music video causes nearly every video to start somewhere in the middle or end instead of at the beginning (Yes - I have a short attention span and rarely watch every video to the end).
I’d like to watch music videos in my Video libraries just like MP3 music files are handled - without a ‘memory’ of how far into a song I was the last time it was played. Instead, Plex treats Video library files the same as Movie Libraries where you definitely want the option to restart the movie from the last place you left off. With Music Videos in a Video library, this is a massive pain in the butt and leads to increasingly erratic playlists.
Is there any way to disable the ‘memory’ in Video Libraries so it doesn’t retain the last played position of every video file - so I can enjoy music videos like I enjoy MP3 music files in a Music Library?
Unfortunately, you cannot turn off remembering the position for videos. There was a bug before where some clients would automatically mark a video as watched in certain cases. This might be what you were seeing before.
Is there any chance I can get a workaround or a change to the design? As a connoisseur of Music Videos, Plex has gotten less and less useful over the years for my primary purposes - watching music videos. It would be great to get a feature this lowly MV guy needs before more news and TV sources, Tidal, Collections and so many other features that have been introduced over the years. I’d even appreciate an unsupported hack before I figure one out on my own to wipe the DB of remaining time.
Any insight or suggestion would be very much appreciated. Thank you.
Any video in a video library will be tracked, there’s no way around that.
The only alternative I can think of is to stop using a dedicated music video library and have them linked to the artist in a music library. The progress for these videos are not tracked.
Thanks for the suggestion @anon18523487! But I tried this a few different ways and don’t think I got it right.
“…stop using a dedicated music video library and have them linked to the artist in a music library. The progress for these videos are not tracked.”
Can you help me understand the steps to stop using a video library and have my music video files linked to the artist in a music library? I created a new Music library and pointed it to my folder of videos - which didn’t work.
Too bad video libraries don’t have the option that Music Libraries have to “[not] Store Track Progress.” That’s the feature that would make this perfect for those of us with a music video collection.
Appreciate your help and steps to try this possible workaround. Cheers!
You don’t point your music library at your music video folders. You need to create a regular music library, then for any artists where you have music, you can include music videos. Unfortunately, you cannot have music videos without that artist having at least 1 music track. You can find more information on linking the music videos to the artist in our support article https://support.plex.tv/articles/205568377-adding-local-artist-and-music-videos/.
Oh. Very insightful. But it won’t work for me. I have upwards of a thousand music videos with no matching music artist.
Final question then, @anon18523487: Any chance I can request a feature to optionally disable the ‘track progress’ for video-based libraries like what’s available for music libraries?
I know Plex is rightly racing to be a major player in the streaming and rental content market (rightfully so). But any chance little features like this can still be put on some backlog? I love Plex. But over the years, the use case for watching music videos the way I used to be able to do has diminished in favor of fixes and improvements that aren’t as useful.
Thanks again - and all the best to you and the entire Plex team - especially @ChuckPa who worked closely with me to improve a number of Synology-based PMS features over the years. Cheers.
Ok, that will work temporarily, but it will still remember progress so anything you play in the future will still be affected. You’ll have to keep marking things as watched.
