I’d like to request a new feature: Import From External Database. I envision looking up content in an external database (e.g. IMDb) and assigning the metadata to either a newly-imported or to-be-imported library file.
I have found it extremely time-consuming and kludgy (at best) for a PMS library to pick up a new file and either fail to identify it or else identify it as something completely different. Even the “Fix Incorrect Match” feature fails occasionally. I often have to locate content in IMDb, Wikipedia, etc. While there’s the “Edit ___” dialog, it takes forever to do that with a lot of mismatches. If we could import metadata given identifying info from an external source, that would be a huge help, e.g. IMDb title IDs.
Optionally, there could be an Advanced button that would let us to the above search & identify, then have a textbox (w/ Browse button) to locate the file to be imported and a similar textbox (w/ Browse) for a library folder location. This way, we could link metadata from an external source to an existing library file or when doing a manual import, either one.
(PS I’ve searched the forums for a while but haven’t seen my request.)
90% of bad matches can be avoided by file naming and folder organisation that conforms to Plex’s naming guidelines. Filebot helps tremendously with this task. It will also perform this database lookup you’re after.
A further 5% can be avoided by telling Plex to ignore those embedded ‘Title’ meta tags in mp4/m4v files, like so:
Go to Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
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.
Do the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMoviedatabase
and
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB
and
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMoviedatabase
I’ve been following the naming guidelines but it only goes so far. (Try matching all versions of Journey To The Center Of The Earth…I swear it’s been remade more than anything, and it was horrible at matching my Resident Evil collection.) I even had problems last night with some common movies w/o remakes, some being completely mis-ID’d as other movies, some not even remotely like the actual movie; of course, it takes forever manually editing them when I’m staring at the metadata in an IMDb page. (sigh) I’ve got metadata editors for MKV and MP4 files (99% of my movie/video files) so I know it’s not an issue with meta tags, either. (Even my music files are meticulously hand-edited using kid3.)
I didn’t know about the Agents adjustment, though, will try that before doing more edits tonight. Thanks for that tip! (I sure hope it works, lol.)
Also thx for the tip about Filebot. I’ll take a look at it tonight as well, though I already wrote my own app, File Wrangler, for doing file & folder management, including regular expression search-n-replace renaming, but I haven’t added meta tag editing yet. Adding Plex naming filters, though, that’s an excellent feature. I’d definitely like to check out Filebot, though…again, thx!
(If the Agent tip works well, I’ll definitely come back and mark this as answered.)
@LloydGM said:
(Try matching all versions of Journey To The Center Of The Earth…I swear it’s been remade more than anything,
Hehe, yes indeed. Though adding the release year should take care of most of them.
and it was horrible at matching my Resident Evil collection.) I even had problems last night with some common movies w/o remakes, some being completely mis-ID’d as other movies, some not even remotely like the actual movie;
The reordering of the metadata agents (as described above) should take care of (most) that,
unless:
Do you have all of your movie files in the same folder?
And if so, does this folder contain one or several .nfo files?
Then either remove those .nfo files or put every movie into its own subfolder and put those nfo together with the video file where they belong to.
(This is actually a feature. One, that you can make use of when you have a particularly difficult to match movie. see .nfo file trick )
After a file has been wrongly identified (‘matched’) by Plex, you need to perform the Plex Dance to delete the wrong association of this file from the Plex database.
Just reporting back after a few days of running with the changes (above).
First, I found no .nfo files. Also, only a few of my movies or TV shows are in subfolders (other than “Season xx” ones); the ones that are in subfolders are ones that need the add’l handling. I tried the “Plex Dance”, twice, nothing changed, even after restarting PMS after the 1st failure. The other settings seem to be helping as only half of the mis-matched content needed manual tweaking. With over 15,000 files, though, it’s still going to take me at least a month of manually verifying everything. (I swear, it was easier writing my own operating system back in school, rofl.)
Thanks for the help, though, it appears as if I’m just at the point where I"m beyond Plex’s capabilities.
Oh, btw, I’m thinking of writing an app: NFO Wrangler. It’'ll hopefully help make adding & managing .nfo files easier. Dang, what lengths I’m going through to make PMS do its job. Now that I think about it, maybe this has become a 2nd job for me…
I’d definitely like to check out Filebot, though…again, thx!