Force PLEX to use local metadata

General Discussions
1

Hi,
I’m a new user of plex and basically very impressed, but couldn’t figure the following out:

I am kind of switching from Kodi to Plex and organized my library basically with great EmberMediaManager.
Movies in different folders, structured naming like:

ANGEL_HEART_[DVD].mkv
ANGEL_HEART_[DVD].jpg
ANGEL_HEART_[DVD]-trailer.mkv
ANGEL_HEART_[DVD]-fanart.jpg
ANGEL_HEART_[DVD]-poster.jpg

I stepped through a lot of FAQ and great articles, but:
As far as I can verify PLEX uses my local stored Poster and Fanart image, but doesn’t read the title or movie-id out of the corresponding *.NFO file.

ANGEL_HEART_[DVD].nfo

2 Problems:
1)
Some movies/titles are not associated correct - I have to manually “re-assign” them.
Which could become very, very time consuming…

Anyway to force plex to read the existing imdbID?
(tt0092563)

As I had been very careful with title naming in my library - for example in grouping movies in alphabetic (set)-order if they are parts of sets, like Fast and Furious 01-09 - forcing PLEX to keep my titles as written in the nfo-file would be necessary.

Thank you for help,
Andreas

Running latest PlexMediaServer on OSX (11.6)

2

Welcome to Plex and the forum.
Plex doesn’t use nfo files for its metadata. It’ll only read e.g. an IMDb id in such a file and consider it when matching a movie. You can achieve the same by including such a reference in a movie name or folder.

3

Thx for your answer.

But - as in my case - Plex didn’t read e.g. the IMDb id out of the NFO file, how can I force that?
:slight_smile:

4

Looks like it’s thus:

If using the (non-“legacy”) Plex Movie agent available in Plex Media Server v1.20.1 and newer, you can also include the IMDb or TheMovieDB ID number in curly braces to help match the movie. It must follow the form {[source]-[id]} .

/Movies
   /Batman Begins (2005) {imdb-tt0372784}
      Batman Begins (2005) {imdb-tt0372784}.mp4

/Movies
   /Batman Begins (2005) {tmdb-272}
      Batman Begins (2005) {tmdb-272}.mp4

From https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/

5

you cannot, plex does not use the nfo files.

as divideby0 indicates, if you want to reference imdb/tmdb id’s, they must be in the folder or file name as specified in the link provided.

if you have custom naming schemes in your nfo files, there is no way that I know of, to import those into plex.

plex does have collections (automatic and custom) which support different sort methods.

you can also use custom filters/auto playlists to generate lists of videos which meet your specified filters.

6

Hi,
thx for all your advises and inputs.

It’s a pity plex doesn’t read out the corresponding nfo files.
Not only to import/link files/movies correct - I cannot rename all my movies (with IMDB-IDs) just to get plex ready.
NFO files with IMDB and TMDB ids aside to the movie file are not unusual those days and supported on many different player-apps:)

But the most annoying thing:
I spent a lot of time to NAME my movie titles (title field) correct, to fit alphabetic orders in case of movie sets or movie parts. Not being able to read that info out of my prepared nfo files (a feature for example emby offers) the sorting of the movies doesn’t make much fun, for example looking at the fast & furious parts…

7

I hear ya. I kept sub-folders in my movie folder for a lot of movie series, MOSTLY for those series where the official name does not work with alphabetical order. So for like the Indiana Jones movies, I’d label them “01 - Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Last Ark”, both to keep it numerically in line and thematically match the “Indiana Jones and the” naming scheme the rest did. This MAY cause Plex to mis-match or fail to match the movie. But once you import it into Plex and fix the match, you can set the name to whatever you want and it will stick that way.

For the movies that would become too unwieldy for this (Fast & Furious franchise, DaVinci Code, ____ Has Fallen, etc) I use the number pre-fix as well in their folder, but don’t change the name otherwise. This usually works out well for Plex auto-matching the video file, while still leaving my file-names to sort correctly in the folders.

Lastly, I combine this with Plex’s collections feature. If you enable collections, and show collections in library while hiding the original movie file, then each movie series becomes a kind of sub-folder in the Plex movie list. What’s even better is that it arranges the movies within that collection by release date by default (or any other sort order you prefer), so I don’t need to mess with the movie names if I don’t want to.

8

Thx, I know - but collections also don’t sort movie parts in the right way unless the title (not the media file) is “modified”.
That’s why I always take care, if I add a movie to my library, if it fit’s my naming conventions (title, not file or folder name).

I don’t change the folder or movie name like 01 First Blood, 02 Rambo II,…
I edit the title in the NFO file, that’s why I get the right sorting in Kodi or EMM or MediaElch or Emby for example.
Somewhere I found the info that reading nfo infos was implemented a while ago in plex… this should be possible again.
Hope this can be fixed or added again, otherwise I have to decide to go my subscription with emby…

9

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