Having trouble with adding music videos

[wtutwiler70]

Server Version#: 4.12.3
Player Version#:
I have followed the instructions for a Global Music Videos Folder, but I cannot get the music videos to show up at all. I currently have the following structure:

/MusicVids/Artist Name - Video name/Artist Name - Video name.ext

But I have also tried the recommended way:

/MusicVids/Artist Name/Artist Name - Video name.ext

And even this:

/MusicVids/Artist Name/Artist Name - Video name - video-type.ext

But none of these seem to work. When I had the MusicVids directory tied to Movies, the files would show up as movies, but this really made a mess of the catalog, since they aren’t really movies. I re-assigned the MusicVids directory to Music, but they don’t show up at all, either under the artists, or independently.

I currently have 1629 files in 509 folders, if it matters; the uppermost folder contains the contents of whatever dvd/bluray/internet source I used.

Also of note is that one directory contains a concert video, which is really a slide-show with music source appended. In a subdirectory of this, I have the source flac file; this source flac file IS scanned and included in the Music library, so I know the path is being scanned, but none of the videos are included.

Any help or suggestions at this point would be greatly appreciated! If needed, I can clear logs and scan Music library to see what may show up.

• Warren

[beckfield]

Have you run the ‘Refresh Metadata’ command for the Artist since setting all this up? If you have, and the problem is still there, please provide the following screenshots:

The configuration screen for the Local Media Assets agent:

This should have the complete path to where your video files are stored.

Then screenshot the actual file folder so I can see the folder and a typical video file:

[wtutwiler70]

This is typical.

I’ve also tried putting all the videos in one Artist directory:

[beckfield]

Try putting the ‘-video’ at the end of the filename (no spaces around the ‘-’). Plex is supposed to assume that if it’s not there, but maybe it isn’t.

Be sure to run ‘Refresh metadata’ after making the change.
The videos should show up at the bottom of the Artist Detail page:

[wtutwiler70]

So, I put all the videos per artist into one Artist directory, added the “optional” video-type tags (no spaces) at the end of each file, did “The Plex Dance” and everything seems to be working now!

Thanks for all your help!

[beckfield]

Ah, good! So it sounds like they may have made it non-optional, and the documentation is outdated. Anyway, glad you got it going.

[ajthedj75]

I am trying to add music files as well, and to be honest am a newbie. can you guy clarify with me are you adding these to your actual music files folder or a separate directory getting lost a little bit any help would be greatly appreciated.

[beckfield]

This has been about adding music video files to a Music library. If that’s what you’re trying to do, then you should take a look at this guide. You can do either, it depends what you want.

If you’re actually trying to add your music to Plex, this guide should help.

[wtutwiler70]

Hi, ajthedj75! While the FAQs do say that you can add music videos to the same directory where the artist’s music files are, that is not how I proceeded. I kept my music video files in a separate “global” directory (as described in the guide beckfield pointed out). In order to ensure they would be listed with the audio files, the artist directory must have the same name as it is listed in the Plex Music library, and the artist name must be part of the file name as well.

The big take-away from the discussion in this thread, for me, was that the “optional” trailing videotype tags are NOT optional, or at least I found them to be required.

[wtutwiler70]

@beckfield,

I have gotten the majority of music video files to associate, but I have a few stragglers…these are videos of artists for which I do NOT have any corresponding audio files. I’ve tried just using the same naming conventions we were discussing here, but since (I guess) there is no artist to match them to, these video files are not detected.

I am thinking, for these, I might have to just add them to my Movies Library, but I’d rather not do so. Do you happen to have a better suggestion?

[beckfield]

You’re correct as to why they aren’t being added to your Music library. Personally, I created a separate library of type “Other Videos” for music videos that don’t have matching audio files. You can try a Movie-type library and see which you prefer. I only have 3 or 4 videos like this, so it’s not a big deal for me.

[wtutwiler70]

Yes, thank you, I hadn’t thought of that - I already have Other Videos for things that aren’t listed in themoviedb or thetvdb. I’ll put them in with those!

[ajthedj75]

thank you both this has been helpful now i just have a lot of tags & files to fix. much appreciated

[wtutwiler70]

@beckfield,

One last question (I think!): I have a number of Surround Mixes that are in either BD-A or DVD-A format; how can I add these to the Music library, as they are not exactly videos, but they are video-format files?

Or, perhaps a more sensible question might be, is there a way to convert these to an audio format without losing the surround aspect?

[OttoKerner]

I have a few of these. It always depends on which type of clients you use to listen to these.
While it is perfectly possible to generate pure audio-only files, many Plex clients struggle to play DTS or AC3 encoded files without a video stream. So I saw no other way than to make these into regular video files.

I don’t have many such items, so I stuck them into a custom Video library.
Scanner is set to ‘Plex Movie Scanner’ and Agent is set to ‘Personal Media’.
The scanner is important to me, to enable the use of Local Movie Extras, which are not available in a regular ‘Other Videos’ type of library.

The DVD and Blurays are ripped with makemkv.
Then the video track is sent through Handbrake to reduce it to a relatively low quality (the video stream of this kind of release usually contain endless repeated loops of low-quality graphics or photos anyway, so there is no big loss).
Then I take the video stream from Handbrake and drag it into MKVtoolnixGUI
Then I add the original ripped file with all the audio streams.
I keep the transcoded video and a selection of the original audio streams.
(again, which type of streams depends largely on your playback setup)

The result is a MKV file which contains several surround formats of the album, among which you can select at the preplay screen in Plex.
I usually also use MKVtooolnix to name the chapters in this file after the song titles.

Many releases also contain bonus material. That’s where the above mentioned Movie Extras come into play.

Videos by the same artist go into a Collection, so that you can see other videos on the preplay screen. This also includes the artist in the regular music library, if present.

The files for an item in my music videos library:
(This one’s a concert, but that doesn’t make a difference)

Named chapters in the video files:

---

There is also a different way to handle this, but it is only useful with Plex Media Player and the current version of Plexamp:
If a source has an audio stream that is loslessly compressed, you can extract it and make 5.1 flac files. These go into a regular music library.

There is software on the interwebs which can extract the MLP stream from a DVD-A. You can send this into eac3to and make flac files from it.
An other way is to use MKVtoolnix to prepare a MKA file with only the DTS-HD MA or the TrueHD stream from a Bluray.
Then use MKVtoolnix to split this file at the chapter borders. (see [HowTo]: splitting multi-episode files with MKVtoolnix GUI)
Then send these files into eac3to and get flac files.

Yes, there is a lot of manual work involved. But the right tools and a few batch scripts can help save some labor.

If you’re a Windows user, I recommend adding these into your toolbox as well:
mp3tag (familiarize yourself with its “filename to tag” feature), mediainfo standalone, eac3to, Musicbrainz Picard

[wtutwiler70]

Thank you for the detailed answer, this will really help a lot! I have most of the tools you mentioned already, and have the raw files in mkv so far. I have been using mp3tag for some time now, but didn’t know about the ‘filename to tag’ feature- I wish I had, that would have saved me some labor sooner!