I would like my videos to appear on Plex by filename (my own file names), not by metadata. But I cannot figure out how to stop Plex from overriding the file name with titles from metadata. How can I accomplish this?
Prayer - and a direct line to The Maker… and that too will fail. The Maker doesn’t use Plex and Plex doesn’t believe in The Maker.
If you want fully populated items - posters, descriptions, etc., that comes from online databases and the only way to get those is by correct naming - so the appropriate database can find the item and populate it with material.
If you’d rather use your own file names and are willing to throw what Plex does so well out the window then put everything into a Home Video Library and Plex won’t care how you have it named and will also stop trying to match poorly named items with online databases.
Another way is to edit each library and in the advanced section in the Agent drop down choose Personal Media and possibly Plex Video Scanner in place of the default Agents. Movies and TV Shows work differently so murdering the default action will require different weapons of destruction:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/sections/200068083-Naming-and-Organizing-Personal-Media
You could also capitulate, bending to Plex’s demands and name and structure your files correctly - in seconds - with FileBot (the first FileBot link in my signature). You can do this manually, setting the structure yourself, or automatically, having FileBot do everything (the second FileBot link in my signature).
What you do depends on what you are willing to give up to get what you want.
