Hello,
I want to reorganize my library and some of the items need to go into a new library but on a few of them I added the metadata (images, titles, description) by hand and I don’t want to lose them or having to redo the info by hand again.
Is there any possibility to do this?
Thank you!
Test it this way:
if yes, then erase the file from the old library
and repeat the process for all movies you want to move into the new library i.e. copy first, update new lib, then erase from old.
If it doesn’t work, you’re screwed and have to update all the metadata again. But it still is easier to do when you have the old instance of the movie in the old library.
I’ve done this many times as I shuffled my Libraries, Content, and Drives… the key here (as @OttoKerner has highlighted in bold) is to “copy” the media into the new location… let Plex find both instances of the media and it will associate one with the other (keeping your metadata), then, and only then, can you remove the original media from its original location.
Just for the record… it’s always a good idea to uncheck “Empty Trash Automatically After Every Scan” in the Server Settings before moving media around. This helps prevent Plex from messing up something because you moved it instead of copied it. I always empty the trash myself manually (when I’m confident that everything is okay).
Thank you for your answers! I tried everything but it didn’t work.
As I said, I wanted to move items between libraries in Plex not to move media on the system.
As an example, I wanted to make a new library containing documentary series and to move the series from TV Series into this library.
I copied the media to new location (without deleting the old one), I pointed the new library to that location but the metadata was regenerated. A few series had the metadata introduced by hand. I had to redo the whole work. It was a bit faster copying between the libraries but it was still a pain. The watched/unwatched info didn’t get transferred either.
I even tried to edit the metadata files but I couldn’t find the info I had introduced by hand anywhere (I used the “find in files” function of Notepad++ so it should be pretty damn accurate).
Anyway, after so much trial and error I decided to redo the whole thing.
It’s a shame that such a used solution like Plex lacks basic functionality like “move item to new library”, “backup database”, and a way to display videos like the photo library does - by folder structure. I know you can view the content by folder but there are no thumbnails for the folders and no way to add one and the worst thing - you can’t auto-play or use the functionality you have on series. Aside from that, you have to chose the display by folder on each player. I have a lot of tutorials that I want to add to the library and to rename each episode is a few months job.
Maybe there will be some improvement in the future… although I doubt it… 
I’ll second this - would be great feature. As I am sure most folks when they start a library may not know the best way to envision their library growing. It would be great if there were an easy way to move items from one library to another.
I agree completely that this is such a basic function, at least when you have a need for it you just assume it must be in there, but it isn’t in there and seemingly can’t even be done manually with success. Everyone has different needs, and as already said, you can’t envision future library structure requirements, so this should be included.
The ‘Real’ trick is simple:
Have your items named and structured properly so even if they have to re-match nothing will change.
Yea… nobody is going to do that… well, almost nobody.
@JuiceWSA said:
The ‘Real’ trick is simple:Have your items named and structured properly so even if they have to re-match nothing will change.
Yea… nobody is going to do that… well, almost nobody.
That doesn’t work for stuff that has no metadata available online, but isn’t a Home Movie
If you ever worked with SQL, this is unfairly simple…
On OS X, the SQLite3 database file is:
~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
On Linux, the SQLite3 database file is:
$PLEX_HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
On Windows, the SQLite3 database file is:
"%LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server\Plug-in Support\Databases\com.plexapp.plugins.library.db"
HOWEVER, NEVER, EVER, make any modification to your database before you backup the file (a duplicate, a second copy of it) in case things go wrong and you end up with a corrupted database…
so here it is…
The coveted database table is section_locations and the column is root_path.
Something like this would do it:
UPDATE `section_locations`
SET `root_path`=
REPLACE(`root_path`,
'/Old_Volume_Name/',
'/NEW_Volume_Name/')
WHERE `root_path` like '%Old_Volume_Name%';
Make sure to correctly set every occurences (3) of
Old/NEW_Volume_Name if you plan to use this example…
The fact this is still not a feature after years of it being requested by users is sad. I just had an entire drive worth of content get flagged as “new” despite following the process listed above like I always have.
It’s not hard to make it so that we’d be able to select a file or group of files and have a move option, yet here we are and it’s still not a thing because why make a feature users request >.<
Not even getting into what happens to users when a drive begins to fail, just what we all want, to have even more added stress when a drive is starting to give out instead of an easy process it’s a giant pain.
And simply to make it easier quicker, here is an open source tool to make these changes:
SQLite Browser
(this will do the trick) (OS X, Linux, Windows)
It occurs to me that you could create a symbolic link between the two libraries instead of a full copy. Advantage: saves space, completed near-instantly. Once Plex populates the metadata, shut plex down, move the files permenantly, then light plex back up to pick up the changes.
…and then you say “blah blah symbolic links don’t work”. Ah, but they do, as long as they’re relative. I know, right?
I would like to follow up on how-can-you-move-items-between-plex-libraries-without-losing-the-metadata
Updating section_locations is not enough (at least today), you have to update media_parts as well with something like :
UPDATE `media_parts`
SET `file`=
REPLACE(`file`,
'/Old_Volume_Name/',
'/NEW_Volume_Name/')
WHERE `file` like '%Old_Volume_Name%';
moved your post to the existing topic and reopened it.
There’s a whole discussion on doing this through SQL. [HowTo] Plex database modification - Moving media the right/wrong way
The initial suggestion did not work for me.
I copied the data to a new share. I added this share to the library and performed a rescan. I verified that Plex matched the files correctly (episodes had 2 files according to plex). I then removed the old files/folders of the series and performed another update. After this update, however, Plex sees this as a completely new series and refreshes everything from scratch (all metadata, watch status etc. lost).
What did I do wrong? I realized later on that empty trash automatically was still on, but I thought that wouldnt’ be necessary in this case to disable this option?!
Luckily I tested it first on some ‘unimportant’ series, but would be great if this would just work tbh…
Empty Trash Automatically shouldn’t have mattered, unless you Moved instead of Copied.
There is another reason this may not have worked - if the matching agents of the old and the new are different.
Then there’s the old - files named and structured so poorly - Plex can’t tell what’s what. <----if you ‘Fix Match’ most of the time - this probably isn’t going to work for ya.
I mean…this doesn’t make sense. It was all correctly matched before I deleted anything. And I for sure did not have to use custom settings for these series, that’s usually only necessary for a few movies.
And the link to that other thread does not help as they are saying this doesn’t work properly anymore with the current version and you should use the article linked by Plex (basically exactly what I did) so I guess I just have to live with it that I have to redo everything that I will move.
