So I am just starting to use Plexamp more than just a quick music player. I am trying to organize the growing pile of audiobooks we are collecting.
I think the easiest way to explain my issue is just tell you what I’ve done and where the problem starts. I took an audiobook on CD and ripped all the files from the CD to my PC. Obviously this was one disk at a time, about 30 tracks per disk. I used windows media player (it was there) to rip the CDs and it placed each CD in a new folder after ripping. (ie: folder names “disk one” “disk two” etc)
Without knowing how plexamp works as a file reader, but having issues in the past trying to play books in order with multiple disk folders, I took all the individual audio files inside the “disk [number]” folders and combined them into one, singular folder with the title of the book. So now I have a folder structure of: [author name] > [book name] > [audio files]. I named the audio files with power rename to bulk change all the audio file names into the correct order. What was once track 1 disk 1, track 1 disk 2, etc is now simply track 1 thru track 332. Every single track was renamed in the same order of the book. If I were to load the files into, say VLC, it would play them in order perfectly.
The issue is that even though I renamed the files in the proper order, when I put them in plex, it only looks at the metadata, which is still showing “track number: 1” on the file which is named track 113. This is causing plexamp to make a play order completely out of order. The equivalent of putting in disk 1, playing the first track, then putting in disk 2 and playing the first track, then disk 3 etc etc.
IF I can get plex to simply order the files based on file NAME and ignore the metadata that has been all sorts of messed up now, then I would be fine. But so far I have not figured out how to get it do this. Furthermore, I have not found a useful tool to edit the meta data in a large (over 300 files!) way. Going one file at a time, right click properties, details, change track number, repeat; is the only way I have found to edit this information. I am on track number 36 when I decided this is dumb and I need help.
I am sorry if this is repeated somewhere, please direct me there if it is, but I have searched the forum and have not found something specific to my question yet.
Plexamp is no file reader. All it does is playing content which has been catalogued by Plex media server. So this means you need to make your files consumable by Plex Media Server. There is nothing that can be done about it in Plexamp.
There is no audiobook support in Plex in general.
Which means, you need to make your files appear to Plex as regular music albums.
There are plenty of these. For Windows and Mac there is mp3tag for instance. It can both apply meta data to several files at once, as well as deriving metadata from folder structure and file names (and vice versa).
yes, I am aware that plexamp is not actually organizing the files, I only said I was using Plexamp to explain where I am eventually trying to playback audio files from. My whole point remains, regardless of listening to files via plex media players or plexamp. Sorry for technically saying “plexamp as a file reader” but of course, I meant PMS’s handling of audio/music files.
So my original question remains though. I appreciate you sharing another forum post, but as you can see in my original post, I DID follow the correct file naming structure covered in that post and my actual question of METADATA handling is not addressed in that post. So I’m not sure what you misunderstood, but I am not asking how to properly name and organize files, it appears I have that correct. My issue is that despite the correct file naming structure, Plex is still using my local file metadata to organize the track order. This is causing them all to play out of order. I want it to ignore local metadata and just simply follow the order the files are named and stored in the file system.
In regards to mp3tag, I already tried that as well but as I mentioned, I have THREE HUNDRED tracks to rename. Perhaps you don’t use mp3tag or haven’t used it recently, but it has a 5 file at a time limit. AND you can not batch change metadata like, for example, my problem of track number order. If I have 300 files with metadata track numbers 1 - 25 repeated over and over and I want to change them to 1 - 300, I have to type those changes in once per file. This is actually MORE time consuming than doing it manually via windows file manager and changing each file one at a time. mp3tag has a 5 file limit, you have to upload them, fix them, then download them…5 at a time. That is not faster and can not be categorized as “batch work” or “fast” in my opinion. For example, if you use Power Rename in windows, I can simply tell it to change all the file names to now include a number at the end starting with 1 and counting up by 1. This will then rename 300 files in seconds. This, but for metadata, is what I have been looking for.
Hopefully that explains my situation better. I appreciate the response and help, but unfortunately, that doesn’t actually solve my problem yet. I will continue to look.
In the meantime, I selected all files in windows file explorer, went to properties, details, and changed “track #” to simply be 0 on ALL 300 tracks. This seems to have pissed off PMS enough that it now defaulted back to the file name order and has them in order. So for now, it works.
TEMPORARY FIX: for those who may come along here looking for the same answers, I have found a work around for now. I selected all 300+ files in windows file explorer, right clicked - properties, details tab, and changed “track #” to simply be 0 on ALL 300+ tracks. This seems to have pissed off PMS enough that it now defaulted back to the file name order and has them in order. So for now, it works.
I will still be looking for a program that can add sequential numbering to metadata but it appears if you remove the metadata from the files, Plex will not missorder things
Perhaps you don’t use mp3tag or haven’t used it recently, but it has a 5 file at a time limit. AND you can not batch change metadata like, for example, my problem of track number order. If I have 300 files with metadata track numbers 1 - 25 repeated over and over and I want to change them to 1 - 300, I have to type those changes in once per file. This is actually MORE time consuming than doing it manually via windows file manager and changing each file one at a time. mp3tag has a 5 file limit, you have to upload them, fix them, then download them…5 at a time.
MP3Tag v3.32 can for me change more than 5 at a time. And I don’t quite understand your reference to uploading? Select them all, right click and open them in mp3tag works fine.
For the future though there’s also utilities like Bulk Rename Utility that easily let’s you select multiple files and modify them, rename them, change strings etc.
I was using the website not an application. When you go to the website it doesn’t say anything about downloading a program for pc just an android app. I was not aware there was an actual program. If you use the website only, it does indeed limit to 5 songs at a time and when they are done, you have to redownload the files. If you don’t believe me, go try it. It’s fun .
I appreciate you pointing out the program works differently, I’ll look into that further. I just (wrongly) assumed everyone was pointing to the website as some great tool and I can confirm, it is not.
It is true. In a certain way. If you go to https://mp3-tag-editor.com/ which I assumed was what everyone was talking about, you absolutely are limited to 5 files and everything I said is true. I’m not an idiot spewing lies. I simply misunderstood what program people were referencing. Since no one actually linked to the program or even the website, and apparently this website exists to try to take advantage of the name since I see no option to download a program that looks like your screenshot.
Perhaps instead of being rude in your reply, you could have simply asked if I was using the correct program and showed me where to download it? Food for thought.
I have since downloaded the correct program and yet I still have the same original question. How do I change the track number metadata in a batch format? I see I can manually enter in the track number one file at a time, but with so many files to change, that will take forever. Is there any way the program is capable of selecting multiple files and changing the track number to be sequential? I want to select all 324 files and say “change track numbers to be 1 through 324”.
I can only think of a 2-step procedure. As recommended above, use something like Bulk Renamer to rename the files, so their names contain an ascending track number.
Then use the Convert: File Name → Meta Tag feature in mp3tag to turn this part of the file name into a proper meta tag.
(It may be possible to get the ascending track number in mp3tag directly. But this may require deeper insight into its scripting abilities, which I do not have.)
Open all the files in mp3tag, then Control A to select them all, Control K is the renumbering / auto-numbering wizard. Also, the forums at https://community.mp3tag.de/ have an enormous wealth of info and help how to automate through Convert and Actions.
.