How to split up Music Box Sets?

General Discussions
1

I just ripped the box set “Playback” by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.

File structure is thus:

Music
Tom Petty - Playback - Disc 1
(mp3s)
Tom Petty - Playback - Disc 2
(mp3s)
and so forth for the other 4 discs.

Refreshed plex and discs 1, 5 and 6 are on a single page under “Playback”. The rest of the discs are on their own individual page. After a bit of thought, I think I’d like all the discs listed individually instead of merged together on one page (easier to pick a disc and play just that one…especially if I just want to shuffle those tracks).
How do I get plex to split 1, 5 and 6 apart? I did a bit of a search, but didn’t find anything useful (may just be my poor search habits).

Thanks in advance,
howlinowl

2

In the tags did you add disc number and total, i.e. 1of 5, 2 of 5, etc?

Regards

3

Thanks for the quick response.

By “in the tags”, did you mean in Plex?

Plex merged discs 1, 5 and 6 when I refreshed the music library and added the files, so there isn’t a way to tag each disc now that they’re merged (as far a I know).

All folders are named simiarly, (Tom Petty - Playback - Disc #) ("#" = corresponding disc number) so I don’t know why it chose to merge some and not the others.

I’m going to try to rename the folders “Tom Petty - Playback - Disc 1of6” ect. and refresh and see what happens.

howlinowl

4

I think you’d have to make each disc an album of its own.
Which means adapting the folder structure and also editing the metatags of all the files.

Music
   Tom Petty
      Tom Petty - Playback The Big Jangle
         1. Breakdown.ext
         2. American Girl.ext
         ...
      Tom Petty - Playback Spoiled & Mistreated
         1. You Got Lucky.ext
         2. Change of Heart.ext
         ...
...

If you use a Premium Music library, you might have to activate ‘Use embedded metatags’ in the properties of your music library.
Otherwise the Gracenote metadata might lump the discs back together.

5

We’re closer. I renamed all the folders per Ottokerner’s suggestion, renaming the folders as individual albums and edited the metatags in the files to the individual album names using renamer. and ticked the "use embedded Metatags in properties.

It split off disc 1, but 5 and six are still merged. Thinking of removing these files, refreshing the library, emptying trash, reinstalling these files and refreshing again. Think it’ll help?

thanks again,
howlinowl

6

@howlinowl said:
It split off disc 1, but 5 and six are still merged. Thinking of removing these files, refreshing the library, emptying trash, reinstalling these files and refreshing again. Think it’ll help?

Definitely worth a try.

You might also have to check the order of your metadata agents. Use ‘Local Media Assets’ in topmost position so the internal metadata get priority over the Gracenote data.

7

Heh…did what I suggested. It’s merged them all together now.

I’ll try your suggestion above and we’ll see.

thanks again

howlinowl

8

checked it. It’s already set up that way.

Think I’m going to leave it like this for now. It’s better than having half of them merged and the other half as individual pages. Maybe if I just step away from it for a while something else will come to me to try.

Thanks for all your help
howlinowl

9

You can also split the albums manually:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/205661857-Fixing-Incorrect-Artist-Album-Track-Matches

10

Well, I got it to work…not sure why but here’s what happened:

Decided to ignore my box sets for a while and rip other single albums.
Then I figured I’d try a different box set, picked out Lynyrd Skynyrd one with 3 discs
Ripped them, updated the library and behold!!! Three separate listings, one for each disc!
Instead of just moving the Playback set, figured I’d just delete them from the hard drive, update the library and rip fresh.
Ripped the first disc, noticed that the playback set is a Petty and Heartbreakers set and not just Petty as a solo artist (my previous rips were just Tom Petty as the artist…this may be why I was having issues?) so ripped them as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Playback disc title (disc title being “The Big Jangle” for disc 1 ect.).
Ripped them each individually along with some other singles discs of other artist and updated library for each individual playback disc. Hoping that it would force Plex to update the library for each disc and not update them together and merge. (Probably wouldn’t have mattered, but figured it couldn’t hurt.

When done updating the last one, each were listed as individual discs.

I dunno why it worked, but it did. I’m sure that Plex is programed to merge them together and what I was trying to do was opposite of what it was probably designed to do. Hope if someone else is trying to do the same maybe it’ll help.

Thanks for all the help, guys.
howlinowl