I am thinking about building a new server soon, however that means that I will have to transition my Plex install and media files. However, when re-adding the files to my library, the Plex metadata for those files that I have manually written and saved (into Plex, and I have locked the fields) get rewritten. Here is an example:
I add in “Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope”. Because TMDb doesn’t like using official names, it uses “Star Wars” instead. For organization purposes I rename the title to “Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope” in Plex and lock the field. If the media gets re-added for whatever reason (e.g. a new version, or moving the media to a new server in this case), Plex decides to redo the metadata so the movie shows up as “Star Wars” instead of whatever I have in the locked field.
Now a name specifically isn’t really an issue, it is quick and easy to rename. But I have a lot of custom information that I have inputted manually, stuff like posters, sort order, collections, etc. With some TV shows that have a lot of special episodes (like Doctor Who for example), I have to go in and sort Every. Episode. manually. It’s quite tedious, and when you have multiple movies, TV shows, and music artists/albums like this, you can probably see why I do not want to do all of this again and all at once.
So is there a way to keep added metadata (like Title, Sort Title, Collection, Poster, etc.) intact when re-adding the file as “new” media (well, Plex will scan it as “new” at least) when doing something like adding a new version or transitioning to a new server? It seems like a very basic feature, as metadata agents aren’t always correct (hence why you have the ability to edit the info in Plex in the first place).
Well… if you start over… you’ll need to give Plex some hint about what it used to know. There’s no data on the content of your server outside your server. Plex cannot pull the information about your manual changes/corrections out of thin air, can it?
So basically you want to replace an existing file e.g. by a better quality version?
There’s basically 2 ways to ensure Plex will take over previously available data:
Add the new file while the old one is still available. In that case Plex should merge the 2 files as „different versions“ of the existing record. When you subsequently remove the old / original file, the new file will keep the old metadata
Similar to #1 but in case you need/want to delete the original file upfront… in that case make sure to disable Automatically empty trash after updating a library from Settings > Server > Library. This way, Plex will keep the record in its library and can re-use it when you add a new version of that video.
In both scenarios it’s key that you name the new file so Plex will actually recognize it as the same as your original file/item.
So basically you want to replace an existing file e.g. by a better quality version?
Well yeah, or really any other version at all. Currently even just moving the file(s) out of my library and back into it completely re-does the metadata.
Similar to #1 but in case you need/want to delete the original file upfront… in that case make sure to disable Automatically empty trash after updating a library from Settings > Server > Library . This way, Plex will keep the record in its library and can re-use it when you add a new version of that video.
I don’t see this in the settings. All I see is Empty trash automatically after every scan under Settings > Library. Is this the same thing?
