Issues setting up Home Video library - metadata / index / search

Hi there. Brand new plex user today. :slight_smile: awesome product.

My use is likely exclusively for my vast collection of home videos, and that is where I have started to work with it. I have created a home movies (not the tv series) type library. Have also set-up the Local Media Assets agent at the top of the list as advised. I am playing media on the Web Player and the Amazon Fire TV and iOS apps (iPhone and iPad).

Sorry - list below looks like a lot! If I could just understand how all of the metadata works with indexing, filtering, searching, and sorting, and any limitations and workaround for these, I would feel more comfortable about investing lots of time in plex as my new manager for my thousands of home videos.

Hope someone can help, even with one of these issues.

Many thanks!

Paul

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So, I can see two main places to capture text based metadata; general and tags. And using these I have spotted a few niggles with the metadata options:

  1. No ACTORS (or CAST) field - can that field be added in some way manually?
  2. The GENRE field will accept many values, displays all of these in the Web Player, but in the apps, only displays the first 2 tags entered. And also only present these first 2 genre under the “related” function. Can it be set to fully index and filter on all genre recorded?
  3. The WRITERS field displays only in the Web Player, not in any app. Can it be set to appear in apps. And can it be indexed and used as a sort/ or filter field in web or apps?
  4. The DIRECTORS field appears to accept many values, but only the first entered will be available under the “related” function. Can all data be set for indexing for search results?
  5. The DIRECTORS field appears to be the only field that is indexed for search on its data. Names enters in other fields (eg, WRITERS) are not found. Can all fields be set to index for search results?
  6. The CONTENT RATING appears to accept data with multiple characters, but will only display data in apps if it is a single character (like R eg). Can it be set to display whatever is entered?
  7. The STARS can only be set in the server and not in any app. Can apps be set to write to the server for this type of data?
  8. The STARS once set do not appear to update the metadata called RATING, so I assume that this is for something else? Does anyone know what RATING is used for?
  9. When searching using the search box in the iPhone iOS app, it finds data in the DIRECTORS field. But the same search in the iPad iOS app and the Web Player (OSX) find nothing. Can you advise what is the issue with indexing or otherwise?
  10. When searching using the search box generally, it will find some embedded words but not others. Sometimes it will find all of the instances of a search term, sometimes only some of the instances, and other times none of the instances. Again this looks like an indexing issue and wonder if anyone can advise on how to fix?
  11. For playlists, the tag SUMMARY field accepts any text, but then is only actually displayed fully in the server and Web Player. In the apps, this is not displayed when a specific playlist is opened. And when the one playlist item is selected it plays immediately instead of displaying the title information page, so providing none of the data in TAGLINE AND SUMMARY entered for that title.