Server Version#: 1.18.0.1846
Had my (earlier version) Plex server running for a while but not used much. However that is about to change and I’m trying to make it suitable for my use. This involved updating it and setting up some new Music type libraries but I’m experiencing a few problems and hope someone can advise.
First of all, everything is from iTunes and has been correctly tagged - EVERYTHING, CORRECT. I have put a lot of time and effort into this and it is all perfect in iTunes. But Plex then seems to mess it up.
For example, there’s a library with only about a dozen albums in it, so quite simple. But after creating the new Library and pointing it to the appropriate folder and letting Plex do its thing, one artist in this Library, instead of 6 albums as there should be, has just one album with ALL the tracks. So 6 Track 1s, 6 Track 2s etc. All tracks are set to the same album. Not the first album in th elist, or the last. But all the same. When I ‘Edit’ one of the wrong tracks, it is clear that it has the incorrect Album data. Also, the artwork being shown is from another of the albums, not the one set as the Album on all the tracks.
I edited the Album data for the incorrect tracks and updated metadata on all and I now have the correct albums with the correct artwork (which is embedded in every file). This occurred for every artist with more than one album. The ‘import’ just mixed them all up in some random fashion.
Being small Libraries, I edited everything manually, but this should not happen. How can it? How hard can it be to read the existing tag metadata and use that. That’s all it needs to do. No need for fancy scanning of on-line sites that is fraught with potential errors. In this case, every file has the exactly correct data to enable Plex to know the Artist and the Album. In fact it appears that it took the Album data of the first file it found for that artist and used that for every subsequent track.
However on a big Music Library, it did not do this. Why the difference? Both are set to use the Plex Music scanner and agent and other settings are the same and set to Prefer local metadata
Can someone explain why it has changed the case of most of the Artist names. I use a particular scheme in iTunes that works for me (think capitalised first name and upper case last name for each artist), but after the Library is set up, most names are capitalised (i.e. title case). I say most as some were not and had been left as they were. Again, why does it insist on NOT using my carefully crafted metadata?
In that same Music Library, there were many Artists listed twice that needed matching to combine all their music under a single artist. When it is importing, all it has to do is check whether that artist exists and if so USE THAT and not create a duplicate.
This same large Music Library is set to sort Albums [library default]. Which indicates to me that there is an overall setting that can control any Libraries so configured, while allowing any individual Library to be ordered differently. Great, so where do I set this ‘global sort order’? I can’t find it. I can adjust each Library individually if need be, but Plex is telling me there’s a global setting, so where is it?
While on the subject of sorting, Plex does seem to have correctly imported the Sort Album metadata tag in ‘most’ cases. In some cases this has failed, but not too many. But it is obviously not using this data when sorting the albums. Instead it seems to be using the ‘Originally Available’ date. But this is downloaded, made up or guessed it seems and often not correct. It appears to get the Year tag and add the month and day of the current date which only has a 1 in 365 chance of being correct. In fact it is stupid to do that. Just filling in data for the sake of it, apparently unconcerned about any accuracy.
It never ceases to amaze me how many times I have to explain to developers that if there is specific data to sort by, USE IT. Why is Plex using what is basically a made up field when there is TOTALLY ACCURATE sort data in every file (did I say my media is fully and accurately tagged). I can correct all this, but it requires manually correcting the metadata in all of the 25K tracks. It’s nonsense to expect the user to do this and frustrating beyond belief when the correct data is there and available, but not used for its exact purpose.
All of these are really basic problems and will involve a lot of manual work to fix and that’s not what I want to be wasting my time doing. I have spent a LOT of time in iTunes ensuring everything is correctly tagged, which it is and therefore correctly organised in iTunes. I just want Plex to read all this accurate data and use that. It’s not rocket science. I like the idea Plex can go and grab additional info from the 'Net it’s really nice to have things like the artist bios, but the basic data has to be correct. The embedded tags are, why can Plex not get this right when setting up a new library? With all the completely accurate metadata and artwork available for every file, this Library setup and import should be simply repeatable. It may take a while, but it should be possible to do it repeatedly and get the same correct data every time. It’s in every file, why is Plex so apparently incapable of what should be a simple import. Chasing Internet data is secondary. Nice to have, but get the fundamental track data correct first.
Finally, I don’t want to see any ‘Popular Tracks’ listed for any artist. But in this big Music Library, I cannot seem to turn them off. Yes, I know there is an option in the Library settings and when I first set up this Library it was on. So I turned it off and when I immediately checked, they were indeed off. But then I signed out and returned later, signed in and Popular Tracks are back. I check in the Library Settings and the checkbox is still unchecked. I have tried checking it and unchecking it again, but every artist still displays an irritating list of Popular tracks.
The smaller music type Libraries that had the Album matching problem correctly respond to the checkbox setting to show or not Popular Tracks. How can I force this large Library to behave and adhere to its settings?
This may be a long post, but its taken way less time than Plex has has had me tearing my hair out over the last few days.
