Local Media Assets and MKV Metadata

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

I have two similar issues.

I have a lot of special features from TV Shows. I was previously renaming them manually, but recently, I had to make some changed and basically lost all the data from that share, and now all my special features are no longer named anything intelligible. If I’m going to go through and fix them all again, I’d like to do it once, and never again.

Also, I have some current seasons of TV shows that seem to have a title encoded into them. Rather than coming up with the correct title, they display RARBG.COM - TVSHOW.S04E10.WEB-DL.x264-RARBG where TVSHOW is the name of the series.

It seems that you can set this data somewhere in the file, however, when I edit the metadata for the file USING mkvtOOLnIX, and change the title tag, the special features I’d like to name don’t show the title tag as the name of the episode and when I go to remove RARBG.COM - TVSHOW.S04E10.WEB-DL.x264-RARBG, it’s not in the title tag, or anywhere else I can find.

Does anyone know where this data is being stored and how to alter it?

Also, for reference, yes, I am following the naming standard, yes, I had the files re analyzed, and no, it’s not cached in the browser. I’d also like to keep Local Media Assets as primary because, when I add a poster, I don’t want to go in and edit it manually to make it show up for the same reason I’d like to not manually re edit all the special features files. :slight_smile:

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Brian

2

the following refers to current versions of MKVtoolnixGUI (those with the new GUI)

  • throw the file into mkvtoolnix
  • go to the ‘Output’ tab
  • there you’ll find the input field ‘File title’

if this doesn’t contain the spam, go back to the ‘Input’ tab
in the window down left (where all the various tracks are listed)
if you see lines in there, labeled ‘Global Tags’ and ‘Tags’ disable them and then remux the file

While the above is all fine, to my knowledge PMS doesn’t read metadata from mkv files.
It only does this from mp4 files.

3

I’m on the current version, 9.1.0 (‘Little Earthquakes’)
I’m new to this area of video editing, so, I was, I though logically in the Edit Headers tab, so I’ve now moved to the Merge tab.

The spam was not in the Output tab, but I did remove the Global Tags, there was no entry for Tags, and remuxed. The incorrect title is still there. I made sure to refresh, analyze, and, in the end, I even told it to fix an incorrect match on the TV show, which caused it to get EVERYTHING new, but the spam name remains.

Similarly, I tried adding that tag to a couple of my unnamed special features files, and try as I might, they new names to not show up. I’ve done similar steps as above and it sees them, creates them anew, but they still don’t seem to get data from that tag. On these, I’ve also gone ahead and removed the Global tags and Tags, both were there, and then added that tag. No luck.

I’ve exported the metadata as a XML file and the spam appears no where in it.

I’ve even now tried writing my own XML file, including only the tag for the file title, I remuxed that. There were previously no Global tags or Tags listed, not there is a Global tags listed, it has the correct name in the field for File Title, and the spam is still there. I even checked thetvdb.com just to make sure their entry was not the source of the spam, but it seems to have good info.

Anything else?

Thanks!
Brian

4

Could you please make a screenshot where the spam name appears. I don’t understand where that may come from.
Also interesting would be the primary metadata agent for this library (Edit your library to find out)
And the configuration of this particular agent (which line is topmost, under Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - [Agent Name])

5

I don’t understand where it comes from either! :slight_smile:

Screenshots attached, but I’m not sure if this is what you want. It basically appears everywhere.

!(https://15254b2dcaab7f5478ab-24461f391e20b7336331d5789078af53.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com

1191×331 298 KB


167×339 56.8 KB

/plex.vanillacommunity.com/editor/6r/iazbrhu2tj7i.png “”)

Settings>Server>Agents>Shows, I have Local Media Assets (TV) at the top of each, closely followed by TheTVDB where it’s an option.

If I edit that Library and go to Advanced, under Agent, I had TheTVDB. I switched to Personal Media Shows, to see what it would do. The same.

I also noticed that, when I tell it to Fix Incorrect Match and have it redo everything, that one first pulls in 2016-05-18 as the title, then switches to the spam shortly after.

Settings for Local Media Assets (TV) has nothing. There is nothing in the box for Local music video path.
The next one, TheTVDB has no settings, The Movie Database has all boxes checked and United States selected, OpenSubtitles.org has my login and English, Spanish, Japanese, and FanArt.tv has my Personal API Key entered.

Thanks!
Brian

6

can I see the ‘info’ tab with the file name too?

7



I sent along three shots, so you cold see all the data there, just in case.
I also attached the meta data file you see when you click View XML from the info window. I renamed it .txt as XML files won’t post.

Thanks!
Brian

8

Puzzling. The xml indicates that it is really asking thetvdb. so something must come from the local media assets agent.
is there a reason why you have a space character between season and episode code?

Try this:
delete the http cache for both localmedia and thetvdb
Plex Dance the whole show. This will clear all old metadata from the Plex database.
Only the watched/unwatched status will survive.

9

Why the space? Once upon a time, whe I was setting all this up for the first time, I was fairly certain that it was in the naming standard as acceptable. Both S##E## and S## E##, and the latter is more aesthetically pleasing to me. It does seem to work fine.

Ok, so, good news/bad news.
The good news is that the after doing as suggested, the spam entry is gone! I still have no idea where it was in the first place, it is now gone.
The bad news is, that was only bothersome. I cold deal with that. Those files would all eventually be replaced with better quality ones that I encoded myself. I am yet to get the special features to take the data, using the same technique. I’m going to do a few more tests tomorrow morning, but as of now, I can’t seem to get those special features that are not official ‘specials’ to self title.

One more detail. I didn’t think about this until just now, but it might have something to do with it.
The file with the spam tag was on one drive. Most of the other files for that series are on another drive. One drive for permanent storage and one for temporary files. When I re-added both folders, the temporary ones were detected first, and got their metadata. Then the permanent ones showed up, but didn’t immedately get any data. The had no seasonal posters, no descriptions, and were all named Episode 1, Episode 2, etc… I tried refreshing and updating the library with no luck. Finally, I just let it sot for a bit and it eventually found the data.
This must be an unusual setup. Unfortunately, I can’t change it, but maybe knowing this detail might help figure out what’s going on? Or may help to develop for odd setups in the future?

If you have any more thoughts, please let me know, but, for now, i am going to sleep, then I am going to try a few more things in the morning to see if I can get those special features to grab their titles from their own tags.

Thanks!
Brian

10

So, just as an update, I added a new TV Show this morning. Never been in the database before. Before I added it, I did everything I previously did to the one special feature that it had, which was not one of the official “specials.” I removed the Global tags and tags and I added my one XML tag file to the Global tags, then remuxed. It doesn’t pick up the title. I’m wondering if, because it doesn’t find any match for it, if it doesn’t try at all? I don’t suppose local media would pick up on locally stored XML files, right?

Thanks!
Brian

11

As stated above, only files in the mp4 format will get their metatags read by Plex. I’d either recommend this format for special-special episodes or the .nfo file importer (see below).

In a normal TV Show library, the episode name is not read from the file name of the episode. Instead it must com from one of the metadata agents. If you have an episode unknown to the default metadata agent (i.e. TheTVDB) then you’ll see no episode title automatically appear.

If you want to read metadata from local Kodi-compatible .nfo files, you must switch the whole tv show to use the 3rd party .nfo importer agent instead. You switch the agent on a by-show basis by using the ‘Fix incorrect match’ at the show level and then pick the agent under ‘Search Options’. This in turn means of course that you need .nfo files for the whole show.

You can spread out a plex library over several drives. But all episodes of one tv show must reside together in one folder structure on one drive. If you add episodes of one show to several drives, unpredictable weirdness ensues.

12

Awesome! I can re-wrap MKVs as MP4s and change the encoding in the future for those episodes.

So far, having TV show episodes on multiple drives has not been awful at all. There is some delay sometimes, but Plex seems to handle it fine. Knowing that I’m the one doing something wrong, though, means I’ll handle the occasional weirdness rather than complaining. :slight_smile:

Thanks for all the help!
Brian

13

So, as kind of a follow up on all this, I spent most of this week getting a semi automated process down for tagging the files, extracting subtitles in a useful format, and converting MKVs to MP4s without losing multiple audio tracks so that I cold begin the conversion of all my special features to tagged MP4s, and then I get another file, this time an MKV, and it auto detected with the same spam in it! Somehow, someone is inserting data into MKVs that is picked up by Plex, which brings me full circle. If I cold figure out how that’s done, it would be a lot easier than the process I’m about to undertake.

I used MKVInfo to get all the info from the file, and I don’t see the spam anywhere. I’ve attached that file.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Brian

14

@BrianSmith, Line 26 shows:

| + Title: The Americans S04E11 - RMTeam, Rapidmoviez.com at 301

For cleaning MKVs I’d Recommend using jMKVPropEdit. It’s a nice tool for editing metadata on mkv files en-mass.

For MP4s I’d recommend using mp3Tag. Even though it was designed for music, you can use it to clean unwanted tags off the files and also stream optimize them en-mass.

15

@Orionshock said:
@BrianSmith, Line 26 shows:

| + Title: The Americans S04E11 - RMTeam, Rapidmoviez.com at 301

For cleaning MKVs I’d Recommend using jMKVPropEdit. It’s a nice tool for editing metadata on mkv files en-mass.

For MP4s I’d recommend using mp3Tag. Even though it was designed for music, you can use it to clean unwanted tags off the files and also stream optimize them en-mass.

Except that that’s not the spam. This is: RARBG.COM - The.Americans.S04E11.WEB-DL.x264-RARBG
That’s what shows up as the title of the show and I can’t find it anywhere.

Thanks!
Brian

16

I see no other explanation for the behaviour yoiu are seeing than this:
either one of your metadata agents was modified or your internet connection is monitored and some software inserts the spam whenever Plex queries for new metadata over the internet.

Have you ever installed a modified metadata agent?
Have you ever used some 3rd party media manager software which might have installed its own metadata agent into Plex (there is at least one which does that)?
Please go through the Plug-ins folder within the Plex data folder (not the one within the plex program folder, which has some hexadecimal code appended to its name).

It should contain a *****.bundle folder for every metadata agent, scanner and channel that was ever installed into your plex.
Look out especially for bundles which have similarly named siblings in the program folder (those are the agents installed by default).

17

If by, “your internet connection is monitored and some software inserts the spam whenever Plex queries for new metadata over the internet” I can assure you, I’m clean, however, understanding the importance of troubleshooting, I did a scan from outside the OS and found nothing, I checked my HOSTS file and other areas where something might have been inserted and found nothing, and I even took one of my other boxes that has almost nothing installed on it, installed Plex, tethered it to my phone so i was not going over my home network, put that one file in it, and the same results came up. I tried.

To the best of my knowledge I have not installed any modified metadata agents, even though I love to poke at things and play with them, I don’t think that’s the case.

To the best of my knowledge I do not have any third party media managers installed, so, again, even though I love to poke at things and play with them, I don’t think that’s the case.

So, under C:\Users*****\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins, I don’t see anything unusual, but I may not know exactly what to look for. Attached is a TXT file of the directory listing. (plug-ins.txt)
This directory seems to only have channels in it. The only think that stood out to me as odd was WebManager.bundle, and it looks like that’s part of Plex…?

There’s also C:\Users*****\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins. Directory listing attached also. (plug-ins2.txt) This looks more like media scanners, and I don’t THINK these look odd, but, again, I’m not 100% positive I know what I’m looking for there.

Also, because I love to poke at things and play with them, I was looking in C:\Users*****\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Metadata\TV Shows\c<HEXDATA>.bundle\Contents
There is:
com.plexapp.agents.fanarttv
com.plexapp.agents.localmedia
com.plexapp.agents.opensubtitles
com.plexapp.agents.themoviedb
com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb

I looked under each and found \seasons\4\episodes\ under each. There was a 11.xml file in each. The episode I am working with now is season 4 , episode 11, so this seemed to the right place.
In the 11.xml files, most contained very little. the one for com.plexapp.agents.thetvdb is attached at a TXT file (.xml not allowed for attachments) and it has Dinner for Seven, which is the correct title for the episode.
Under com.plexapp.agents.localmedia, file attached as 11 (com.plexapp.agents.localmedia).txt, there is RARBG.COM - The.Americans.S04E11.WEB-DL.x264-RARBG

So, this wold seem to indicate that the data is coming from a local media source, right?

I’m no expert on this, but everything I see seems to me to be pointing right back to the file itself. What do you think?

Thanks!
Brian

18

@BrianSmith said:
To the best of my knowledge I do not have any third party media managers installed, so, again, even though I love to poke at things and play with them, I don’t think that’s the case.

I see no indications among your .bundle for those. Good.

So, under C:\Users*****\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins, I don’t see anything unusual, but I may not know exactly what to look for. Attached is a TXT file of the directory listing. (plug-ins.txt)

perfect! Yes these are all channels. Nothing unusual. If you don’t use any of these anymore, you can delete them. The less you have in there the better.

This directory seems to only have channels in it. The only think that stood out to me as odd was WebManager.bundle, and it looks like that’s part of Plex…?

It was part of Plex. It held the old, ancient Media Manager (which is now part of Plex Web).
You can delete it.

There’s also C:\Users*****\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins. Directory listing attached also. (plug-ins2.txt)

This subfolder should not exist. I think it is a remnant of a temporary move of the plex data folder. Or when you edited
Settings - Server - General - ‘Show Advanced’ - “The path where local application data is stored”
and included Plex Media Server at the end of that path.
apparently you corrected the mistake since, because the .bundles I see in this Plug-ins folder are not supposed to live there anymore. And there are some among them which have been renamed since - all indicating that this happened with an older version of PMS.
You can delete the whole C:\Users\*****\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plex Media Server\ subfolder.
Caution: delete only the Plex Media Server within the Plex Media Server folder :wink:

Under com.plexapp.agents.localmedia, file attached as 11 (com.plexapp.agents.localmedia).txt, there is RARBG.COM - The.Americans.S04E11.WEB-DL.x264-RARBG
So, this wold seem to indicate that the data is coming from a local media source, right?

Yes, this certainly indicates that the spam comes from the Local Media Assets agent, which only reads embedded metadata.
Normally, since you swapped all mp4 files for mkv files these should have been cleared out when you performed the Plex Dance. So I can only assume, that you did not perform the Dance (completely) or did not remove all files for this particular show from the “reach” of Plex while performing it.
Do the episode posters show some little numbers on top?

19

I’ll clean up those directories in a bit. Yes, I have move this database from one build to another, to another, so that database backup is several years old.

I just wanted to clarify something sooner rather than later. I didn’t swap MP4s for MKVs, they have always been MKVs. When we began this thread, I was fixating on episode 10. When I obtained it, it was an MKV. I had never had any other file in its place, so the data it pulled was new. I am now fixating on episode 11. It’s also new, I got it as an MKV, and I never had episode 11 in there before. The first time I saw this, it happened a few weeks ago, on a completely different series. For that one, I just manually corrected it and didn’t think much of it, until I saw it again, recently.

I have been performing the full Plex dance as described, but, again, troubleshooting is important, so when I get back and clean up those extra directories, I’'ll try it again, no sweat, however, yes, I did move them completely out of view of Plex, I was careful to do everything you described, and the unwatched data did survive, but I was under the impression that tat was normal. You did mention earlier that “Only the watched/unwatched status will survive.”

Also, just as extra experiment, I created a new library, pointed it at a directory containing the episode and just that episode, it is on a drive that Plex has never looked at before, and it came up with the same data.

I’ll let you know how the rest of it goes a little later.

Thanks!
Brian

20

Here is one other experiment:
In case don’t have it yet, get MKVtoolnixGUI

Start it and drag one of the video files in question into the upper left window

u504ry19jm9f.png1051×641 20.5 KB

Then take a look at the lower left window. Are there any entries named ‘Global Tags’ or just ‘Tags’?

0uj52f5e111s.png1218×873 40.9 KB

If so, deactivate them, then ‘Start muxing’
perform the Plex Dance again, but use the just-remuxed mkv file and add it instead to the media folder