Managing multiple languages in a Movie library

Dev Community Dev/API Corner
1

I have a large selection of movies in various languages (French, German...) with the filename usually containing the movie title in that language. 

 

If the library language is set to English and the Freebase agent is used, the metadata agents seem to discard the language specified in the filename: for example "Deux Jours, Une Nuit (2014)" and translate it to "Two Days, One Night" and put all the synopsis, poster information in English.

 

The only solution I have found is to create a separate library with French being the language. However, this means having to manage multiple movie libraries.

 

Is there no way that the metadata agents can pick up the language specified in the filename and NOT try and translate it? Instead, based on the name of the film, they should be able to determine the language of the film. 

 

I find it particularly strange to have multiple films with their French titles in the filenames being given the English title when added to a movie library with English as the default language. These films will have French as their language so what value is there in having the English title/poster/synopsis?

In a library with French being the set language, do we really expect an English-language film to be given its French title, synopsis and cover. In my opinion it is nonsensical since it is not the French-language release of the film that is being added. 

 

I see that I can manage a single library with films of multiple languages by setting English as the default language of the library but each time a non-English film is added:

- Selecting the Fix the Incorrect Match

- Specifying the language of the film as French (for example)

I would of course expect that the original match would have been the French-language one in the first place. 

 

Maybe what I deem to be the expected default behaviour is not that of other people by this automatic translation of the filename/film title seems strange to me. 

2

You have already found the two strategies one can take to deal with this problem.

There is no other, except to get a movie version (or make one) with both audio languages and decide for the metadata which language suits you more and then stick to it.

3

You have already found the two strategies one can take to deal with this problem.

There is no other, except to get a movie version (or make one) with both audio languages and decide for the metadata which language suits you more and then stick to it.

Ah yes, I see your point: in an ideal world, the films would have all audio languages I'm interested in. 

However, I would still say that the first priority should be to determine the language from the filename

i.e. if I come across a file Un Prophète (2009).avi, I can safely assume that this is the French/Original version of this film:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235166 

If it were the English-language/subtitled version then it would be called A Prophet (2009).avi 

Instead the metadata seems to want to automatically translate the name to the language of the library. I still dispute that. I know that when French films are shown on British TV, they are listed with their English title so maybe that is the logic being used here... i.e. the idea being that an English-language library is like an English-language TV channel and regardless of the original language of the film/the language the film is shown in, you use the English title. 

4

I created a thread on this previously. If you look at the metadata for films there are actually two title fields. The agents are still populating the “original title” title field for most films but there is no option currently in most UIs to display this “original title” rather than the “title” field, which is usually populated with localised titles. This would probably be the best solution. I want to have all my films with their original title displayed, as the vast majority of my Plex-ed collection is of old, foreign, obscure films, whose English title I am not familiar with and is often unofficial, having never had a release in the UK or US.

5

Indeed this is kind of ridiculous not to have a simple option like in Movian or Kodi to display the original title, regardless of the library language. It shouldn’t be a global setting! This is even more illogical considering that all the necessary information is properly populated in the appropriate fields, like you mentioned…

6

Hello,

I think this topic seems to be only of interest to those of us who care about monolingual-ther-than-English, multilingual and/or subtitled films. And we’re hardcore about it! :slight_smile:

Now, I think you should already be familiar with it but creating nfo files from Kodi or (probably more suited to our interest) any scapping tool with editing possibilites and then have them imported into Plex by means of the XBMCnfoMoviesImporter and XBMCnfoMoviesImporter addon seems to me like a valid solution. More info abou the addon here and here.

Yes, it may be tedious to some, but if we really care about collection, then it will certainly need some hand-fine-tuning. If we get proper nfo files then we are all ready to go!

Cheers,

7

Hi everybody.
After almost 18 months my post is probably of no help. Anyway I had this problem with 1 movie (and this can make the difference if you have many movie s to manage) and found the following solution.
First of all I added the english version (my library has italian as default language). Then, manually, I changed the movie association by editing the language in the search engine. In this way I have the movie fully in english, description included.
Afetr that I added the italian version. The agent by itself has recognized the movie in italian as a different object and now I have both versions coexisting.

Good plexing!

8


Music Videos

You can add music videos for tracks you have in your library. To do so, ensure that the video files are named and organized appropriately.
Music/Artist_Name - Album_Name/Track_Filename - Descriptive_Name-Video_Type.ext
Where -Video_Type is one of:
-lyrics (lyrics music video
-video (regular music video)

Global Music Videos Folder
Some users prefer to separate their musical videos from the actual audio files. This is supported through a global path setting for the location of the separate musical video content.

Note: Using a “global” folder for your videos, it isn’t possible to have music videos associated with particular tracks in your library (so that they appear on—and can be accessed with—the track). If you want that, you’ll need to do so using the “Inline” method discussed earlier.