I recently got a QNAP NAS and moved my collection of movies and TV that I’ve been gathering for years to it. I have never done anything for media management and it’s a mess. Nothing but filenames with matching SRT’s where needed and some JPG posters, most of the earlier ones and TV don’t have dates in the names. I started working with Plex and realized I had to start cleaning it up, and after searching the forums I tried Tiny Media Manager. After going through the bulk of the several thousand shows and movies, and recreating better libraries in Plex, I had it rescan them, but it doesn’t seem to be loading the metadata from the NFO’s created by TMM at all, and is going right back to the same results it initially found. It’s especially noticeable with movies that were numbered like “01 - Star Wars - The Phantom Meanace” or with files that had dots in the names like “Discovery.Channel-Apollo.13-The.True.Story”. Another especially bad section is my entire set of Battlestar Galactica, which is all under one folder with subfolders for the original 1978 series, Galactica 1980, The 2003 miniseries and the main reboot with 4 seasons in subfolders.
Will Plex simply not use the NFO’s generated from TMM? Wrong format? Can anyone suggest a better manager to clean up the collection? I haven’t found any kind of manager utility in Plex?
Plex won’t use those nfo’s by default.
It relies solely on file names, which will cause trouble, considering only the examples you gave above.
You have 2 options:
Make your file names Plex-compatible (which pretty much makes them compatible with all other media managers as well) Filebot is an excellent tool to achieve that.
install the .nfo importer agents and use these as your default agents.
(and pray that TMM writes Kodi-compatible nfo files)
IMHO i find that NFO files turn out to be more of a pain.
Just naming the files as Plex likes is easier, and using Filebot to accomplish that is the easiest route.
And disabling Local Media Assets so Plex doesn’t look at embedded data works for me.
NFO files are just a (poor) tool in the battle against proper naming and structuring.
Proper Naming and Structuring is way easier.
FileBot (in my signature) changed my life, Man.
You can rename/restructure your entire library in an afternoon - and still have time to mow the lawn.
TV Shows that won’t cooperate with proper naming must have ‘Fix Match’ employed - and I doubt an NFO file makes that any easier. That nightmare was born at Plex HQ. Not much we can do about that.
Well so far I’m batting zero. Starting with the hardest fight over all the Battlestar Galactica series. Moved all to the root of my TV Shows folder, renamed all to include the year in the filename. Did the Plex Dance and it still scanned and labeled all of them as one series with 4 seasons (2003). Deleted the series from the library and tried again. Refused to even show the series at all except for Galactica 1980. Deleted my whole TV Shows library, did the dance again and recreated it. No Battlestar at all. Why does PMS hate this show so much? I can’t even imagine how hard it’s going to be to get it to properly ID all the Doctor Who episodes spanning 1963-2006
(OMG! I just found another AVI File! - thought I eradicated all of those - guess not… lol)
FileBot (link in my signature) can handle that naming and structuring for you automatically or manually in seconds.
What FileBot can’t do is remove possible embedded metadata in the Title Field of MP4/M4V files. Plex will read this info and prefer it over a perfect file name/structure, but you can combat that situation by moving Local Media Assets to the bottom of every agent list you can find. All tabs in TV Shows and Movies here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200241558-Agents
Just drag LMA to the bottom of the list and drop it. If you do have embedded metadata this will cure the issue, if you don’t it won’t matter. LMA will do what it has to from the bottom.
Renaming/restructuring is best performed OUTSIDE the library and you may need to write a new bundle for the show or movie so The Plex Dance® was invented:
So after doing some renaming and the Plex Dance, I wound up not having 2 of my BSG’s at all. Turns out “Remove show from Library” actually deleted them from the drive (thank goodness I have backups). I even specifically remember it saying it would not affect the files on the drive, but it did. Also discovered some of my problems are MP4 files that have tags in them, especially those I ripped from DVD myself with Handbrake. Still in cleanup mode with every utility imaginable to cover all the bases
