Metadata & Album Art Problems (with Logs)

Server Version#: 1.15.1.707

This post details problems with Plex displaying Album art correctly, as well as problems with metadata. There are two sets of logs attached at two different points in this post.

I have spent an embarrassing number of hours working to remedy these problems. I just want Plex to read my tags correctly, and display the album art that I have embedded and stored in the corresponding album’s folder. That’s it.

New Library Creation:

  • Freshly groomed audio files, with tags and folder structure set to the guidelines specified in the Plex articles.
  • Album art embedded in each file, and stored in the corresponding album folder as “folder.jpg”
  • Copied these files into a previously empty directory on my PMS.
  • Created new Premium Music library, checking the box for “Use embedded tags”
  • All agents are set with Local Media Assets at the top.
  • PMS built new library overnight undisturbed.

Problems #1: Album Art

  • For all albums, Plex downloaded one or more album art posters from outside sources.
  • In many cases, Plex is displaying album art that is either lower resolution, or from a different release version, than the album art I have embedded and stored.
  • In some cases, Plex is displaying album art that is for a completely different album by that artist.

Here are screenshots of a particularly extreme example of the Album Art issue:

Albums for the artist Uncle Tupelo. Note that the album Anodyne has the artwork for March 16-20 1992. (Also note that the artwork for No Depression is of terrible quality, and is not the resolution of the embedded and stored artwork I supplied):

Correct title, correct year, wrong art:
UT_An_Art

All the artwork Plex pulled for Anodyne. (Note that there are two copies of art work for a different album by the same artist.):

The Album tags in Plex:

The embedded tags as shown in Windows:

Logs #1: Plex Media Server Logs_2019-02-22_07-45-44.zip (5.4 MB)
These logs were fetched this morning, about 8 hours after I created the new library, and before I did any manual adjusting or tinkering.

Problem #2: Metadata Weirdness

  • In at least one case that I have found so far, there was an artist for which Plex assigned tracks 4 through 9 of a 9 track album to a different album by the same artist that should only have only 3 tracks.
  • I doubled checked the tags for these albums in Windows, and in two different tag editors, and the tags were all correct.
  • I had to manually edit the Album and Album Sort tags in Plex for each of the 6 mis-assigned tracks in order to get them where they belonged.
  • In this case, Plex also assigned the same album art to both albums (the art for the 9 track album was assigned to both).
  • “Unmatching” the artist corrected the album art issue, which suggested to me that it reverted back to my embedded and stored art work.
  • I then wondered if “Unmatching” Uncle Tupelo might correct the problematic artwork on Anodyne, but this changed nothing about the displayed artwork. I then"Matched", with no impact on displayed artwork

Logs #2: Plex Media Server Logs_2019-02-22_08-39-56.zip (4.8 MB)
These logs were fetched after I did the aforementioned tinkering, and then after I completed the following steps:

  1. Cleared the caches
  2. Quit Plex Server
  3. Wait 1 minute
  4. Start Plex Server
  5. Wait 2 minutes
  6. Refreshed one artist, in this case Uncle Tupelo
  7. Wait 10 minutes
  8. Fetched and attached log files.

(The refresh performed in step #6, did not correct any of the artwork issues for this artist)

I will refrain from any additional tinkering with this library until I am advised on further steps. Thank you for your time.

For the purposes of trouble shooting, and in order to provide as much information as possible, I selected 6 artists from my library which collectively represent the types of metadata and album art issues I am seeing throughout my entire library. I copied the folders and files for these 6 artists into a new directory, and created a second Premium Library in Plex pointing to that directory. I let Plex build the Library, took screenshots, and fetched logs (which are at the end of the post).

Our sample group:


Above are the 6 sample artists. Note that 7 artists are shown, but that’s because Plex seems to think that one of the artists is actually two different artists.

We’ll work from left to right.

Nonsensical default artist poster selection:


Above are all of the artist posters downloaded for this artist. Default selection is a banner. This is hardly a major issue, but it’s an example of Plex often selecting the least sensible image – one, in this case, which such oblong dimensions, that I wonder what criteria exists for default selection.

A mix of downloaded art, local art, downloaded metadata, and local metadata:


Above is not a well known artist, yet we have excellent artist info. We also have some album art and album metadata issues…


Terrible resolution.


Despite the fact that high resolution art work exists – both the local art, and downloaded art.


Above we have an instance where no additional art was downloaded, local art is displayed, but embedded tags are not being used for the song titles and the album title.


The embedded file info.

No artist art downloaded, but album art downloded:


With GN’R, Plex can’t seem to handle the artist, but can handle the album enough to locate and download additional art.

Local artist metadata ignored, but local album metadata and art used:


Here’s an interesting one. The actual name of this artist is Hope And Anchor. Plex somehow thinks that each of the two albums by this artist are from two different artists with similar names – neither of which are the correct artist.


Above are the tags for the first track from each of the two albums.



And yet for both albums local album and track metadata is used, and local posters are used.

Two different albums are mixed together, plus art and metadata problems:


This is Trophy Wife. The artist selected is not the correct artist, but at least the artist has an identical name, justifying the mistake.


The above album has the correct title (it’s a self-titled release) but incorrect album art. It also has another strange problem. It is a three track album, but the three tracks shown here, are actually the first three tracks off another album by this band. That album is named Patience Fury, and there’s more on that below:


The above album has the correct art, but the incorrect album title. It has the correct number of tracks, but the first three tracks are actually the tracks from the band’s self-titled release.


Above are the actual files for Patience Fury.


Below are the files for the self-titled release.


Above shows the tags for one of the tracks from the self titled release. Note the album art.


Above is what Plex shows has available album art for both of the two Trophy Wife albums I just mentioned. Note that it shows two copies of the Patience Fury art, a copy of an album released by a different band by the same name, but in neither instance does it show a copy of the correct art for the self-titled album – art that is embedded in the files, and stored as folder.jpg in the corresponding album’s folder.

Logs:
Plex Media (5.1 MB)

A friend, who has been using PMS for years, suggested that having IPv6 enabled might be contributing to some of my issues. So I disabled IPv6, did the Plex Dance on the small text library mentioned in my last post, and was surprised to see that some of the problems are improved…

  • 7Seconds still using agent art instead of local.
  • Des Ark now seems be using the embedded album and song titles for the albums where it previously was not. However, low res agent artwork is still being favored over the local artwork.
  • Guns N’ Roses now has a bunch of downloaded artist posters, but PMS still wants to show the exclamation mark image as shown in the previous post.
  • Both Hope And Anchor albums are now recognized as being by the same band – and the correct band – and even the artist poster is now correct.
  • Trophy Wife is still recognized as the wrong Trophy Wife, but the strange track mix-up has been solved. Ironically, Plex has fetched album art from an agent, but is actually displaying local art for these albums.
  • The Uncle Tupelo album Anodyne is now displaying the Anodyne artwork instead of the artwork for March 16-20 1992 . Unfortunately, low res agent artwork is still favored over the local art.

So, disabling IPv6 seems to have resolved most of the odd metadata issues, and some, but not all, of the album art issues. It’s the inconstancy that has me scratching my heads. Sometimes it uses local data and art, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it uses a mix of the two.

Here are logs fetched after disabling IPv6 and doing the Dance.
Plex Media Server Logs_2019-02-25_18-47-01.zip (1.2 MB)
I also purged logs before fetching, in an effort to hopefully make them easier to read. Which brings me to my next concern…

By approaching this with so much detail and providing logs, I was hoping a moderator or team member would be able to take a look and provide me with some sort of assistance or commentary. Is anyone from Plex reading this?

Thank you.

This is great debug information that you posted there. Unfortunately, the Plex developers haven’t come up with a solution for this. There is no response to this post either: How does Plex select album art to display
I guess the solution could be quite simple: allow setting a preferred album art filename (e.g. folder.jpg). Plex actually finds the local files (as seen in the poster selection dialog) but shows no clear pattern of choosing a file.

Ideally if Plex sees embedded or stored album art, it shouldn’t fetch additional art in the first place. That would altogether eliminate Plex selecting the wrong art.

However I can see an argument for having Plex fetch additional artwork for every album, even when local art is present. Not every user is going to have high resolution art, and I assume many users want Plex to do that work for them. So then, as you point out, there needs to be a better solution for Plex selecting which art to display by default. A specific filename or two seems like a reasonable suggesting. It seems unlikely that Gracenote, Lastfm, or Discogs are hosting album art simply titled “folder.jpg” or “cover.jpg”.

If Plex must fetch other art, in addition to improving the default selection, it might also be wise to provide more information to the user about what they are looking at. So when a user clicks on “Edit” for an album, and then “Poster”, and sees 6 posters, it would be great to see one or more of the following criteria: local vs agent, which agent, resolution, and/or file size.

The only thing I know about programming software is that it isn’t easy. The only thing I feel like I can safely assume about Plex is that coding for multiple platforms has to be even more of a challenge. The only thing I feel like I can safely assume about Plex Music, is that the multitude of variations in album releases, metadata fields, & formats, and the way agents structure their own databases, has to make it all even more of a challenge. My point is, I don’t expect perfection, and I don’t expect everything to be fixed right away, but I would appreciate some level of useful response – particularly in light of the fact that so many other users seem to be reporting the same types of issues.

Can I please receive confirmation that a Team Member or a Moderator has seen this post and will take a look at my log files?

Open questions for me are:

  1. Metadata issues caused by IPv6 enabled – is this a known issue? If so, is it published someplace in the Articles?
  2. Regarding my album art issues, is Plex functioning the way it is currently known and expected to function for most users? (Regardless of whether or not this is the intended proper function of the developers.)
  3. Is there anything in the numerous logs I have posted indicating things I can do on my end to improve this situation?

Thank you.

It’s been over two weeks…

It has now been three weeks. I would greatly appreciate some acknowledgement from a Team Member or Moderator.

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.