Metadata for moved files

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Hello,

I was using two different hard drives to store my plex data, having a part of my movies in one drive, the other part in another, same for series.

So the organisation was like that :
D:\mediacenter\media\Films
E:\mediacenter\media\Films
I had about 160 movies in D, and about 110 movies in E.

Now I upgraded my storage and I have one big hard drive, which I want to use to store all my plex data in, instead of having everything splitted in two hard drives, so I copied all my 270 movies in my new hard dive, which is named U:

So I created a new movies library for my movies, using the new hard drive :
U:\mediacenter\media\Films

The issue I’m facing is that I had to manually change a lot of the metadata of my old libraries using the two hard drives, so my new library which is using the new hard drive, has outdated metadata for all my movies.
I’m changing the default metadata because I’m french, and I want french titles and the default metadata are far from perfect, for what I want.

Is anyone know if there is any way to use the edited metadata from my old library for the new library, so I don’t have to edit all the metadatas manualy ?

I tried to simply keep my old library, and just change the folders of the library to the new hard drive, but it’s detecting all the movies as new movies, because they’re not in D or E, but in U.

Thanks a lot to anyone who wants to help me with this !

Server Version#: 1.18.2.2029 - Windows Server 2019
Player Version#: 4.12.2

2

I believe the correct way to do this is to copy the movies to the U: drive (which you’ve done), then add that path to the existing library (the one with D: & E:). Plex will pick up the movies on U: as duplicates and use the existing metadata. Once things have scanned, updated, etc, you can then delete the D: and E: paths from the library, leaving just the path to U:.

Suggest you test first.

  1. Make a new directory, d:\test, and copy in 2 or 3 movies.
  2. Make a new library, Movies-Test, and point it at d:\test.
  3. Edit metadata as desired & lock in changes. Use something non-standard so things will be obvious (change the studio to “abcdefg” etc).
  4. Make a new directory, u:\test, and copy in the movies from d:\test
  5. Add u:\test to the Movies-Test library and scan. You should see duplicate movie entries.
  6. Delete d:\test from Movies-Test and update.
  7. If it works the duplicate listings will go away and the custom metadata will remain.

Edit:

To try on your full library, add the U: path to the existing library and scan to pick up duplicates.

Instead of removing the D: or E: paths, just move one or two movies on D: or E: so Plex cannot see them (move from D:\mediacenter\media\Films to D:\foo).
Scan for updates. You should see the duplicates go away for the moved movies.
Check the metadata and see if your personal changes are still in place and still locked.
If so, you can proceed with the rest of your movies.

This will let you test with just one or two movies instead of 110 or 160. That way if something goes wrong, you’ve only lost metadata for one or two, not all of your movies.

3

Hi, thank you for your advice, this is actually clever !

I’ll try this out during my meal break and I let you know how it turns out.

Thank you :wink:

4

You could swap the drive letters of the D and the U drives (While Plex is shut down), provided the folder names don’t change.
That way you’d only have to care about half of the media files potentially losing their manually edited metadata.

5

It simply works !
I tried with a bland library and it works.

Now I’m adding my new drive to the existing libraries, it’s detecting everything as duplicates, and I’ll just have to remove the other folders from my libraries.

Thank you very much !

6

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