Migration path from macos TV app without breaking library

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Server Version#: 1.23.6.4881
Player Version#: All

So, as a good mac citizen, I managed my media library in Itunes, and when they split, in Apple Music and Apple TV App. I always tagged my shows and movies and then import them into the TV App. The TV app then renames the files according an internal scheme you can not control if you click “Keep Media folder organised”

Now I wanted to move my complete media experience to plex. I bought a mac mini and a Raid enclosure. I split the Apple TV App folder into Movies, TV Shows and Home Videos as it is anyhow split by the TV App. I pointed to the Folders and created different libraries.

I expected the migration going smoothly because I thought this is a common problem, I do want to keep the Apple TV App Library as is and point Plex to it. But especially the TV Shows only get imported half way. I only have one episode per season, its really strange.

So Apple TV app names for instance:

TV Shows/show name/Season 1,2…/1-01 The Showname.m4v

I can not rename the Show according to plex standards because it breaks the Apple TV App library.
But all my Files contain proper ID3 tagging so why does plex not simply import ALL files in the subfolder and scan for ID3 tags?

Also with the Movies, its better there but I dont even want plex to look up metadata because all Movies are tagged with ID3, but still there are 15 Movies missing, just so. Is there any way to look up what went wrong on the scan and why they are not imported?

I think, one of the more common usecases would be the migration/integration from Apples TV App on macos without breaking the library. Why is this not supported out of the Box to just import ALL and scan ID3 tags? I would happily be a paying member, but this is not the UX I was looking for. Thanks all for helping out.

2

You can configure your libraries to prefer embedded metadata. That’ll work fine with e.g. mp4 files (wont’t work with mkv but given you’re coming from the Apple TV app, you won’t have any of those :wink: ).

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As for tv-shows it’s slightly different. While Plex is capable to read the embedded metadata, it’ll still derive the series organization from the file structure. Those simply aren’t compatible.

I’ve seen some users who tried living in both worlds who ended up creating a shadow folder of either hard or symbolic links pointing to the original media files but named/structured according to how Plex needs them to be organized.

Personal recommendation:

Staying on the brink of the wall or “sitting between the chairs” (a.k.a. Plex vs. iTunes) will give you tons of pain over time. So if you need to keep both environments alive at the same time, be prepared for it.

3

Thank you Tom. I just can not understand why Plex can´t use the metadata which is perfectly fine imported from theTVDB including Seasons, Episodes, etc. to create the database. Why using the folder structure and filenames. This is a serious blocker for all who want to escape the Apple walled garden. I would reccommend creating an agent for that. So for now, I will not be a paying member/user of Plex until this is solved because it takes me three days to edit all my shows pathnames to comply with Plex demands. Pity though.

4

There’s apps that can automatically rename the files / folder organization (e.g. Filebot). On a Mac, even Finder‘s file renamer is quite helpful when it comes to adjusting those names with little manual interactions.