Music Videos and Music using Global music videos path issues

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
41

Yes, @anon18523487 should have mistaken the connection between track filenames, track titles and music video filenames, that is, track titles don’t do anything at all, whether music videos can be linked to tracks or not is only related to their filenames.

This is the result of practice.

/Music folder A
   /Artist A
      /Album A
         Track file name.mp3
         Track file name-video.mp4

/Music folder A
   /Artist A
      /Album A
         Track file name.mp3
/Global folder
   /Artist A
      Track file name-video.mp4

/Music folder A
   /Artist A
      /Album A
         Track file name.mp3 (Track file name starts with the artist's name)
/Global folder
   Track file name-video.mp4 (Track file name starts with the artist's name)

Track file name can be Track title or Track title - Artist Name or Artist Name - Track title or track number - Track title or something else, it doesn’t matter. As long as the file name of the music video and the file name of the music track remain the same, they can be linked together.

When the same Track title appears, you can use different Track file names to distinguish them, and also to distinguish the connection of music videos.

Plex does not currently support this, but what we would like to support is the following structure.

/Music folder A
   /Artist A
      /Album A
         Track file name.mp3
/Global folder
   /Artist A
      /Album A
         Track file name-video.mp4

It’s about having GMV and Inline Videos/music files use the same folder structure, this is better to understand and easier to work with.

Let the album level tracks and videos stay at the album level and let the extra content stay at the artist level.

There is specific content such as behind the scenes or artist interviews that are related to a specific album, and they should be displayed on that album’s page, not in the artist’s extras. If the artist has many albums and also many behind the scenes videos, under the current system, all the videos are listed in the artist’s extras and that’s messy.

The complete structure of Global folder is more convenient for us to manage music video files, such as concert videos, in a reasonable way.

Because Plex does not support mixed libraries, and artists’ concert videos are both movies and TV on TMDB, concert videos cannot be placed in the same Plex video library, and this is when the music library is a good choice.

It should make more sense to put album-related content in the album folder and concert videos and other content in the artist’s folder within the Global folder, and to display them separately in plex.

Videos in the music library should be given more management rights, such as creating collections, changing covers, viewing media information, random Play Videos, etc.

I think we have said enough, I hope Plex can understand our intention, which is to make Plex better.

1 Like
42

Well I would still recommend my suggestion above as it provides EVERYTHING we have discussed as being required.

A Music type library is already a mixed type library as it supports both audio and video types. It’s just artificial restrictions that limit its usefulness. All it needs is to remove the requirement for an Artist to have at least one audio file. Then it could be really useful for either type.

It occurs to me that the above restriction might be because PMS needs to parse the audio file tags to get the Artist’s name. However, not hard to get around this as mp4 files can have tags, so if a user wants to have a ‘Music’ type library that will display an Artist with only videos, they have to tag their video files appropriately with the Artist name. Not all video files can be tagged, but it’s up to the user to decide if they want to take advantage of this feature and in which case maybe have to convert some/all to a video format that includes tags.

It would also not be impossible to have PMS parse the folder/file name to obtain the Artist name in cases where the file format does not allow tags. Still better to use tags as ‘Sort’ versions of the names can be included, but it’s up to the user what they require and how much effort they are prepared to put into it and so it is able to suit everyone.

The only aspect of this that might be considered lacking in comparison to a GMV folder is that it would not be ‘global’. Each Music type library that needed to include videos would have its own video folder (if not in-line). However I would actually see that as an advantage as there is nothing really ‘global’ about such videos. Each set of videos is really only going to relate to one set of audio/music files. No need to be global at all and in fact having them separate just makes it all easier to organise.

But hey, if it helps, leave the current GMV concept in place as well as what I’m proposing. Then the users really do have every option covered.

1 Like
43

Your filenames are different so you are binding to the track, not to an album. If both music filenames of “Smile” by Avril Lavigne were named the same, you can’t specify which video goes to which filename. It is all based on the filename only.

[Edit] - Using your example

/Music
   /Avril Lavigne
      /Goodbye Lullaby
         Avril Lavigne - Smile.mp3
      /Smile
         Avril Lavigne - Smile.mp3
/Global folder
   /Avril Lavigne
      Avril Lavigne - Smile - Smile-video.mp4  (This would tie to both tracks, you cannot specify which album)
      Smile-video.mp4  (this would only be a global video and not tied)
44

I known that, of course, this is what I am trying to say. Since the purpose is to connect the music video to the respective track there is no need to use the same file name, what is the point?

And now all music videos are displayed in the artist’s extras, and have nothing to do with the album, even the in-line videos are not considered to be tied to the album, because the album page doesn’t show the music videos, They should all be counted as tied to the tracks for now.

45

@anon18523487 , a quick question.

As we know, in a Music type library, an artist has to have at least one audio file or that Artist will not be ‘found’. Can you please explain this process?

What are the requirements for that audio file? How does PMS determine its suitability, i.e. whether it is an audio file or not? Does it merely look at the file type/extension? Does it actually analyse the file’s data to see if it contains audio? Or as I think is more likely, does it simply look for an Artist tag and if there is one the Artist is included, but if not, PMS doesn’t know the Artist name and hence it is ignored?

Is it the presence of the Artist tag that is the deciding factor?

46

PMS tracks media files, in this case music. The album and artist info are used to organize the music.

What are the requirements for that audio file?

First PMS looks for extensions to identify it as a music file. It then tries to match that song and subsequently the album and artist. This can be done by either analyzing the file itself (sonic analysis), looking at the embedded metadata, or just looking at the filename. Once the file is identified, the info for that song is added to the Plex database. The album and artist info are then created to organize the song.

Back to your first question, without song info to add to the database, there is no next step to add the album and artist. Then it will look for extras like videos, etc. I’m guessing you asked because you want to be able to do this with music videos. Technically it could be possible, but since this is meant to be a music library, it’s not intended to look for videos as the source. Videos are augmented to the song.

All libraries are handled the same way. There is a source media type and the other things are extras to that source. You cannot have an entry in the database for just the extra stuff.
For Movie libraries, we look for files that are names like a movie. TV Shows are named with either a date or season/episode number. Music are music files and Photos are image files.

1 Like
47

Thanks, that’s very helpful to understanding how PMS ‘imports’ content.

Yes you’re right. I’m thinking more about Music Videos. I have my Global Music Videos folder working, but any such video that has no matching audio will never be seen.

My current solution is to also use the GMV content in its own libraries. There is no conflict for PMS as the GMV folder is an overlay mount of several real folders that contain the video content used for these other libraries. However, the problem is that Plex has no ability to deal with videos in a music type Artist/Album data structure. As we know, can’t use a Music library and an ‘Other videos’ library just displays them all in a flat list. So currently I am viewing those ‘Other videos’ libraries by Folder which is also not ideal as viewing by Folder is actually very poorly implemented.

This is a huge hole in Plex’s functionality. Libraries of videos are limited to either flat list Movie and ‘Other videos’ types or TV type which has its own rigid structure and is totally unsuitable. Plex needs a ‘Music video’ type library. The competition is better at this, e.g. emby already offers a mixed content library and Plex needs to plug these holes or lose more customers.

Not necessarily limited to music videos, but with the ability to handle videos grouped and ordered like music. Currently it cannot be done. Any attempt to do so is a kludge (bodge) that doesn’t really work well.

This is why I am trying to think of the best kludge and also made the suggestion in a previous post to solve the problem. Rather than create a new library type, just open up the Music type library to be able to handle video with no associated audio files. I understand that’s not how it (currently) works, but it would be relatively trivial to make suitable changes, especially if it relied on video formats with tags. Then it’s the exact same process as for parsing audio files.

My quest is always to think of a solution that provides the maximum benefit for the maximum number of users for the minimum development ‘cost’, which I think is provided by what I have proposed.

48

For now, You just need to add a track file for that artist to make that artist appear in the library, then you can add any video of that artist to the music library through the global folder, no need to have matching audio. But they all show up in the artist’s extras.

49

Yes, that is my plan. But it is just another kludge that we have to perform in order to overcome Plex’s shortcomings. I was pointing out that Plex’s GMV concept, as provided will not include videos with no matching audio for that Artist. So it’s not a complete solution.

It also cannot handle track related videos in their appropriate Album folder so in truth, it’s a very poor solution.

50

So the videos in the music library are treated as extras, as in the case of other libraries that handle extras, is it possible to treat them with reference to the TV library? Because when you think about it, music libraries and TV libraries are actually very similar.

The TV Shows Library currently supports three levels of extras, which are Show level, Season level, Episode level, the display currently supported by each client varies, but the plex is there with this feature.

These three levels actually have a counterpart in the Music library.

Show level corresponds to Artist level.
Season level corresponds to Album level.
Episode level corresponds to Track level.

Since TV show libraries can display extras for each of these three levels, can music libraries do the same? Whether it’s through Inline Videos or GMV, although it’s best if you can do it through GMV.

51

Another factor that had me puzzled for a while is that a track video (i.e. associated with audio/music track) has to be type -video (or unspecified as that defaults to -video) or there will be no match.

Conversely, a video at the artist level of type -video (or unspecified) will be ignored.

So type HAS to be -video (or unspecified) to be associated with a track, but CANNOT be type -video (or unspecified) to appear as an Artist Extra.

This can really catch you out and waste a lot of time till you notice. :grimacing:

52

That’s not correct, type -video can also be associated to tracks at artist level and can appear in the artist’s extras.

/Music
   /Jonas Brothers
      Jonas Brothers - Sucker.mp3
      Jonas Brothers - Sucker - Sucker-video.mp4

In this case, you get both.

/Music
   /Jonas Brothers
      Jonas Brothers - Sucker - Sucker-video.mp4
      /Sucker
         Jonas Brothers - Sucker.mp3

In this case, the music video will appear in the artist’s extras, but will not be associated to the track. If the video is placed at the artist level and there is no corresponding track, the filename should be changed to “Sucker-video.mp4”, Otherwise the title in the extras will show “Jonas Brothers - Sucker - Sucker”.

/Music
   /Jonas Brothers
      /Sucker
         Jonas Brothers - Sucker.mp3
/Global folder
   /Jonas Brothers
      Jonas Brothers - Sucker - Sucker-video.mp4

But if you put this music video in the global folder at the artist level, it will associated with the track and also show up in the extras, just with a duplicate.

53

Sorry to be unclear. I have changed to using in-line videos as the GMV folder was too messy with no album folders allowed. So my comments above apply to in-line videos.

Apologies for switching context without making that clear. I didn’t think it worth a new topic as this has become a fairly broad Music Videos topic.

Having said that, I suspect that what I said is correct for GMV folder and any video (in the Artist folder) that does not match any track, but is type -video, will be ignored. However, I can no longer test that and can only confirm it’s true for in-line videos.

In fact, I am not storing the videos in-line. I am using mergerfs to ‘merge’ separate folders of music audio and music video. When this is added as the folder to a Music type library, PMS sees the audio with videos in-line.

This means track videos are in associated Album folders and with a short audio file of silence, tagged for the Artist, in each Artist folder that otherwise contains only videos, ALL artists are listed in the library and obviates the need for any other library in oder to view those video only artists. By far the majority do have proper audio tracks, so not many of these ‘dummy’ tracks required.

This is the best current solution, but should be handled solely by PMS without all the hoops I’ve had to jump through to achieve it. So my earlier proposal still stands. Plex needs to make PMS incorporate video only Artists in Music libraries.

54

My reply includes both Inline Video and GMV cases, not specific to GMV, please check my example for Inline Video under Music folder and GMV under Global folder.

No, they will not be ignored, they will be shown in the artist’s extras.

I don’t understand this part, so you found a way to add music videos to the album to connect to the tracks, but without the correct track files? What do you mean " ‘merge’ separate folders of music audio and music video"?

Currently music videos will not be displayed on the album page. If you don’t have the right music files and just want to create a simple music video library, you don’t really need album information because all videos will only be displayed in the artist’s extras, you just need to put all videos in the artist’s folder to make it happen, whether it’s Inline Video or GMV. And no matter what type of video it is, they will all show up in the extras. Of course an audio file is still needed to identify the artist.

That means you can use the general music folder to define artists and then put all your music videos in the global folder. This way all music videos will appear in the artist’s extras and show the correct name, without music tracks. It’s the same if you put the music video in the general artist’s folder.

55

Ok, several points to answer.

Firstly, all your examples are of videos named to match tracks and yes, in a GMV folder they will be associated with tracks even if they (the video file) are in the GMV/Artist folder. However, to be matched with a track, I found that they had to be type -video (or no type). Any other type, e.g. -live, -concert etc would NOT be matched to a track even if correctly named to do so. Change the type to -video and they would appear. It was clear to me that PMS expects any video that needs to be associated with an audio/music track must be of type -video. There is logic to that, albeit hugely flawed.

Conversely, I found that when videos are in-line with the audio files, any video in the Artist folder and not named like any track, i.e. not intended to match and would not match, so purely an Artist video, would be ignored if it was type -video (or no type). This follows the same logic, that a type -video is for matching to a track and not for just an Artist video.

I also suspect (but not confirmed) that would also be the case if using the GMV folder.

I pointed it out as it is likely to cause confusion. I was originally under the impression that the -type was used purely as a label when displaying the video item, but in fact it has an influence on whether it is included and/or displayed, depending on whether it is a track or Artist video. So this is worth bearing in mind.

Regarding the merging of directories, it may seem strange to a Windows user, but in unix/linux any folder/directory can be mounted anywhere and a ‘union’ mount means 2 or more sources mounted to the same point (folder/directory) so that mount point appears to be a combination of everything in both/all sources. They appear to have been merged, although the original, separate source folders can still be accessed independently.

I have 2 folders/directories, one contains all the music/audio tracks and the other, just the video files. Both are accurately structured as Artist/Album/. In the case of the videos folder, the videos might be in an Album folder (named to match a track) or in the Artist folder as an Artist video. Maintaining separate folders for music audio and video content is hugely preferable to storing them all mixed up together.

Unfortunately, Plex works best with them mixed up (known as ‘in-line’). So I have created a union mount of the audio and video folders and point Plex’s Music library to that ‘merged’ folder. PMS simply sees that as music audio with videos in-line. In fact, it is impossible for PMS to know they are actually stored separately. The directory/folder it sees has them all in-line and PMS does not and cannot know otherwise.

It is similar to what PMS does with multiple folders in a single library. It merges them all together to provide a single unified view of all the media contained in all the folders.

This union/merging can be done for multiple Music type libraries, each with its own separate ‘matching’ video folder. No need to have to lump all videos together in the same GMV folder. However, any ‘union’ mount created for this purpose could use the same video folder, so one could have a single global folder. Or some libraries could share the same video folder, while others had their own independent videos. Mix and match, however suits.

The only problem with that is PMS will ignore any videos of an Artist (or their tracks) for which you have no audio file. Those Artists will simply not show in the library. So for those Artists (a relatively small number in my case) I use a small .m4a (AAC) audio file. Could be anything, but I created one of several seconds of silence to use for this. I then add a copy of this audio file into the folder of each ‘Artist with no other audio’ and tag it with that Artist’s name, Sort tag etc. PMS may be able to work it out from being in a folder named for the Artist, but for my Music library I specify to use my own metadata and media assets, so to be sure, I tag this dummy audio file with the Artist info. Plex then includes those Artists without music (just the dummy file) and simply displays an unknown album with a single track called ‘Silence’ (as I have unsurprisingly named it).

Any Artist for whom I DO have music/audio tracks, do not need this as PMS sees the videos merged with those audio files and is happy to include the Artist.

I’ve no idea if Windows has anything like ‘union’ mounts, but I doubt it. MacOS and linux do and as my media server is debian linux based and I use ‘mergerfs’ elsewhere, I have used mergerfs to provide the ‘union’ type mount and merge my Music audio and video folders to provide the solution I outline above.

In case anyone else has an idea to try this, I also experimented with ‘overlayfs’ which is included in later linux kernels as simply another mount type and requires no additional software. However, it is stated in its documentation that changes to any of the underlying source directories will have unpredictable results. Indeed I found that sometimes a change would be immediately displayed in the merged folder, but at other times, it simply would not, without unmounting and remounting. However, mergerfs has no such problems and I was already using it, so that is what I’m using for this.

I still want Plex to update the Music type library to include videos with no audio for that Artist. Could be done very easily if limited to video formats that allow tags, or a bit more work to include all others. Either way, they need to do it.

56

Again, any videos in an artist’s folder will not be ignored, no matter what type of video they are, type-video is perfectly detectable and displayed in the artist’s extras even if there is no corresponding tracks, no different than any other video, as long as the artist has any of the audio files added to the library, even if it’s silent audio. It also has nothing to do with how the video file is named.

Music videos are shown in extras as soon as they are detected, regardless of whether it is associated with a track or not, as long as they are placed in the artist folder it will be shown in extras, no difference.

/Music
   /Charlie Puth
      Cheating on You-video.mp4
/Global folder
   /Charlie Puth
      Girlfriend-video.mp4
      Mother-video.mp4
      One Call Away-video.mp4
   /Taylor Swift
      1989 World Tour Live 2015-concert.mkv
      City of Lover Concert 2020-concert.mp4
      Reputation Stadium Tour 2018-concert.mkv

Take the above music videos for example, they have both Inline Video and GMV, as well as type-video and type-concert. As long as they are placed in the artist’s folder and any of the artist’s audio files have been added to the library, these music videos will show up in the artist’s extras and none of these music videos have a corresponding audio file.

Yes, if an artist has only video files and no audio files, the video files will be ignored. But as long as there are audio files (meaning that the artist is identified in the database), then any videos in the artist’s folder will not be ignored, they will all be recognized and shown in the extras, regardless of whether there is a corresponding audio track or not, and regardless of whether they are associated to an audio track.

/Music
   /Jonas Brothers
      test.m4a
/Global folder
   /Jonas Brothers
      Sucker-video.mp4

/Music
   /Jonas Brothers
      test.m4a
      Sucker-video.mp4

In the above two cases, I recorded a three-second silent audio and put it in the music folder of “Jonas Brothers”, which is the only audio in this folder and there are no other Jonas Brothers tracks in the library, after the audio was recognized by plex I manually changed the artist to “Jonas Brothers”, at this point, whether Sucker-video.mp4 is placed in the music folder or in the global folder, it will be recognized normally and displayed in the “Jonas Brothers” Extras.

Yes only type-video can be associated to the track after proper naming, as track video, other types of video cannot be associated to the track, but they do not affect whether they will be displayed or not, any type can be displayed in the extras.

I understand what you mean by ‘mergerfs’ now, it sounds pretty good, I’m using macOS but don’t know much about this.

/Music A
   /Jonas Brothers
      test.m4a
/Music B
   /Jonas Brothers
      Sucker-video.mp4

/Music A
   /Jonas Brothers
      /Sucker
         Sucker.mp3
/Music B
   /Jonas Brothers
      /Sucker
         Sucker-video.mp4

The video files are indeed not recognized if the audio tracks and videos are put in different folders using the regular way, which is possible with ‘mergerfs’.

Well, actually your purpose is to store the video files and the audio track files separately, in fact, GMV can already do that now, only now GMV does not support album folders, so all album videos and artist videos will be mixed together, artist video in GMV is currently fine.

Since GMV can’t support the full folder structure, using ‘mergerfs’ is a good solution for you, but if plex can make GMV support album folders, you can actually achieve the effect you want, but of course there is still the problem of artist videos without any audio files that need a better solution.

57

Well what I stated is certainly true for in-line videos. As I also said, I could not confirm when in GMV folder, but ‘thought’ it would be the same.

I set up an in-line structure for a new library but was baffled for a while as NO videos would appear, AT ALL, whatever I did. I studied settings for both that library and the Music library which was working perfectly, but I could see no difference.

Then I noticed that all the videos in this new library (all just Artist videos) were named with NO type, so defaulting to type -video, whereas Artist videos (which were visible) in the Music library were named as -concert, -live etc. So in the new library I renamed the videos with a type that was not -video and on refreshing the metadata they instantly appeared.

So I can state absolutely that is the case with in-line videos, but as I said, I cannot say the same for use of GMV folder. I only surmised that it would be the same. However, it would not be the only inexplicable difference between the 2 schemes.

Using the GMV folders was close to usable, but lack of Album folder support and being Global are big downsides, so merging using union mounts is better. However, as we agree, Plex needs to work on improvements to its whole Music Video capabilities. Let’s face it, not hard to come up with a better solution than Plex currently provides.

One more thing. In-line videos do not suffer from the duplication problem. I realise that can be fixed, but even being charitable, Plex sadly are not renowned for rapid fixing of such bugs.

58

That’s probably because your new library/directory is a video only library/directory and you are using ‘mergerfs’ or something, I can also confirm that the examples I gave are all true, my experience is that all videos from artist folders can be recognized regardless of type and whether it’s Inline Video or GMV, because I’m not using a video only library/directory, the library/directory has music files and video files from other artists in addition to what I mentioned, so there is no problem as you mentioned. And I can confirm that all videos in GMV show up in the extras, no matter what the type is.

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59

First of all, this was a MUSIC type library. I added the same video folder to a new ‘Other videos’ type library and they were all immediately visible and played. This was purely down to how PMS deals with videos in a Music type library, which we know is unnecessarily fussy about whether or not it will display them.

Secondly, this can be NOTHING to do with any ‘union mount’ as PMS DOES NOT KNOW anything about that. The mountpoint is presented simply as a directory to any process accessing it. Similarly, PMS knows NOTHING about the inner workings of any filesystem, how the bits are stored on disk etc. Doesn’t need to. That’s not how it interacts with files.

What you are shown as the contents of any folder/directory is what the operating system wants you to see. Any type of mount creates a representation of the data in that location. A union mount simply represents the contents of more than one directory as a single unified list. No process that interacts with that directory knows anything about how that list is created. This is simply a complete red herring in this discussion, hence I was reluctant to mention it in the first place as someone would be sure to misunderstand.

I cannot presume to know anything about Plex’s code, but I can state 100% that what I reported regarding the videos IS what happened. Exact same library, based on exact same folder, everything. Simply renaming the video files allowed them to be seen. When type was not specified (or -video presumably as that is the default when not specified) and NOT matching any track file (not intended to as they were Artist videos), they were invisible. I spent hours puzzling over this until I figured it out. Please don’t try and tell me it’s not true.

There is a sort of logic to this. Plex considers any actual track video has to be type -video and so the inverse of this is also likely to be true, that a video type -video can therefore NOT be simply an Artist video. The basic premise is flawed but I do see a consistency in that, hence why I am not entirely surprised by the behaviour I experienced.

Are you confusing your GMV based experience with the IN-LINE structure I am using? I have already said there may be differences. In fact, we have discussed some of them.

I also already reported that type -behindthescenes was causing a ‘visibility’ problem elsewhere and that was recognised by Plex as a bug. So this -type specification can have a greater impact than might be first thought.

No point arguing about this further. I reported faithfully what I saw and how I solved it. Hope it helps others. If you see something different, ok, but that does not detract from the truth of PMS’s behaviour as I experienced it and explained here that it might help others. YMMV.

60

Despite what I said about union type mounts, some apps/systems will do their best to circumvent the standard process for dealing with files. E.g. a symbolic link should be treated as the real directory defined as its target. If you cd (change directory) to a symlink, to all intents and purposes, the symlink IS a directory.

Apple however decided we users could not handle this ('cos we’re so dumb, doh!) and they de-reference any symlinks to treat them like their more normal ‘alias’. However, this is not correct. An alias and a symlink are different.

The point being that an app CAN if it desires, get around the way things are normally presented. So, it IS possible that PMS ‘could’ do the same with a union mount and look behind what the OS is presenting and ‘de-reference’ a union mount into its source directories. BUT, this would mean it is performing a LOT of non standard practices involved in EVERY mount that it deals with in a *nix environment. A lot of extra work. For what reason?

We have to then ask ourselves if this is likely and the answer is a big fat “no”. Plex has problems dealing with the standard operational layer, without trying to get behind that for some nefarious purpose. So no. PMS deals with any union mount as any process should and accepts a directory as what it is told by the OS and looks no further. As far as PMS is concerned, any union mount directory its simply a directory and contains what it is told, i.e. the ‘merged’ contents of whatever the mount command configured to be ‘merged’.

Just thought I’d clarify that.

I have also realised that using ‘in-line’ videos will link an appropriately named video that exists in the Artist’s folder, with a track in an Album folder. Move that video into a suitably named Album folder changes nothing. PMS maintains the association. This is entirely different from the GMV folder in which any video in an Album subfolder of the Artist is completely invisible.

Just noting what I find as I believe it will be useful to anyone else who reads this topic.