Server Version#: 1.25.4.5426
Player Version#: 1.41.0.2876-e960c9ca
Also Plex Pass.
I consumed everything I could on importing Itunes on TrueNas. @random1781’s post is basically where I tend to be:
Have 20 years of Itunes use/history, and know it is dead. I don’t want to maintain it anymore, but I want it brought over to Plex with as much info in tact as possible. Playlists, and ratings. I have all the files backed up in folders etc… so I suppose I could just copy them all over to a Music folder on Plex, adding the library and start again?
My Itunes was setup and running on my old pc, which is NOW the server as I have a new pc. Truenas is running etc, and no real access to itunes easily… but I do have backups and I think an old .xml file of library etc. Created date is very dated, so not sure if up to date…
Suggestions, recommendations? Do I follow the process outlined in “Itunes import tips”? Is there a better way?
I haven’t done another import since writing up my post a few years back, but to my knowledge the process should be the same.
Because I didn’t want to take the time to explore how Plex handled ratings if you moved files, I wound up not touching the location of any of my ‘old’ iTunes music. I created a new directory for new music that was never part of my iTunes library.
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I seem to remember Plex not tracking location changes of files. Instead of associating track data to a song or even to a specific file, it would associate it with a path/file entry in its database. This was a bit problematic for a couple reasons:
Moving the location of the file meant that all metadata not a part of the file was lost, including ratings, listen counts, etc. Plex assumed the new location was a new file. This behavior was different than how Plex handled movies/TV shows.
Duplicate songs would be treated as unique entries rather than different versions of the same song. This was a bit annoying since I had a lot of lossy copies of lossless tracks which were identical, just a different format.
I can understand Plex’s different treatment of audio versus video since there are often different versions of the same song, but the file location issue was annoying.
Beyond that, I wound up having problems with ratings randomly disappearing. Not individual ratings, but all of them, and it wound up being an intermittent problem. It was particularly bad on mobile devices where I had synced copies of tracks. I never got to track down the root cause of this though and I have since had to give up my server.
Frankly I wasn’t too impressed with Plex’s music databasing. It’s fine for casual listening, but since I care about maintaining my music library, I didn’t have the trust in Plex to spend time rating and organizing new music like I had in the past. I was just too worried that that data would be lost. If you really care about that data I think the best way to preserve it is to just write the metadata to the file itself. That’s probably not feasible for play count, but I think it would be fine for ratings, which is really the only field that I would care about losing.
I can’t speak to what has changed since I last used Plex (6 months or so).
Finding a new tool to maintain a music library has actually been on my to-do list. I keep telling myself that the Winamp reboot is right around the corner…
So, on a Mac installation of Plex Server, I do initially get the IMPORT ITUNES prompt ONLY if I’m adding a fresh new music library and going through the prompts of each step before hitting ADD LIBRARY.
However, once the music has been imported, I don’t seem to be able to update or overwrite the current playlists that were imported like we all used to be able to.
The above import box hasn’t always shown up when making new music libraries so this is a first for me to see it come back in a while. But like I said, there use to be an option to re-import /overwrite currently imported playlists from the library submenus as well as from the Playlists page.
I found someone else’s screenshot but here is the menu items that are no longer in Plex when you’re trying to update the Plex playlists from the iTunes library path again. The items don’t exist anymore and it’s made using iTunes useless once you’ve imported that initial first time.
This Import from iTunes option when you create a library is new to me. When I did this there was only a global setting to point Plex to your iTunes library.
Playlists imported from iTunes were always immutable, which was really annoying. I didn’t have many though so it was easy for me to copy them over to Plex.
End of the day music isn’t Plex’s strong suit. I think they’re improving the user experience (like with Plex Amp), but the backend is lacking.
I swear Plex Server is the most unpredictable application to use.
I just now came upon the infuriatingly missing menu item to import iTunes playlists. It suddenly showed up in the localhost of Plex Web under Playlists… where all three media tabs are located (music, video, and photo playlists live).
But when I go to my actual Music Library and click on the Playlist tab there, IMPORT FROM ITUNES does NOT appear.
This is by far the most frustrating UI. The IMPORT FROM ITUNES prompt window doesn’t even have proper padding and cuts off the text in the window. Why is this a mess and not showing up in the actual Music Library under the Playlist tab?
If I ‘export’ properly from iTunes, then import - that info metadata should remain?
How would I write the rating metadata to the file itself? ;o
PLEASE let me know if you or anyone else has got a good suggestion. I am open to having Plex just for Movies/films/doco’s etc.
I do have a lot of playlists, and unique remixes from relatively unknown bands etc. I don’t think any data bases are going to help provide info automatically.
I can see this still. Do all the options actually work?
Best scanner to use? Best agent?
How does it actually pick up / import from iTunes exactly? The iTunes folders only are needed and am basically importing those folders, that is it? or need .xml somewhere?
I don’t get how this works either? If I have my personal server that is running Truenas → plex plugin… and it was my old pc, where I have my itunes folders/history (which I have elsewhere), I need a running/working itunes for this to work? Or can I have all that info stored on network in their folders with a .xml path?
The only server that I have been able to get this to work on has ‘iTunes’ installed as a plugin under Settings → Server → Manage → Plugins.
Again, I have exported the entire ‘working’ Plex database, which has the iTunes plugin enabled and my imported playlists, to a new machine with a fresh install (using the backup and restore guides on these forums) but once restored on a new machine, the iTunes plugin is missing.
I cant find much information online when trying to diagnose this issue, most of the issues come from people needing to correct their library.xml files.
If I ‘export’ properly from iTunes, then import - that info metadata should remain?
If I recall correctly, I had to keep my iTunes file structure and library (the xml file) in place. In other words, Plex was pulling metadata directly from the iTunes xml and did not pull the metadata into its own database. I think Plex assumes that you are still using iTunes, so Plex would defer to it for the latest info. I could be wrong about this, it’s been a while.
How would I write the rating metadata to the file itself? ;o
Depends on what OS you’re using and what filetypes you’re working with. I personally haven’t used it, but Picard is supposed to be good and is cross-platform with a GUI.
PLEASE let me know if you or anyone else has got a good suggestion. I am open to having Plex just for Movies/films/doco’s etc.
I do have a lot of playlists, and unique remixes from relatively unknown bands etc. I don’t think any data bases are going to help provide info automatically.
I’m just getting started with Beets and am liking it. It can get in the weeds though. It separates library/catalog functionality from playback, which I like. It does a really good job of matching music to online databases, but more importantly it gives you full control over it: you can automate the process, do it manually, and adjust matching parameters and thresholds.
There’s technically an iTunes plug-in for this, but I’m having trouble getting it to work also, so I’m writing some Python to copy some of the iTunes metadata into the Beets sqlite database.
Otherwise I haven’t really found anything great. I think streaming killed the market for good music library tools. Maybe Winamp will do something awesome…
No dice it seems . Had entire itunes folder, nothing adjusted, added to Plex media server from old pc place. Didn’t request any prompt. I had filled out itunes plugin checked, and proper path for .xml
Are the paths to all the files within the XML still valid? Ie if you open the XML in a text editor and browse to a track entry, does the location of the track match up to its actual location on your hard drive?
If it is, you’ll have to start looking at Plex logs to see what’s going on.
Anything in the xml file is technically temporary unless @Conzaaa plans on opening the iTunes library again. If and when they do, that xml file will be overwritten with the updated paths. Any previous editing, Find and Replacing, that they do will be overwritten, ONLY if they open the iTunes library through a network connection to the truenas directory from a windows install iTunes. It is very possible to open the iTunes library from a windows pc, and when you do, itunes automatically readjusts the file locations of all the media for you, just takes a few minutes for the app to do it. iTunes will literally have a pop up indicating that the iTunes library is being updated, converting the previous file paths to its new locations, then export all that info back into the xml file.
iTunes does this all on its own for you.
I’m currently uncertain if they have a error free situation with file paths.
@Conzaaa seems to insist on doing this manually though.
Yeah this is all situationally dependent. Personally I haven’t had iTunes actually installed for 8 years or so, and I trust replacing paths more than letting iTunes muck with it. I also wanted to move away from iTunes.
Reason for this is its on Truenas - jail - plex plugin, so not going to have iTunes running on anything to do that?
Hence, transferring music over and .xml file etc, and yes can update the “find and replace” for that. I THINK the path is correct; maybe messed up with ‘local host’ part etc? How can I easily check that?
Was when I first transferred and tested, but only part of the itunes music (did not want to try 80gb, then fail); 2nd time I did all transfer across but .xml likely wrong.
Truenas OS.
I have Itunes on my old pc (which is NOW the Truenas OS / personal server. AFAIK I can’t run both at the same time? So I have to fire up / boot into old pc, itunes is working there; do what I want/can, move files to elsewhere etc…
AND THEN reboot, start Truenas OS / Plex etc. and move files to it etc.
I basically want to move away from itunes now its no longer supported; to new - whatever platform - if Plex is best, then great… but ideally - having the ratings come with it and plays…
Even if it is hardcoding all of that somehow, I can get back onto old pc itunes working, do that… and then export elsewhere.
So the cord is not completely cut yet, but I want it to be. Hassle to ■■■■ down Truenas/Plex, and then refire up etc.
Okay, this is exactly what I went through myself. Again, this is all from memory and was something I did four years ago, so I’m not sure what (if anything) changed with Plex. I wrote about it here:
Long story short, the Unix-based versions of Plex would not properly import iTunes information because they didn’t support the a feature required to do this, but there was no good documentation about this (classic Plex). So what I wound up doing was creating a Linux VM with Plex, importing iTunes metadata there, and then copied that entire Plex library/database from the Linux VM to the instance of Plex TrueNAS jail.
I was just starting with Plex at the time, so I didn’t have an existing Plex library. If you do, you could potentially create a separate Linux VM, copy your existing Plex library to that VM, do the import, and then replace your original, TrueNAS library with the one from the VM that you imported everything into.
It’s a PITA process to do, but it worked for me. Or you could just continue running Plex in a VM. Plex’s Unix/BSD ports don’t get the same love that the Linux/Windows versions do. I wound up using TrueNAS exclusively to host files and then using another machine for my virtualization, which is where I had Plex running. If you have the equipment to do something like this, that’s the route I’d go.
My trick for importing my playlists from itunes into Plex on windows is to use the old UI. For some reason this works. The new web UI for the last couple of years always seems to have a problem with itunes.
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. Had entire itunes folder, nothing adjusted, added to Plex media server from old pc place. Didn’t request any prompt. I had filled out itunes plugin checked, and proper path for .xml
