Server Version#:1.19.4.2935
Player Version#: varies?
Server OS: Windows 10 Pro
Players: Plex app for firestick (primary), plex app for Android (secondary), web app (rare)
I’ve been using Plex for several months now, and I have some questions related to metadata. Some are just related to advanced topics, while others are due to issues I’ve experienced over the months.
I recently ran out of storage space on my WD Blue Plex data drive, and I’ve expanded to a 3x 12TB WD Gold array. I am in the process of moving everything over now, but I’m retagging most files with MetaX to hopefully correct errors and prevent metadata loss noted below. But i began wondering if Plex even used this information. All the tutorials I find on Plex metadata only seem to address the metadata set in Plex. Is this independent of the metadata stored in the actual file itself? If so, then I’m pretty much wasting my time here. Not to mention, in managing my new raid array in Snapraid, which doesn’t like a lot of changing of the data. So i want to get this right the first time.
I’m planning to setup transcoding in system memory per the instructions from Byte my Bits on YouTube. But then I would like to move all my metadata to a spare SSD I have. Is there a way to export all the existing metadata to an SSD? I guess this kind of ties into #1 above as I’m assuming at least some of the metadata is stored within the actual file. I also have numerous movie covers pointed to an image file in the folder in which the movie is stored. Does Plex actively use this data or does it like copy my movie cover to its own directory or something?
I’ve had a number of instances in which movie covers or banner art or movie titles reset themselves after a period of time. It has happened with mainstream box office movies as well as personal movies such as our wedding videos. I direct Plex to a specific image as a cover photo and rename the movie as I see fit, and everything looks and works fine for months/weeks/days. Then out of nowhere it’s reverted back to how it looked after uploading. I’m not “matching” the files or anything, so i don’t understand why it keeps doing this. I hit the little lock icons in the metadata scree, but apparently that doesn’t “lock” anything. Why does this keep happening?
We’ve had issues where Plex mislabels something, for example a TV episode, and I can’t figure out why. We have a couple instances of The Office and Friends where Plex will say it’s one episode when it’s actually another (usually the next episode). When i check the metadata and filename in Windows, everything looks fine. I don’t know why plex is confusing them.
This may not be related to Plex, but we have issues where Plex doesn’t remember how far into a movie we are or what season or episode we’re on in a TV show. I only have 1 Plex login setup, which both my wife and I use. Though we rarely ever use it simultaneously, and certainly not on the same show. She definitely uses Plex far more than me, but we watch a lot of The Office and Friends together. For whatever reason, Plex routinely screws up the season and/or episode that we’re on when we resume watching from before. It jumps all over the place, but this seems to mostly happen with the firestick in our living room for some reason. Force closing and clearing cache has made by difference. Similarly, Plex doesn’t ever remember what episode of Friends we’re on. It always starts on season 4 on every device, no matter where we left off. It would make more sense if it took us back to s01e01, but season 4? Any idea what’s causing these issues?
in agent settings leave Local Media Assets on top if you want it to prefer you local embedded metadata over online metadata. ( this only works for MP4s)
I’ve never seen that happen so can’t say unless the movie was not actually matched with an agent which you can see by looking at its GUID in it’s xml which shows which agent it was matched with. It will update during scheduled tasks when it refreshes metadata. You can turn that off in scheduled tasks settings.
without knowing specifics can’t really help. if embedded metadata is different than the online stuff or the the online source TVDB or TMDB has the episode order different. or possibly you have your files in DVD order but Plex is set to get the aired order by default
even if you click on the current episode that it should show in on Deck? Never seen that so not really sure. I would make a forum topic about it with more details if you can easily reproduce.
Ok so just to be clear, the metadata within the file itself is completely independent of the metadata Plex sets by default? Meaning that if i was relying solely on the default Plex metadata, the metadata in the file could be completely blank without any issues? Does that also include chapter breaks or are those completely separate? If all of this data can be handled by Plex, including chapter breaks, I’m just going to stop tagging all my videos except in unusual circumstances. Most of my library is mkv anyway, so if Plex cannot even read that mkv file metadata then I’m tagging it for no reason.
The metadata that’s located on the PMS folder, is that exclusively Plex default metadata? If say i have an mp4 with file metadata that i prefer to use over the default and have Plex configured to use it, will that metadata also be found in the PMS folder? If not, how do i export the file metadata to SSD?
Not sure what this GUID you mention is, so i will need to look into that. But it sounds like my issue may be related to the scheduled refreshing of metadata you talk about. I didn’t know what was even a setting in Plex, so if it’s set by default than that explains why it keeps erasing what I’ve set. Is it possible to turn this setting off on a per-file basis? There’s no database that’ll have metadata for my wedding videos obviously, but I don’t want Plex to keep wiping the metadata I set for them.
Can i decide which database a specific library entry uses? Like can i set Friends to use ‘Database A’, The Office to use ‘Database B’, and the rest of the TV library to use a default ‘Database C’?
Yes, on-deck episodes are screwed up. I know if I just go to the library item and click ‘play’, it’ll start at the very beginning. That’s universal. But under ‘Home’, the on-deck shows get messed up, and it oddly sometimes varies by which device we’re watching on. Are there any device-specific settings that could cause this behavior? Like maybe i configured one firestick different from the others…
It does’t necessarily have chapter breaks. it doesn’t necessarily have anything. You order the agents i which metadata you prefer. if you add local metadata on top it will use that before online for the specific thing. If you don’t have a local poster for example it will look for an online one. It doesn’t mean an online one is guaranteed to exist.
2, all metadata is added to the pms folder. it you want to move it then move it and edit the advanced preferences (which is in registry on windows) to tell the server where it is,
are you using an “other videos” library for them? make sure the the agent for that library is Personal Media
yes you can match different shows to different agents by doing a fix match on the show in question. You can match one show to themovieDb and another with the TVDB. you can also tell specific shows that they are in DVR order or Aired order.
on deck is gotten from the server for the specific account that is signed in. If the home page is not updating on a specific app then it is having some communication error with server. sometimes just going to another screen and back will make it update. The only times I have had it do weird things is when i have had something on pause in a different room for a long time and forget about it as it will keep periodically updating the server that it is not finished even though i watched in on a different device.
( also if you have that trakt plugin or webhook running it can screw things up if trakt has things saved differently)
I think you misunderstood what I was asking here. I’m trying to verify if Plex can take a library full of videos which have zero metadata encoded within the files, or within their containers, and completely populate all metadata from a database for use in Plex. I’m assuming the answer to this is ‘yes’, but I want to verify first. Second, I’m trying to figure out if chapter information is considered part of the metadata (either file metadata or Plex database metadata)? The reason i ask that is because many of my movies are missing chapter breaks. I can go through them 1-by-1 and set chapter breaks using MetaX, which pulls from chapterdb. But I REALLY don’t want to go through all that trouble if Plex includes all this information already when it pulls metadata from it’s databases. That would be a huge waste of my time. I just don’t know if chapter breaks are considered “metadata” or not.
I wasn’t aware registry changes were required to redirect the metadata library. Are there official instructions on how to should be done?
Is there no way to prevent Plex from overwriting movie posters? For example, i am using custom movie posters for my Harry Potter collection, which resides in the default ‘Movies’ library. I don’t want to use whatever poster the database pulls, so i directed Plex to use a jpg I have saved locally for each of the 8 HP movies. You’re saying there’s nothing i can do to prevent Plex from overwriting these posters besides setting the entire Movies library to read from the file metadata (which i definitely don’t want to do)?
Our wedding videos are setup in their own ‘other videos’ library, but Plex still overwrites the metadata I previously set with…non-metadata since my wedding videos can’t be found in any database. Why would it even attempt to overwrite if there’s nothing to overwrite with? I’ll check on the ‘agent’ setting you mentioned, but it still seems like an odd default setting to overwrite with null values.
So i can select different databases depending on the show, but i cannot set one show to read file metadata instead of pulling from a database? Can this feature be added in the future? Seems like an unusual restriction to place on metadata.
We only have 1 account configured, which is the sole admin login to the server. So there’s no issues with multiple account conflicts. I had issues in the past with Plex asking for login PINs on a multi-user account setup when when it was specifically configured to remember the PIN. So i just deleted the second account because it was really annoying. That bug may have since been fixed, but i just haven’t tried creating a second login because there’s really no need for it.
Anyways, exiting out of the app does nothing to help this issue, neither does force-closing and clearing cache. This has been an ongoing issue since the day i first setup the Plex sever. It consistently screws it up, 100% of the time in the case of Friends… No idea why it varies by TV show either. We watch mostly on the firestick in the living room (<1ft away from the router) and the firestick in the master bedroom (same location, except 2 floors up, so ~15-20ft from router). Signal strength is no issue, and the fact that this Plex issue is so consistent leads me to believe it’s got nothing to do with signal. Only difference i can think of might be that I believe the master BR firestick is connected to Expressvpn that’s configured in the router, however that should only affect traffic outside the home network. All communications between the firesticks are local and therefore never pass through any VPN servers.
I have no plugins or web hooks in use. Never have either.
yes 90% of user do not have any embedded metadata. mkv files for example which most folks use these days don’t have embedded metadata. yes chapter info is part of metadata. What I am saying is that for any given movie there is no guarantee the server will be able to find online chapter info for them. You can always add them for specific movies after the fact and refresh metadata for that movie.
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but i cannot set one show to read file metadata instead of pulling from a database?
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you can set that one to use Personal Media Shows agent when you do a fix match. or if you have local media assets first it will use that if that is the only show you have with embedded metadata
again make another topic about that one. It seems too complex for me to make some guess about what is going on . I’ve never seen that happen.
Leta say I have 4 shows.
for Show A I have embedded metadata for all of its episodes
for show B i don’t have any embedded metadata i have a local external poster file but no embedded metadata.
for show C have no embedded metadata at all.
for show D I have it in the order that themovieDB is the only online agent that has the correct order as far as I am concerned. it also has no local/embedded metadata
My library is set to use tthe TVDB main agent by default which uses these settings. so I don’t need to do anything special for A B and C to work. as it will use local metadata if it is there and then look for online data.
I think that answers this issue. I get that the databases aren’t perfect; the chapterdb pulls in MetaX are more than sufficient to show that…80% of the time they’re wrong or incomplete.
Just read through that article. So I plan to set the following keys:
Name: ArticleStrings
Value: the, a
Name: LocalAppDataPath
Value: D:Plex_Data
Name: TranscoderTempDirectory
Value: T:Temp
Drive D will be a 500GB Samsung Evo SSD dedicated to the metadata. Drive T will be a virtual drive from system memory mounted using third-party software (probably 8GB or so). Is this all that must be done? Do I need to change the settings in the Plex UI as well, or will this take care of that? What about the existing metadata, do I need to copy that over first or will this migrate my data automatically?
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
You example with Shows A through D is how I’d originally assumed Plex worked. The problem is that my ‘Show A’ and ‘Show B’ aren’t behaving in this manner. Beit a TV show or Movie, Plex does not prefer the embedded metadata first. I must tell it to use said metadata manually or must manually type out metadata in the edit (pencil) screen of each file in the Plex UI. In either case, Plex eventually writes over my settings, even when its a file that has no metadata in any database (like my wedding videos). I got tired of repeatedly reassigning this data, so now it just sits in my library looking ridiculous.
that TVDB primary agent has Local media enabled and set above all others in priority so it will use local (either embedded or a local file) first if it is there.
for external files you can read the various Local Media articles about how to set up the files so plex recognizes them automatically. Here is an example of my Game of Thrones files. I don’t need to do anything my local images are automatically used because i have Local media assets first for my tvdb agent settings
My TV Shows library is configured the same way as your example. Though with that said, I had no idea that you were supposed to drag-drop the various DBs in order of importance. That wasn’t immediately clear based on the UI. Despite my lack of knowledge on the behavior of the hierarchy, I still had ‘Local Media Assets’ at the top, just as you have shown.
The problem I have looking at this though is that I fail to see the connection between this and metadata set in Plex. The ‘Local Media Assets’ wants a file directory location defined. I do not (yet) have a dedicated metadata directory, so I couldn’t possibly set this input for an entire library. What ‘Agent’ or category does the metadata set in Plex fall under? How do I make that the top priority for Plex? See attached for example.
It doesn’t need anything defined. You don’t need any separate directory. You put them in the folders with the show like my Game of Thrones where “show.jpg” is the poster for that show and each season has its own particular poster
I’m not sure what that screenshot is supposed to be showing me. show me screenshots of your agent settings and that libraries settings.
Why is there an input screen if you’re not supposed to type anything in? The screenshot i provided is the metadata section of 1 particular library item. THAT is where I customize the Plex metadata. I don’t see the connection between my settings and the agents you told me to set.
Why don’t you lose your attitude and try following this conversation for once. The screenshot YOU posted for the Agents lists ‘Local Media Assets’. The input for THAT ITEM is asking for a directory location. You just told me that I don’t need to set anything there, but if that’s the case then why the hell is there an input for it!?
Furthermore, the screenshot I posted is the Plex metadata settings for a specific library item. You should know that, being a Plex employee and all. Data and covers I set in that window eventually get erased by Plex. I’m trying to figure out how to stop that from happening, but I don’t know how Plex even uses that information. Like where it’s stored. If i don’t know how Plex stores it, there’s no way i can stop Plex from erasing it.
Click on the little gear thingy to the right (aka the settings for that item). The screen that pops up says “Local Media Assets (Movies) Settings”. Then below that is an apparently incorrectly labeled input for “Local music video path”. Most of the line items in ‘Agents’ have their own settings, though most have more useful settings than this.
It’s not incorrectly labeled. That field only has to do with music videos files for music libraries. Local Media is an agent for all types of libraries. it has no special settings for Movies or TV.
