Hey guys,
It seems that the new Movie Agent is not populating any metadata field containing the imdb id (which the previous agent was doing).
This has had the knock on effect of breaking (URL) notifications that point to 3rd party sites like imdb, trakt, TMDb.
Was the removal of this intentional, is there a way we can get it back?
Wow, that sucks.
I call bullshit on that. It would be very easy to include another field in the metadata containing an imdb (or any other site) reference.
Sometimes it feels like Plex Inc really hate their customers.
Just use the old agent.
Sometimes it feels like Plex Inc really hate their customers.
That makes a lot of sense. A company defintely wants to drive away their income stream. 
Working in a different company within the customer support side, I can tell you that itâs 100% impossible to please all of your customers but thatâs what Plex would prefer to do. The problem is that one way of collecting metadata works better for almost everyone, but unfortunately a small percentage of people see the change as worse.
By the way, THIS is the reason companies do Beta releases of updates to see if thereâs things they can do to improve it for even more people and to see what may not work like they expect. This update is still in Beta release. Itâs possible for you to undo it and revert back to the latest official version, and maybe youâll get lucky and the issue youâre having will be resolved by the time itâs released to everyone.
However, saying that a company hates their customers is stupid.
This will work great right up until it gets removed because we are supposed to be using the new agent.
There are no immediate plans to remove the current agents.
Personally I would label the new agent as BETA rather than renaming the old agent to Legacy.
Legacy is as good as writing deprecated.
Also Beta should be opt in, New Movie libraries are created with the new Agent, this does not feel like Beta.
I didnât say they hate their customers, I said it feels like they hate their customers. You donât get to tell me how something makes me feel ;).
Maybe its just that case that users are no longer the customers and partners are?
I didnât say they hate their customers, I said it feels like they hate their customers. You donât get to tell me how something makes me feel
I didnât tell you how something makes you feel. You did.
Either way, itâs stupid to think, say, feel, or otherwise insinuate that a business hates their customers.
Plexâs failure to connect with their userbase is well known and if thereâs an Olympics in that sport - Plex would stand atop the podium with enough Gold to sink Fort Knox.
HoweverâŠ
I havenât touched Plex Movie in over a Decade - except to match a version to it in order to stop âDouble Troubleâ in Continue Watching - and I doubt Iâll switch to the new one anytime soon.
TMDB and Filebot are working fine - with a few caveats.
If Iâm not thrown from the vehicle, kicking and screaming - Iâll be fine.
@anon18523487, is the instruction to use the old agent basically indicating that there is no plan to add back the IMDb info into the metadata?
We obviously cannot control that decision (though I am sure it will negatively impact a fair number of people), but I think most of us just want a bit of transparency regarding if this will be added in the future or not. Right now, a lot of tools are defunct and just flat-out incompatible with the new agent. I am sure the devs would appreciate a straightforward answer on this, just so they can plan next steps.
@mushtang, so letâs be specific on this issue. They have removed an identifier for the movie, which they certainly already know. While this may have been unintentional and could be added back, there has been no straightforward answer from the devs on this point. In fact, they often skirt this question completely. I am asking a dev this question in this thread right now, point blank, so letâs see the response. However, if you would humor me, letâs assume it was intentional. Can you please explain how this benefits âalmost everyoneâ?
Just from the little Iâve read on these forums, and having no experience with the Beta version myselfâŠ
It sounds like the company has compiled metadata in their own database which populates the Plex server software on all our systems, which from what Iâve read makes it WAY faster to get metadata than it did when pulling it from IMDB and other sources. Removing the identifier was necessary because the software no longer points to IMDB.
So my answer is, it benefits âalmost everyoneâ because itâs so much faster than it used to be.
It probably benefits the folks at IMDB because it severely cuts down on the hits to their servers. Maybe Plex had gotten too big and popular that IMDB needed Plex to either do this or theyâd cut us all off completely? Who knows?
@mushtang to be clear, we are not asking for it to pull everything from IMDb. We just want the IMDb ID, or even say a TMDB ID. Anything that can help us identify the movie. It is perfectly fine to keep the Plex ID in the guid, which is what makes the agent so fast. They know all of these IDs and would just have to make them available in the XML/DB.
Itâs the same way you can find IDs for IMDb on Trakt, TMDB, TVDB, or basically any metadata provider. Itâs not to pull info from that service, but just so people can identify the movie.
You asked me to humor you and I tried. Hopefully it was clear that it was just my best guess and I wasnât speaking from knowledge.
The main points of my first post still stand, 1) Claiming that a company hates their customers is silly and 2) Beta versions are made to identify and fix issues which may happen in this case.
Another pure guess is that if theyâre able to include the IMBD identifier number within the Plex DB maybe theyâll update it to be able to do so. Perhaps when they realized it wasnât included they made steps to have it added into the official release?
Or⊠perhaps there are legal reasons why they canât use data from IMDB such as their ID numbers (seems unlikely, but still possible). If so, maybe theyâll provide a equally easy way to find the movie in their database and use their ID number to point your server to in order to pull metadata. That would be just as useful I would think.
If you want to find out whatâs actually going on, Iâm sure the best way to get them to discuss it with you is to insult them. 
My guess from reading this thread is that Plex wants us to use the older agents to get the IDâsâŠ
OK, I wont use the new agentâŠ
Iâm not insulting anyone, and I apologize if thatâs the tone. I just want some idea about whether or not these will be added in the future so that I can plan accordingly. Itâs a bit frustrating that no one has answered this directly, but Iâll keep asking, and I hope others that would want these identifiers added back do the same. Itâs on us to indicate there is still a demand for these identifiers.
Maybe someone can step up and start building out a mapping between Plex identifiers and IMDb/Trakt/TMDB/TVDB identifiers? Itâs not ideal because maintaining such a mapping seems like hell, but it might be one way to work around the new agents until the developers indicate their plans.
I hear youâŠ
But I know feature requests that are over 5 years old and no Plex comments at all.
This is not a new feature request as much as it is adding back something that was removed. It may not work, but it did for Plex Media Player, so itâs worth a shot.
I donât know what the plans are since Iâm not on the development team. I was just saying that if having the IMDB ID is important for you, you will still have the option to continue using the old agent.
Wanting the ID is valid feedback and itâs been heard.
So far youâre the only one thatâs asked, so 
.
