I have put unimaginable amounts of time in to organizing beyond the source provided metadata and lately lots of time to create custom collections within my library. I have not found any solid way to keep the metadata I enter 100% locked. I have tried different combinations of selecting sources for my information and metadata but none have proved to be completely locked. I am practically to the point of begging now to add a simple “Perma-Lock” of some kind that will fully lock in the information attached to a piece of media within my library. I understand there could be improvements to the data linked to my individual files that could change down the road but for the most part I am pleased with the data collected and provided. It’s heartbreaking to spend hours putting media into a collection and then coming back another time to find that tag has been wiped because the library is attempting to “fix” the metadata attached. I just would love to see a hard lock that ensures the integrity of my information tagged onto a file. It also would help beyond just the collection issues I’ve had. Like having to rename files because the server has rolled my filename back to apparently some embedded metadata from within the file itself. PLEASE move forward with a feature like this. It is discouraging to put the time in and then the server wipes my organization away.
Outside of this hangup I have been a long time Plex Pass owner and Plex user. I have no intention of using any other media organizing/playing suite similar to Plex. It had too many incredible aspects that make it unique and powerful. I love the platform and will always hopefully. I just hope this issue can be addressed.
In general, when you choose a new poster, or upload it, e.g., that should cause those fields to be “locked”. I’m trying to understand the specific issue you’re running into.
Can you be a bit more detailed about this? To be clear, the server never changes the names of your file on disk.
Check out some of @OttoKerner 's posts. He seems to have a good mastery on this subject. I think you’ll find an explanation of why the “Local Media Assets” agent should be moved to the bottom of the order list. And info about changing matches/agents on entries to avoid Plex ‘rematching’ unmatched files. I’m paraphrasing from memory though. Otto’s got it down.
Posters typically remain permanently set at least as far as I’ve noticed I’ve never had an issue with posters and backgrounds not changing on their own. The file names are not changing on the disk but sometimes they “update” or “refresh” such as when I add more media to the library. In those cases the Title and Sort Title sometimes revert back to the original information that was displayed when I first added the file. Currently when I add a file, after updating the library to add the movie to the Plex media library I manually “match” the file I added to the relevant media from the Plex Media agent source. After it imports the information from the source the movie entry is populated with that information. On some occasions, more than I would ever like to experience, pieces of that information don’t stick such as the title going back to the original file name structure from the disk rather than the information that the Plex Media source provided. This example is fortunately more rare than what I’ve experienced with the collection tags. As I stated in the full original post the biggest hangup I have found was adding and hard locking my own custom collection tags.
A good explanation of this would be let’s say for example I have an actor who isn’t one of the key “main characters” in a movie however they still are acting in said film. They wouldn’t necessarily show up as relevant in an “actor” type search but they are still in the cast. I have made collections like this for many actors and it would include more than what Plex would identify as movies they were cast in therefore a more complete collection. Once I’ve added the tag for whatever reason (actor, film series, cinematic “universe”, etc) they appear in that collection. Now let’s say a day or so later I add more media and “update” my library. Sometimes at this it will remove those collection tags from some titles and thus remove the film from the collection. Other times just simply selecting the title to view more information about it (description style view that shows the movie length, current progress, cast list, rating, director, etc) is all it takes for the server to what I’m assuming is “refreshing” that information to display it for me. I use an AppleTV mostly to play from my server and it will clear the tags if I view it from there or from the computer that is running the server itself. When I add the tags while organizing the media it shows the orange background, white lock symbol that I always assumed forced that data to remain static and not dynamically update over and over from the Plex Media source but that apparently isn’t happening. I would like to add those tags and have them stay permanent. That way no updating of the library, refreshing metadata or simply selecting a film to read a description would remove those collection tags. The files of course are never removed from my library and they can still be found but the convenience of finding them in the collection just isn’t there if the integrity of the collection tags are compromised over and over again. I have resorted to adding the collection tag to the edit info window, clicking on the film, watching it load and run the refresh animation overlay on the poster thumbnail and then I can watch the collection list below the cast disappear after the refresh animation finishes. Then I click the edit info button again, open tags, add the collection tag again, save changes, back out of the film to the collection view again, click on the film again, watch the refresh animation overlay run its course and hope that second time it doesn’t wipe the collection tag again. Sometime even after all those steps I can come back a day or two later and see my collection count Has decreased and sure enough either that exact same movie is missing or other titles have disappeared. I almost started making a backup list of what should be in all my collections so I could periodically re-add films to the collections if they disappear but this server system is too advanced for me to do all that extra work. It should keep its integrity on its own so I don’t have to.
Thank you for the information and from what I’ve just reviewed I have attempted to do everything he described on a few occasions and it just doesn’t stick still. The biggest flaw is the “locking” system. When you manually change the data in the edit info window the field will change to have that orange background, white lock symbol to the left of the keyed information. This should indicate that the data in that field is permanently locked and no change aside from me manually unlocking and/or changing that information will ever alter its field. It should be 100% permanent unless I make the change. As of now the “locked” indicator is simply not true. Again if it is truly “locked” the only “key” to change it should be my direct interaction, not an automatic server refresh.
Can you explain this a bit? It should all match automatically.
Hmm, that would seem to imply the movie is getting removed from your library altogether. Is it possible you’re using a networked filesystem which is sometimes offline?
You can also see if the “Empty trash automatically after every scan” Library setting is disabled to work around glitches in media availability.
I am Having the Same issue. I have hundreds of thousands of media at this point. it happens at random and sometimes its info i have painstakingly researched and added. The lock should lock the data, but right now it seems like its a suggestion and not a rule.
I have been having the same issue from time to time. It happens mostly for me when I add a better version or duplicate version of the same movie and it gets merged with the existing movie that already had all its meta data fixed. Especially the Collections, Poster, Genres and main Title. Those fields would be locked I make sure. Sometimes during the initial merge, especially the collections or some of them would normally disappear and sometimes the Poster would change but not loose extra newly added images. So i have to to select the poster and collections again.
I have this week done 2 big moves all my Martial arts movies and Westerns to a new HD and I lost all modified meta data on my Martial arts movies, very disappointing. The Westerns are fine for the time being. I made copies of the movies to new HD, waited for plex to pick them up merge them with existing movies and show them as duplicates, i made sure every copied movie was a duplicate to make sure the merge was successful. Fixed the 4 that did not merge correctly and made sure all meta data looked correct collections was fine. I did a trash clean and bundle clean and optimized the dbase. Everything was 100%.
I then deleted the folder with the original movies and saw that all duplicates was resolved now and posters and collections was fine. Did the Trash, clean and optimize again. Everything was fine.
The next day when i checked all meta data from martial arts movies was gone, most have no or bad posters no collection info what so ever. Something i also notice in these cases is that the collection info is also broken. When you browse library you will find empty collection with 0 movies in but when you want to assign the movies to that collection it does not exist, you cant select it, you have to enter it as if creating it from scratch.
Seems all meta data was just refreshed for them and all new posters that was added is lost, over 800 martial arts movies. I really dont even feel like fixing this again.
I am unsure if this is merge issue or lock issue although i feel that locking means lock and should have prevented this even in merge fail. I have had this many times with individual movies and now with this big merge…
