OK - I guess a naive user like me just went to “Recommended”.
Can we turn off “Popular Tracks” - I couldn’t care less, and it pushes the actual albums off the page.
in the properties of the music library.
But they are actually used for some stuff. Not just for that little table on the Artist page. Like weighting randomness and putting together “Radios”. If you disable them, those features won’t work that well anymore.
OK - so I removed the (year) on the albumtitle, so that it does not conflict… after a scan,no difference. It seems metadate will override the explicit albumname in the folder structure - even when metadata is NOT enabled.
However, when I relabeled the tracks and appended the CD # to the front - and then put them all in the albumname folder, then I finally got a single album - but it is NOT named “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)”
After seeing some comments above on brackets - I even removed the brackets: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - 40th Anniversary Edition”. No luck.
Why is Plex ignoring the structure defined albumname?
Regarding this - from one of your links:
Music/ArtistName/AlbumName/DiscNumberTrackNumber - TrackName.ext
So I just relabeled 4 CDs of tracks for this test… not a big deal.
On a 10 CD set you want ALL tracks in one folder??? Sorry - but that’s just a disaster… potentially 100’s of tracks in one folder.
Its obvious no one here does classical music sets - or complete artist catalogues where there are 100’s of files.
Yes. And that is a good thing.
IMHO, it assumes users are stupid. In this case, my folder structure correctly identifies the album and Plex ignores it. Please explain how that is a good thing?
Well - then I’m afraid it is well hidden. I do not see the word Properties anywhere - and I’ve done a text search as well. Can you be more explicit, or clarify?
No, it doesn’t.
It’s just that embedded meta data can be much more refined than folder names. Some characters are even not allowed in file and folder names, while they are perfectly fine usable in meta tags.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200289266-editing-libraries/
on the “Advanced” tab
I think you are missing my point Otto. If I tell it not to use metadata and it does - and my folder structure is correct and it ginores it, then why even talk about folder structure? Just say USE METADATA.
Anyway - so I went back and redid the metadata. Now the Alum name in the metadata is:
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road [40th Anniversary Edition]
I also added the disc number for each track as metadata.
I then selected rescan metadata… Plex still shows the album generically as “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”
So now both my metadata and folder structure correctly identify the album - but Plex decides to do something else. How is this really working?
I added a second album… this time with DTS files. Folder structure is:
Seal > I > TrackNo - TrackName
In the Plex GUI it shows as “Various Artists” - once again metadata overriding a simple explicit folder structure.
I’m guessing because there is little metadata in a DTS file that is of any use… but then why not fallback on folder structure instead?
Perhaps it would be good to know where folder structure is actually being used; so I don’t waste a pile of time reorganizing my current folder structure where it won’t make a bit of difference.
PS: I guess what I am asking - is that if I have to be very carefull about metadata - then perhaps I spend my time doing that - and simple keep the exiting folder structure - but change my library scan settings to USE metadata?
Of must I need BOTH.
Is the checkbox “Prefer local metatags” enabled or disabled?
(same place as the Popular Tracks setting)
Plex will always try to find meta data. If the above checkbox is empty, it will make a “sonic fingerprint” of each track in the folder and try to find one or several corresponding albums on Musicbrainz.org . It will then fetch the metadata from Musicbrainz for these albums.
If the checkbox is enabled, it will look into the embedded meta tags first and will only refer to Musicbrainz if some or all are missing.
I urge you to adopt both proper metadata and folder structure.
The “Prefer local metatag” is NOT checked at the moment.
So in the case of the Seal DTS example, metadata failed, Music brainz failed - but my folder structure is correct - but is ignored.
BTW: Thanks for the description on what is going on.
Music in DTS or AC3 format is particularly difficult in Plex.
There is no music-specific file format from which Plex would be able to read meta data.
It certainly won’t read embedded meta tags from mka or AC3 or DTS or WAV files.
So it can only fall back to folder and file names, combined with its sonic fingerprinting.
(even if you enable “prefer local metatags”)
So it can very likely happen that the surround version of the album is confused with one of the regular releases.
In which case you have only the option to correct manually.
In general, it is OK to use subfolders per disc.
Here is an example for this. An album which I just added recently.
I do have “prefer local metatags” enabled, to be able to deal with re-issues of the same album.
OK Perfect!
I use the same tool for managing my metadata. Thanks for that!
I’ve been using Plex forever and I had no idea it did that, neat.
I have the same Elton John album and it imported into Plex OK. My settings prefer local metadata, and the album is tagged like this:
- Album Artist and Track Artist are both Elton John
- Album tag is
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (40th Anniversary Celebration / Super Deluxe) - Every track has a Disc Number (nothing like “1/4”, just “1”)
- Release Year 2017
- Path example:
Elton John\Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (40th Anniversary Celebration _ Super Deluxe) (2017)\CD1\101 - Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (40th Anniversary Celebration Super Deluxe) - Funeral For A Friend Love Lies Bleeding (Remastered 2014).mp3
In my experience I’d get the same result whether or not I used subdirectories for the multiple discs.
I do have some album folders with many discs and no subdirectories, but I use a track number which begins with the disc number to keep the tracks grouped by disc in any list view.
Since you use MP3tag already, if you put some time into learning its tricks you’ll be able to re-organize your whole collection more easily than you might think possible. It’s such a good tool.
I will consider wrapping these files in .mkv/.mka in order to have metadata.
Well, frankly your statements cause me more concern - not less.
I used the same tool and ensured that the Album Title was very similar to yours:
Yet Plex shows the album as “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”
I think I have 4 versions - including the DTS Surround version - so I need to know how this thing is working.
I’m going to switch to using metadata and then try again . I think the fall back to MusicBrainz is not working too well. If it can’t figure out Elton John, what hope do I have for something like “Sisters Euclid”?
So switching to “Prefer Local Metadata” solved the incorrect Elton John album.
My files structures are fine - but all but ignored… My metadata is excellent in only about 60% of my personal music - so looks like I have to spend time going through the rest and tagging them properly.
