Server Version#: 1.25.5.5492
Player Version#: 4.69.1
I’ve run into a weird metadata bug with the “Plex Music” scanner. When uploading more than one music file at a time to the same folder, all of the new music files are indexed as being in the same album and having the same album art as one of the newly uploaded files.
The meta data is correct on the files. I can even re-download the files from my Plex server and windows/mac properly display the correct album art and correct albums.
The work around is to upload each file individually to the same folder and then re-scan my library after every upload. Doing this properly indexes each uploaded file with the correct album and album art.
Under the scanner advanced settings, choosing “Prefer local metadata” or [“Local files only” for album art] make no difference with this bug.
The only way I can get multiple uploads of different albums to display properly in the same folder is to upload each individually and then re-scan my library every time.
I have seen issues like this, with the root cause being bad folder structure and misuse of the “Various Artists” album artist tag … and those issues were not inside the folder with the newly added files! For example all of my Various Artists albums were misnamed as one specific artist, and that artist was NOT present on ANY of my VA tracks, nor did that artist have any mis-tagged VA stuff in their folder. So why did Plex pick them to represent all VA albums? Who knows! Only when I tidied up bad folders and tags that were totally unrelated did it fix itself.
So, if you aren’t sure if ALL your folder structure and metadata is kosher, try to evaluate that first. If you fix anything you may find this problem goes away too.
@BanzaiInstitute Thanks for the tips! That’s interesting. I’ll some experimenting and see if somehow one of my top level folders could be messing with the scanner/indexing.
I will say that the immediate local folder name/structure doesn’t seem to make any difference in this case since the uploaded files are inheriting their album name and art from one of the files that was recently uploaded and indexed along side it. None of the new uploads are receiving any part of the album name from the folder.
In some cases, such as with podcasts, there may be 20+ episodes in a season (same folder), all with unique album art for each episode, but when uploaded and scanned/indexed, they all end up with the same album art. If I upload and scan them individually, it works great.
All things said - the scanner is being inconsistent. I can’t imagine inconsistent scanning results would be as intended. This feels like a bug.
You keep using the word “upload” and I’m not really sure what you mean by it. Nothing is uploaded anywhere you just put them on the drive with the rest of your files in your music directory. Is your server on a remote server somewhere?
That being said what is your music directory structure like?
I’m afraid this won’t work with Plex. (at least not satisfactorily)
Plex is very much album-centered. So even if you have a mixed bunch of tracks, they still need to belong to an album. (And no: a “mega-album” with several thousand tracks which holds all “Various Artists”-tracks won’t do.)
If you files are well-tagged, it is possible to read their embedded “Album Artist” and “Album Title” tags and automatically move the files into the right folder structure.
Software like mp3tag makes this almost trivial.
What is also very important: if you store an album inside the “Various Artists” folder, its “Album Artist” metatags must contain only “Various Artists” and not something else.
If you have albums with other Album Artists, they must go inside their own “[Artist Name]”-folders.
Thanks for your thoughts/help @OttoKerner. You are right – I could definitely add folders to each individual file.
All things said, I guess what I’m trying to report is the inconsistent behavior of the scanner. I really am able to have my “mega-album” with several thousand tracks all from various albums and artists. I just have to upload each individually and scan after every upload.
My question is – shouldn’t the Plex music scanner yield the same results whether I upload 1 file at a time (and scan after each) vs uploading 100 files (and scanning once)? Correct me if I’m wrong, but to me it feels like inconsistent scanning/indexing results shouldn’t be the intended behavior?
If the Plex music scanner really wants to overrule the local meta data based on the folder structure, shouldn’t that behavior be the same whether I upload 1 or 100 files?
