So I discovered today some undocumented features of Plex and Music Videos that I don’t recall being reported by anyone else.
So I have always used a separate folder and added it to the agent, which according to the documentation you would organize/name files this way:
Folder Structure:
Music Videos
Music Videos\Artist - Title of Song-video.ext
Music Videos\Artist - Title of Song-lyrics.ext
Well I started to re-arrange my files in the folder too:
Folder Structure:
Music Videos
Music Videos\Artist\Title of Song-video.ext
Music Videos\Artist\Title of Song-lyrics.ext
This is not in the guidance for file naming and etc. But this works for my library using the latest PMS. But a while ago I had seen something mentioned about song/video linking the files in a more recent PMS update. When that update came out, I was hoping it would replace the hole linking by placing the song and music videos in the same folder, but it didn’t seem like it was working or I couldn’t get it to do that. Well as it turns out, Plex does link your song/video files even when using the separate folder for music videos as long as the Song title exactly matches the video file name, for example see below for naming convention:
Folder Structure:
Music Videos
Music Videos\Artist\Title of Song.ext
Thoughts:
Let me just say this is amazing! This allows me to better catalog my files and use all of Plex’s features, I feel like the Plex should update the documentation to reflect it! Now I’m not sure how this works for other types of files such as -lyrics, -live and etc. I know those tags will still work and show up in your library using this folder structure, I just don’t know if they will link to the song.
Here are some pictures:
File Structure with Song Naming:
Example Album of files linked, using the above method:
Please note: I am using a Plex Premium Music Library if that matters and the videos do show up on the normal Artist Page. You can tell from the pic with the little TV icon next to the song title that the Music Video is linked, previously this only worked if your song and video was in the same folder with the same exact name…
Aren’t the docs referenced above describing it the same way that you are now using ?
Question, that you might be able to help with. Sometimes I have an Artist with videos all named properly, just like other artist I have, yet there Music Videos do not populate or show up… Do you have any advice?
Specifically this happening to me now with David Guetta…
Am I misreading this documentation? The original post describes what I understand to functionally be a “Global Music Video Folder” but the documentation in 205568377 says –
“Global Music Videos Folder
Some users prefer to separate their musical videos from the actual audio files. This is supported through a global path setting for the location of the separate musical video content.
Note: Using a “global” folder for your videos, it isn’t possible to have music videos associated with particular tracks in your library (so that they appear on—and can be accessed with—the track). If you want that, you’ll need to do so using the “Inline” method discussed earlier.”
I have been unable to get the screen icon to show in the track list the same way RandomNinjaAtk02 has in the example shown for “Instant Crush - Daft Punk” above(shown as well on the track “lose yourself to dance”), and it appears that the documentation says it ISN’T POSSIBLE.
Using the file structure described in the original post [ \music videos\daft punk\instant crush.mp4 ] my library shows this video on the lower part of the artist page, below the list of popular tracks and list of albums by the artist, but above the list of upcoming tour dates. I’m using the latest PMS 1.9.1.4272 in a Plex Premium music library type.
That is correct. When using the global folder option, the music videos are tied only to the artist, so they show up on the artist page as separate items. To have then showed up attached to a particular track, they need to be inline with the track, the same way subtitles need to be inline with a movie.
@anon18523487 said:
That is correct. When using the global folder option, the music videos are tied only to the artist, so they show up on the artist page as separate items. To have then showed up attached to a particular track, they need to be inline with the track, the same way subtitles need to be inline with a movie.
Well what you and the documentation have now said to be correct, the original poster was illustrating that this is not correct. AND, I am now experiencing the same behavior. Apparently my library scan had not fully completed when I said it wasn’t working for me. I can say for a fact now that I have experienced the behavior that isn’t supposed to happen.
This screen print may be a little small to see but I have the video file in only a global folder where all my mp4’s reside. I have no video file inline in the folder with the mp3 file. And in addition to that you can see that I have two mp3 files for this song, one of which includes additional characters at the start of the file name ("1-02 ") and yet both instances of this song include the video screen icon, to denote that a video for that song exists and can be played. What you can’t see here is that I have meta-data in both of the mp3 files and in the mp4 file which indicate the artist/actor is “Alexander O’neal” and the title is “if you were hear tonight”. So while the documentation for this feature (executing video from the track link) appears to require a file name match, I suspect that in truth it may also be achieved by a metadata match. I think this also shows that RandomNinjaAtk02 is correct in his “discovery” that is not documented. I have successfully tested and have launched the video from both of these track listings.
So if you use the global music video folder but don’t separate the videos into artist folder file structure it won’t work. Which is why mine stopped linking the videos with the songs. After moving some videos into separate artist folder, the track linking worked again!!
But as “hatfieldjf” mentioned, this is still an undocumented feature that would be nice to be updated in the documentation.
After I posted about this I began to question part of what I said above, but now I’ve confirmed that the behavior is sustained. It seems that there must be a match between the video file name and the audio track name in order for the video to be indicated in the track listing. This does not mean that the audio file name and video file name must match, but can be different (as in the example I show above which contains “1-02” in the filename). In addition, as RandomNinjaAtk02 mentions, the global folder must be organized by artist ie. \Global folder\Artist Name\Track name.mp4.
Thanks guys for the info. I ran this up the chain and you guys are correct. There was a change made at some point where the matching ability was changed. We’ve now updated the support document.
Note: When using a “global” folder for your videos, if you wish to have music videos associated with particular tracks in your library (so that they appear on—and can be accessed with—the track), be sure to name the video file with the same track name as the track.
We discovered this last weekend, quite by accident. I was explaining to the wife how she could bring up our VPS Plex server on her phone and play music in the car via the bluetooth connection. She starts playing a song and then says how cool it is that the music video is playing on the phone while we’re listening in the car. I just continued driving, trying to figure out how that happened!
Using Global Music Video folder, I can get the videos to show up in Artist folder but can’t seem to get any successful track matching. Currently, the music files are in “\plex\music\artist” and video files are in “\plex\videos\artist”. This is a local artist so I’m relying upon updated metadata in the files. I’ve matched Album, Artist, AlbumArtist and Title fields using MP3TAG, I’ve Plex Danced myself to death. Any suggestions?
For the video file names, you can remove the artist info and just match the song title. The matching of video and song is not based on the actual filename, I’m fairly certain it is based track title and video file name. But your track titles, seem to match the video file name.
So since you’ve separated the videos into artist folders, you should strip out the artist name from the video file names.
Yes, the video file name should simply be “song title-video.extention”. You have to put the -video after the song title so Plex knows that particular extra is a video, as opposed to a concert, live, interview, etc.
So for my AC/DC Back in Black video, the file name is “Back in Black-video.mpg”
