Plex NFO Agent Forum Preview

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
390

I appreciate that in the notes at the top of this thread it says it is not possible to include movie extras in the NFO file (e.g. behindthescenes, deleted, featurette, interview, scene, short, trailer, other).

One of the reasons I want to be able to use NFOs in Plex is so I can easily include use custom metadata for movie fan edits from IFDB. As far as I am aware there isn’t currently a metadata agent that can get data on IFDB (though it would be great if there was!).

My thinking for a particular Fan Edit is to use TinyMediaManager to grab an NFO for the official movie release so I have a template to work from, and then to update the NFO to fit the fan edit adding a custom description, posters, artwork etc.

Currently, it seems that the only way to add movie extras from YouTube to a movie listing in Plex, is to download each video from YouTube and save it to the movie folder as a local file. This obviously takes up unnecessary space, when they could presumably be streamed directly from YouTube, like most trailers are. It would be really great if we could include URLs to these videos in the NFO file.

A good example would be the upcoming “Rogue One: The Andor Cut” fan edit, releasing in a few days, that has a number of extras from YouTube that you might want to include. It would be really useful to see support for something like this added to the NFO:

<extras type=”trailer”>
     <title>Teaser Trailer</title>
     <url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBxs_UOCTeY</url>
</extras>
<extras type=”trailer”>
     <title>Final Trailer</title>
     <url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kynPAivzjoY</url>
</extras>
<extras type=”behindthescenes”>
     <title>PixelJoker95's Vader Battle Damage VFX</title>
     <url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhlrGLUfeCo</url>
</extras>
<extras type=”scene”>
     <title>Clip: Cassian's Rogue One Speech with 'Andor' Flashbacks</title>
     <url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reUSXC3ZM9Q</url>
</extras>

(‘type’ should obviously use one of the extras types supported by Plex - behindthescenes, deleted, featurette, interview, scene, short, trailer, other)

If something like this already exists and I have just missed it, or there is a better way to achieve what I want, please let me know!

391

No, there isn’t a way to use extras from an NFO.

I am looking at adding support for local ones but pointing to external links won’t be supported, that’s not something we will do.

392

amazing! thanks mate. Appreciate it

393

Hello,

I’m having an issue with the ratings not being pulled from the .nfo files. If I have a custom agent set up as follows Plex Nfo Series → Plex Local Media → Plex Series (Primary) it will only show me TheMovieDB ratings even though the default is set to IMDB in the .nfo file. Alternatively, if I have the custom metadata agent set as Plex Nfo Series (Primary) → Plex Local Media → Plex Series it will show the IMDB ratings, but the shows will not be marked as watched even though it has the uniqueid in the .nfo. Just wondering if this is to be expected or not.

rating
rating909×425 28.3 KB

nfo
nfo1144×690 41 KB

tvagent
tvagent1035×1284 49.9 KB

394

Ye, there is a known issue having multiple providers with ratings. Haven’t got around to it yet.

395

Oof, thank you. I removed the library folder pointing at the youtube media, updated the agent to JUST use the Plex NFO Series provider, emptied trash, then added the folder back to the library.

When scanning, I’m not seeing any nfo or episode images showing up. Is there something wrong with the nfo for a show?

tvshow.nfo.txt (219 Bytes)

I have yearly episode folders for the seasons so like “Season 2026”, then nfo files that match the name of the episode. Do my episodes need to be in the format of " - SE - " for this to work?

Right_Wing_Media_Turns_on_Trump._The_MAGA_Civil_War (2026-04-15) [v31slqTf9Zw].nfo.txt (794 Bytes)

Looksmaxxing_Is_Making_Men_Miserable (2026-04-22) [__TVfHRhB64].nfo.txt (779 Bytes)

396

Yes, if they’re in a TV Shows-type library, they’ll need to follow follow the existing naming guidelines; nothing has changed there:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/#toc-2

The NFO agent only adds an additional source of metadata; it doesn’t change scanning, as far as I’m aware.

397

I’d like to point out a few things:

  1. Plex’s native NFO parser, and I think we can all agree on this, should primarily serve as a drop-in replacement for the old XBMC plugins. Therefore, its familiar and established functionality should be fully intact. If it behaves differently, it’s simply not a drop-in replacement, and nobody is going to manually edit thousands of NFO files and rewrite XML tags – especially when it’s not just a simple search and replace, but rather a change in the XML structure, such as changing <tag></tag> to potentially <set><title></title><originaltitle></originaltitle><overview></overview></set> and a new movie set folder including all media files.

  2. In tinyMediaManager, when parsing movies, a collection is automatically created and linked if it’s available in the source (e.g., thetvdb). However, this collection is primarily a movie series. But you can create custom collections. However, I’ve never imported all my movies or TV series into tinyMediaManager at once. I have a temporary directory where all the files to be parsed are stored. After parsing, they move to the media folders and thus out of tinyMediaManager. Therefore, I can never really edit full collections. Tags, on the other hand, are easy to manage. Both the XBMC plugins and Emby or Jellyfin support this.

  3. After all the Plex controversies of the past few weeks and months, I get the feeling that you’re someone who listens to the users who have long wanted the NFO parser feature. Therefore, here’s a suggestion: To satisfy both sides and truly provide a drop-in replacement, how about a setting similar to the “minimum collection size” option, where there’s a checkbox to choose whether tags should become collections or not? This would satisfy everyone and save the effort of reworking potentially thousands of files or creating an entire roadblock.

For me personally, this is the only missing feature that makes me switch to the native NFO parser. And if I read the recent comments correctly, I’m not the only one expecting this behavior – regardless of whether <set> or <tag> would theoretically be the right choice.

398

I’m having the same issue, but not following how that is incorrect. The naming guidelines show how to do date-based shows:

Date-Based Television Shows

TV Shows that are date-based should be named as follows:

  • /TV Shows/ShowName/Season 02/ShowName – 2011-11-15 – Optional_Info.ext

  • /TV Shows/ShowName/Season 02/ShowName – 15-11-2011 – Optional_Info.ext

Where you specify the appropriate date. The date can use either the YYYY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YYYY formats and can use different separators:

  • Dashes (2011-11-15)

  • Periods (2011.11.15)

  • Spaces (2011 11 15)

What they describe matches this, they just name the seasons after the year as well.

This is how I have mine as well, but when I refresh metadata, it will refer to the first nfo file in the folder, not the one with the same name as the video. Oddly, it does update to show the thumbnail with the same name as the video. Everything else updates to the first nfo file. They were combining into one despite the different dates until I tried to resolve this by adding the date as an episode id.

399

I’ve been test driving for a few weeks. When my agent is set to .nfo, my theme.mp3 files seem to quit working. If this has been addressed, I overlooked it. Is this a known behavior?

401

Well that did it. Renamed all of them to match the format you linked and bam: jpgs and nfo metadata are showing up.

402

I think I spoke too soon about episode images. It looks like plex is creating those images from the media and preferring those over the jpg that matches the name of the episode exactly minus the extension.

I created a new library, set the nfo provider, and selected “Use local assets”. The episodes and the nfo data do display, but the episode thumbnail is generated. If I go into the edit poster for any episode I see the first option is the local file, but the new generated one is selected every time.

Is the expectation that the thumbnail has to be referenced in the nfo (whenever local file references get implemented), or do I need to set some other missing setting?

403

Did anyone get <namedseason> to work?

404

Do you have “Use season titles” enabled on the library?

If you can post the NFO file that would help.

405

Ah, that was it, sorry :smiley:

406

I can’t seem to get my episode info to load from .nfo files. I’ve followed the naming convention to “T.” The Show and Season info is being pulled, just nothing at the episode level.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!--created on 2026-05-22 09:57:14 by tinyMediaManager 5.2.12 for PLEX-->
<episodedetails>
  <title>Nostalgic Commercials</title>
  <originaltitle>Nostalgic Commercials</originaltitle>
  <showtitle>Nostalgia Critic</showtitle>
  <season>1</season>
  <episode>-1</episode>
  <id/>
  <ratings>
    <rating default="false" max="10" name="trakt">
      <value>7.0</value>
      <votes>1</votes>
    </rating>
  </ratings>
  <userrating>0</userrating>
  <plot>NC looks at old commercials from the '80s and '90s</plot>
  <runtime>21</runtime>
  <mpaa/>
  <premiered>2010-11-09</premiered>
  <aired>2010-11-09</aired>
  <watched>false</watched>
  <playcount>0</playcount>
  <studio>YouTube</studio>
  <trailer/>
  <dateadded>2026-05-22 09:18:00</dateadded>
  <fileinfo>
    <streamdetails>
      <video>
        <codec>h264</codec>
        <aspect>1.78</aspect>
        <width>854</width>
        <height>476</height>
        <resolution>480</resolution>
        <durationinseconds>1306</durationinseconds>
      </video>
      <audio>
        <codec>aac</codec>
        <language/>
        <channels>2</channels>
      </audio>
    </streamdetails>
  </fileinfo>
  <epbookmark/>
  <code/>
  <!--tinyMediaManager meta data-->
  <source>UNKNOWN</source>
  <edition>NONE</edition>
  <original_filename>Nostalgia Critic - s01e01 - Nostalgic Commercials</original_filename>
  <user_note/>
  <episode_groups>
    <group episode="-1" id="AIRED" name="" season="1"/>
  </episode_groups>
  <english_title>Nostalgic Commercials</english_title>
</episodedetails>

And all I end up with is this:

2026-05-22_11-26-04
2026-05-22_11-26-04784×675 31.3 KB

407

This won’t work. It needs to match the file’s episode number, which I suspect isn’t -1.

408

Well damn. Alright. In Jellyfin, -1 can be used to have it just ignore the episode number and go by the date. Thanks for the quick response, though! At least I know how to fix it!

409

What is the filename?

410

Nostalgia Critic - s01e01 - Nostalgic Commercials

I assumed the .nfo files would be consulted and override data parsed from filenames.