Problems displaying embedded album art

[T04stie]

I’m using the following settings and all my albums feature the correct embedded tag metadata and 98% of my albums display the correct embedded album cover but around 2% are blank. If I run ‘Refresh Metadata’ on the album then refresh the page, the embedded album cover is displayed but a day or two later I come back and the same 2% are back to displaying no cover art again. Before refreshing one of the albums, if I go into edit the album’s properties the ‘Poster’ page displays one or two covers which I don’t recognise and look to have been scraped from online. Aalthough Plex never actually uses them, the cover art is blank (which is fine I want to display my own anyway).

Has anyone seen this problem? It’s very frustrating!

Scanner - Plex Music
Agent - Plex Music
Prefer local metadata - Enabled
Genres - Embedded Tags
Album Art - Local Files Only

Another strange problem I find is when I have two albums that are named very similarly. For example, these two Genesis singles have a folder name, Album Artist + Album Name as below. The tags display correctly in Plex, however Single I shows its cover art but Single II is blank. When I look at the ‘Poster’ page in the properties for Single II it shows the same cover art as Single I. If I then refresh the metadata for single II it displays the correct embedded cover art but single I will switch to showing single II’s cover art in its ‘Poster’ page! (even though it continues to display the correct embedded cover art). If I then refresh the other single’s metadata they both switch back to displaying the other single’s cover art in the ‘Poster’ page. Whatever I do, the ‘Poster’ page for both singles will only ever display the same identical cover art from ONE of the singles. Bizarre! :

Genesis - Not About Us [Single I]
Genesis - Not About Us [Single II]

As described in the previous issue, after a while, one of the singles will then revert to displaying no cover art again until I manually refresh it. Something is broken here No hidden or protected OS files exist in the album folders. Can anyone offer any help or suggestions?

Server Version#: 1.20.4.3517 (Shield Android TV)
Player Version#: 4.46.2 (Plex Web in Firefox)

[T04stie]

After doing some further checking it’s clear - all the 2% of albums that have blank cover art display the cover of a different album in my collection in the ‘Poster’ page within its properties. If I then refresh it’s metadata this is corrected and both the album’s icon cover art and the ‘Poster’ page display the correct embedded cover art. Then a few days later the same albums revert to blank again.

[Gretschguy]

Myself and others have had this same problem for about 18 months – please see the topic “Album Art Disappears Randomly”. You’re not alone!

I also noticed yesterday another topic about problems with Various Artists. I think these are related so I posted some information there as well.

We’ve had a lot of trouble getting anyone at Plex to seriously look at the bugs here in the matching logic. In a nutshell, this used to work perfectly about 1 or 2 years ago, I’m not exactly sure what release broke the matching logic but it did and it reveals itself over time which is a difficult bug to identify.

The problem is with any albums with similar names, you have an example there. I’m typically missing about 5% of my cover art because I have many cases of the same album in different versions / editions (LP, CD, etc.).

It appears that the background metadata process “matching algorithm” causes the problem and it runs every few days.

Hopefully you can get some Plex attention on the problem!

[T04stie]

Thanks for the info. You’re not wrong, I don’t remember seeing these issues when I first imported my music into Plex a while back. It’s particularly frustrating if it is the matching logic because I don’t want or need any artwork matched! Spent years getting my files all perfect. I also use JRiver Media Center and I see none of these problems there. To be honest Media Center absolutely blows Plex away in all respects except for its remote access features and the convenience of having my music on the Shield TV. Media Center is an incredible music library management system and player.

I’m going to run a few tests with the effected albums and see if I can narrow down the cause. Perhaps find a workaround.

[Gretschguy]

Sounds like we are in similar boats here, I continue to use Plex for similar reasons but manage my car’s SSD drive using JRiver and find it outstanding for library purposes. For Plex, I like the remote access, Synology support, and Apple TV features so I wish I could blend the “good stuff” of these two systems. I’m now taking a closer look at ROON but I think it may lack the remote access that Plex supports, I’m not quite sure yet.

Anyway, here’s one suggestion if you prefer to simply use your own cover art and metadata – you can unmatch everything (which has to be done one album at a time) and then turn off the metadata background process in the server settings. This seemed to work for me for a few weeks, but I think an update turned the process back on because things went upside down again and I just left it with 5% of my stuff messed up and started to explore alternatives to Plex for music.

The downside of my workaround above is that you then miss the nice lyrics and other artist / album info that used to work so well with the matching.

[Gretschguy]

From a related thread on similar issue:

Quite a few folks are frustrated with this situation and related — the suggestions are all with good intent but some of us have been fighting this for at least a year. I literally rebuilt my entire Plex system twice I’ve the past year which didn’t help.

So first, some good news, as a public service announcement here there is a way to avoid the matching engine and use your own metadata. Maybe I’m stupid but for 12 months I couldn’t figure that out.

You have to do several things to force your own metadata / cover art — first set the agent to “Personal Media” at the top of the library config, also turn on “Use Embedded Tags” and set “Local Files” only for album art. Try to disable anything in site that hints at using the Plex matching engine and rebuild the libraries.

It’s been 4 days now since I rebuilt all my libraries with those settings and I’m happy to report that all my metadata and cover art at 100% correct! I’m slowly adding my own artist images but these aren’t a big deal to me so I’ll gladly deal with that over time.

TWSF have you tried this agent “Personal Media” instead of “Plex Music” or “Plex Music Scanner”? I noticed it’s set differently for you. Is there a reason that you want Plex to match your albums to the outside world? To me, that features is a “nice to have” but having my correct cover art and meta data has to come first.

As I mentioned before, JRiver works perfect on the same library — as it does for TWSF as I recall — so the problem with Plex is now confirmed to be in the matching logic and perhaps its relationship to folder structure or perhaps caching bugs since both JRiver and Plex render my metadata and cover art perfectly as long as Plex’s matching is disabled.

Otto / Plex folks, very thankful that you are looking into this — but clearly there are numerous people having these mysterious data problems related to the metadata matching logic. Some cover art disappears one day , reappears the next, Basic things like changing some metadata can’t be done easily. For some of us it’s been a nightmare but we push on because other aspects of Plex we love so much — those positive aspects crush Roon and JRiver or I would have switched (Plexamp, Plex on Apple TV, rock solid remote access, etc…). To me, Plex is a 10 overall but the music matching subsystem is a …

Please please take a careful look at your logic — I actually run a software company so I understand that user error is common or misunderstandings can happen, but at a minimum, if we assume the coding is correct, the interface certainly is befuddling and the mystery behavior is no fun. Here are some suggestions:

(1). Please name the scanners something more clear , to TWSF’s point “Plex Scanner” and “Plex Music Scanner” are terribly overlapping names.

(2) create an easy way to disable ALL matching, this will help with the debugging , so that you can confirm that at least that simple case is working for people having trouble.

If “personal media” does, in fact, disable all matching then make that clear in the interface.

(3). This is huge here — the forum approach (here) for solving problems does not work IMHO, I’ve been on a bunch of threads like this that go nowhere. As a lifetime Plex pass subscriber can I not have a one-on-one dialogue with a Plex representative to help me solve my issues? Most other companies allow that and things get fixed.

Instead I’m writing these long notes on this forum all the time

(4). I’ve mentioned before — I’m happy to simply share my library to someone at Plex to figure out what’s going wrong. As you can see with TSWF we have very publicly discuss the issues and use an interface that is not meant for debugging.

I realize it’s possible to direct message in this forum but is there a big reporting system / ticket process?

[rockwoofstone]

I have exactly this same problem. Whilst I can switch to the Personal Media agent, and that results in all the album metadata being correct, the drawback of this is I don’t get any artist images.

If there was some way of using all local metadata for the tracks themselves, but pulling artist info from an online source, that could be a workable compromise for me.