Server Version#: 1.31.1.6782
Player Version#: 4.6.3
I’ve recently been upgrading some of my music library from mp3 files to flac. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my star ratings are retained. However I’m disappointed to learn that the tracks dissappear from playlists that they were included in before the upgrade.
I’m glad that I at least thought to check this because I just finished building a collection of massive playlists. At least I know I need to re-add the tracks but it’s quite cumbersome to locate which tracks from an album are on which playlist in order to add them back after an upgrade.
I have no idea if this is a possibility, but it would be spectacular if something could be tweeked so that the tracks would somehow magically reappear in their respective playlist positions.
Thanks for your work at making this one of the best media streaming experiences I’ve known
It seems as if I’ve created yet another post that deserves no response. Is there not even a single member of the Plex team who can shed some light on the possibility of a fix or work around for this issue?
Plex uses the track’s underlying GUID for ratings, so ratings/playcounts will stay intact as long as Plex matches the new file to the same track as the old file. That also means that if you have e.g. both a single and the album that the single also appears on, their ratings will be tied to each other (for better or worse). Playlists uses an item’s unique metadata id to determine what’s in it, which will always be different between the old mp3 and new flac.
Something could theoretically be done on Plex’s when scanning to see “file A with GUID X was removed, and file B, also with GUID X, was added, so I’ll do an in-place replacement on any playlists that contain file A”, but that’s not something I see as being high on Plex’s list of priorities.
I guess this is a know issue/limitation of how plex handles track identification and linkage across albums. It’s also most like quite complicated to resolve which is why you get radio silence from plex on it.
I’ve fought with this since I’ve started moving my mid sized music collection to plex. I suspect (but I cannot be 100% sure) it’s something over at musicbrainz changes which then changes the guid (plex://track/xxxxxx) id which plex uses to identify individual tracks. Once this changes its like rating/playcounts are starting again as its a new track from plex’s perspective.
I’ve seen this happen when doing a plex dance on a album/artist and force refreshing album/artist so I don’t think its limited to just scanning & matching.
Regardless, what I do to try and mitigate this is keep a close eye on my db using a couple of queries:
First: This one select anything from metadata_item_settings (table which stores ratings and view/play counts) and see if the guid is NOT present in metadata_items (think of this table as the master list of items on your plex server).
SELECT * FROM metadata_item_settings WHERE metadata_item_settings.guid NOT IN (SELECT metadata_items.guid from metadata_items);
Anything it finds means something has changed and you can then carefully manually fixed up within metadata_item_settings so they match again. It’s a pain but works …
Second: This one select anything from metadata_item_views (table which dashboard play history) and see if the guid is NOT present in metadata_items.
SELECT * FROM metadata_item_views WHERE metadata_item_views.guid NOT IN (SELECT metadata_items.guid from metadata_items);
Again, anything it finds is again a change and can be carefully manually fixed up within metadata_item_views so they match.
Disclaimer: Use at your own risk here and backup is always your friend.
Will this find standard playlist issues, I’m not 100% sure. I decided to shy away from those playlist due to how limiting they are in plex and just use smart playlist instead. I can control what is in there based on criteria. So far its working well and better than bog standard playlists. Good luck.
I don’t know anything about coding, but it seems to me that if the server can recognize that an mp3 has been replaced with a flac file in order to apply the same star rating from the old file to the new one, then it likely wouldn’t take much to have the new file replace the old one in a playlist as well
Soooo… Interestingly enough, I have discovered that my issue is a non issue if the upgrade/replacement of files is done correctly. The key is to allow the files to coexist in the folder until both the old and new version appear at the same time. Once the new (flac) version shows in my library, I wait just a few minutes before deleting the old (mp3) files. I’m guessing that this gives the server an opportunity to associate the files more completely, because not only are the star ratings preserved but the flac version of each song then appears in the same playlists, and even in the same positions, where the mp3 versions previously were.
Anyone else who is having an issue with this, if you need more clarification on the process just let me know.
