Trims in Song Metadata on Playback

Feature Suggestions
1

Server Version#: 4.8.4
Player Version#: 1.4.1.940-574c2fa7
Cannot find where to turn on PLEX to use modified and metatags imbedded in M4a songs from iTunes. When I export “Library” in iTunes, I see the metatags in the xml playlist that I then import to PLEX, so I know they are there. I have over 4,600 tracks that have been modified to get rid of dead air before/after songs. Some songs have in excess of 7 seconds of dead air after the song. I’ve trimmed 99.9% of these tracks to allow only 2 seconds between playback(which doesn’t happen in PLEX because PLEX is not reading these tags on playback).

If this is not a feature of PLEX, it needs to be soon.

Thanks, John

2

No Plex doesn’t support this functionality in any of its players (that I’m aware of)… I can move your post to the Feature Suggestions area if you like. However, I doubt that it’s something that will be implemented “soon” (though I could be wrong).

3

Yes, please move to “Feature Suggestions”. It’s kinda incredible that this feature doesn’t exist because of the wide variety of dead air different record companies put in their albums. This should be a “must have” feature for those who curate large audio libraries. I’ve trimmed all my tracks to have no more than 2 seconds of dead air between tracks.

Thanks for getting back so quickly.

4

I don’t understand what this has to do with XML files?

Plex by default does an analysis of the audio file, particularly of the end and beginning.
Some Plex clients can then use this information to avoid silence between tracks in mixed playlists. Try either the Android mobile or the iOS app or Plexamp for a example.

5

It doesn’t. I just used that as an example of how the trim is stored(as an integer)in iTunes. If there is no trim applied to a track, then the Start Time and Stop Time are not generated, which to me implies iTunes uses the complete track recording on playback.

Example:

14088

Track ID14088

NameOne Night in Bangkok[84]

ArtistMurray Head

Album ArtistMurray Head

ComposerBenny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus & Tim Rice

AlbumEmotions (My Favourite Songs)

GenrePop

KindPurchased AAC audio file

Size8278568

Total Time236066

Start Time39000

Stop Time233100

Disc Number1

Disc Count1

Track Number9

Track Count15

Year1984

Date Modified2019-08-02T18:38:42Z

Date Added2019-06-25T13:40:12Z

Bit Rate256

Sample Rate44100

Volume Adjustment-51

EqualizerBass Booster

Play Count8

Play Date3653460370

Play Date UTC2019-10-09T14:06:10Z

Skip Count2

Skip Date2019-10-31T20:19:55Z

Release Date2001-06-30T07:00:00Z

Normalization4430

Artwork Count1

Sort AlbumEmotions (My Favourite Songs)

Sort ArtistMurray Head

Persistent ID53EB54B96059B41F

Track TypeFile

Purchased<true Location file:///Users/johnvaline/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Media/Music/Murray%20Head/Emotions%20(My%20Favourite%20Songs)/09%20One%20Night%20in%20Bangkok%5B84%5D.m4a

File Folder Count5

Library Folder Count1

This is translated to something meaningful by iTunes for the person editing the trim. This track is represented to the editor of the track as start track delay 0:39 seconds and stop track at 3:53.100 .

You reference: “Some Plex clients can then use this information to avoid silence between tracks in mixed playlists. “ How do you get to that option? I think I accidentally found it one day, but don’t remember where. And besides, does that mean I have to go and re-trim 4,600 plus songs manually in PLEX?

Thanks,

John

A screenshot of a cell phone Description automatically generated

6

This is done during the deep analysis of your music. It also determines the overall loudness of each track to it can be used to level-out the big differences during a mixed playlist.
Normally it is done fully-automatically during the nightly server maintenance.

All you need to do is:

  • keep the server (and the media storage!) available during server maintenance
  • don’t set this to ‘Disabled’: Settings - Server - Library - “Analyze audio tracks for loudness”
7

Thanks for the info OttoKerner. I have my server maintenance running fro !:00am until 6:00am. I have about 4,700 tracks of music and 100 five minute videos. How long do you estimate it will take PLEX to go through them all? Does that also include evening out the timing of the dead air between tracks? I have manually trimmed my music tracks in Music, but PLEX seems to ignore this trims I’ve made.

8

The speed is depending largely on the server, particularly on the speed of the media storage and the CPU.
On my Windows server (directly attached SATA drives, no RAID, Core i7 CPU), analysing my ~50.000 tracks library took about 8 hours.

But unless you have explicitly disabled this feature, chances are that your library has long since been analysed.
The analysis covers both the overall loudness and the silence at beginning and end of tracks.

However, both “Sweet Fades” and ‘Loudness levelling’ are Plex Pass features.
You can only try them if you buy a month subscription as a test.
And even then, it is currently only available in the “mobile” Plex apps and in Plexamp.

9

Thanks, OttoNerner. I used my iOS and iPadOS devices and I see it working on them. I thought PLEX app on MacOS would do them same thing. That is what I have been checking for these features, but apparently it’s not an option on that. Would be nice though. Downloaded PLEXamp and using that beta for my desktop to play. Would be nice if I could find a volume control on PLEXapp. Maybe in the official released version?

10

There is only one released version of Plexamp.
see Plexamp - Frequently Asked Questions