Unable to get titles in original language with some movies (Plex Movie agent)

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Server Version#: 1.16.1.1291
Player Version#: 3.106.3 (Web)

I’d like to have a library that shows original (=Finnish) titles for the movies, but the language handling in the Plex Movie agent (and/or the Web UI user interface) does not seem to be correct as I’m only able to get English titles for some movies, even though both IMDb and tmdb have the original Finnish titles available and the movies are correctly matched.

For example, let’s create a dummy library with two files:
“Ajolähtö (1982).mkv” (tt0140797)
“Tyttö sinä olet tähti (2005).mkv” (tt0471957)

And add it to Plex as a Movie library, with Plex Movie agent, with the following settings:

  • Library language: Finnish (“Suomeksi”)
  • Localized titles: no (as we want original titles)
  • Use collection info from The Movie Database: no (default)
  • Prefer artwork based on library language: yes

The end result is that both movies have English titles in the web UI:

  • “Gotta Run!” - XML metadata dump shows originalTitle=“Ajolähtö” but that is not shown for whatever reason.
  • “Beauty and the ■■■■■■■” - XML metadata dump does not have originalTitle, but has Finnish plot summary (as expected).

I would have expected both of them to have the original Finnish titles as localized titles were turned off - even if “localized titles” were enabled I would still expect them to be in Finnish as the library language is Finnish. And again, IMDb and tmdb have the Finnish titles (imdb release info: movie 1, movie 2).

Let’s try to recreate the library with “Localized titles” enabled - though I would not expect it to make a difference as both library language and movie original titles are Finnish.

However, with “Localized titles” enabled, one of these movies now gets a Finnish title, one still does not:

  • “Gotta Run!” - Again, XML dump has originalTitle=“Ajolähtö” but it is not shown on the UI.
  • “Tyttö sinä olet tähti” - XML dump now has the original Finnish title in the title attribute.

So in summary, there are several strange things:

  1. I see no way to get the original Finnish titles - surely there should be a way.
  2. Different behavior with the two example titles, even though both have the original Finnish title in both imdb and tmdb (and have the original language listed as Finnish, etc.).
  3. I would expect “Localized titles” off mean that the original titles are used. But that does not seem the case as I get English (not original Finnish) titles when that is disabled. If that is intentional, that option should probably have a better description.

Web UI language is set to English - changing it to Finnish did not seem to have any effect on this.

2

Plex does not show the original title, only the release title. It has been asked that this change to allow showing the original title, but that is not currently possible.

3

What does “release title” mean in this context? When I say “original title”, I mean the release title in the language of the movie (which is also the library language in this case), as listed on e.g. “Release Info” pages on IMDb.
I don’t mean a “working title” which is a separate non-release title.

For these movies (and other Finnish movies I checked), the IMDb release info (1, 2) has “(original title)” which is the release title in Finnish (movie language), and then “World-wide (English title)” which is the translated title when/if released in English-speaking countries, in English subtitles, etc.

Note that IMDb pages show localized headings by default (unless changed in preferences), so while you may see “Gotta Run!” on the top of the linked IMDb page, I see “Ajolähtö”. Only the release info (AKAs) page shows the same strings for all users.

Also, I do understand if there is no way yet to get “original title” field showing for all titles regardless of original language - that’s why I’d also be fine to just show Finnish release titles for all these movies - I just don’t want the translated English titles (and it seems odd that Plex forces the use of translated English titles, considering the library language is Finnish).

4

I’ve investigated this further and found the root causes:

Firstly, the Finnish title is missing for e.g. Ajolähtö (tt0140797) because PlexMovie ignores the base TMDb data for that title as there is no Finnish “overview” field in TMDb. See PlexMovie lines 1187-1191 (lang = library language):

  tmdb_dict = GetTMDBJSON(url=TMDB_MOVIE % (metadata_id, lang), **args)

  if not isinstance(tmdb_dict, dict) or 'overview' not in tmdb_dict or tmdb_dict['overview'] is None or tmdb_dict['overview'] == "":
    # Retry the query with no language specified if we didn't get anything from the initial request.
    tmdb_dict = GetTMDBJSON(url=TMDB_MOVIE % (metadata_id, ''), **args)

Per TMDb API documentation, the language parameter defaults to “en-US”, so the retried data will be in U.S. English. I’ve also verified that both omitting the parameter and an empty parameter cause the same fallback to “en-US”.

So because tt0140797 has no Finnish overview in TMDb, PlexMovie will proceed to discard the preferred Finnish metadata, including title, and download the U.S. English metadata.

Attached is a patch that fixes the issue of overridden title:plexmovie-fix-overridden-title.patch.txt (1.0 KB)

With the patch, the title for tt0140797 will be correctly set as the Finnish title when the library language is Finnish and localized titles are enabled.

Secondly, the behavior of the “Localized titles” PlexMovie option is currently indeed this:

  • unchecked => Use titles in U.S. English,
  • checked => Use titles in library language.

See PlexMovie line 1024, where Prefs[‘title’] is the “Localized titles” option:

    tmdb_data = get_base_tmdb_data('tt%s' % guid, lang if Prefs['title'] else '', force)

So if Localized titles is enabled, empty string “” is used, causing “language” to again default to “en-US” per TMDb API documentation.

If this behavior is intended, I suggest to improve the UX for the option to make it clear that unchecked = English, as that is not very intuitive especially for non-English movies.
E.g. make the option text “Localized titles (uncheck for English titles)” or even reverse it to make it “Use English titles”.
Example patch attached that just alters the help text: plexmovie-localized-title-fix-alt-a.patch.txt (376 Bytes)

If the current behavior is not intended, here (plexmovie-localized-title-fix-alt-b.patch.txt (848 Bytes)) is an alternative fix that makes it:

  • unchecked => Use titles in movie original language,
  • checked => Use titles in library language.

Note that as the option defaults to false (= always English titles), as-is the alt-b fix would change the default behavior of current user libraries for non-English movies. If that is not wanted either, something more complex is needed and probably the cosmetic alt-a fix should be implemented in the meantime.

5

Sorry if I wasn’t clear, this is what I was trying to say. “Localized” title means to use the title for your location/language that is specified.

I was not aware of this limitation. I will pass this along to the devs.

6

seems like anything is broken with Plex-Movie-Agent currently.

My whole library (defined as to be German) is listed in english, even if “localized Titels” is checked in the library.

The XML shows title and original title both in english.

Edit. Okay. Seems that doesnt work with Plex Movie Agent at all. I need to select OFDB Agent (to be installed as plugin) to grab the titel (beside Genre). Then the titels are fetched in German.

7

Was the library always set to German? If you change the library language, the language of existing titles will not update unless you perform a “Fix match…” on them. Simply using the “Refresh metadata” option will not work.

This is because the language gets coded into the guid of the title, as can be seen in the XML dump: guid="com.plexapp.agents.imdb://tt0471957?lang=fi". The guid is set at movie matching time.

8

What “localized” means was clear, but I was just not expecting “not localized” to mean “localized to English” :slight_smile:

9

it was set to German, but the Plex Agent fetches English titles with German descriptions. Needed to ceck “titels” from OFDB and then I got the correct, German Titels beside the Plex Agend descriptions.

10

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