I have a folder structure for my classical music that is based on Composer/Work/Conductor-Orchestra/track. Unfortunately, this is not a structure much liked by Plex.
As a result, perusing my music using Albums or Artists folders in Plex results in more than 50% showing ‘Various’ or ‘Conductor’ as the artist. Nonsense!
That leaves me with Folder as the best option and that’s fine except that it does not provide any of the pretty artwork, etc. I do have that artwork available to me outside of Plex, as a result of ripping all of my music with dBpoweramp. It also means that I have Albums and Artists folders that contain rubbish information., an outcome I don’t like.
Is there any way that Plex can be encouraged to base their Album and Artist folders on the information provided (including artwork) within my Finder folders? I know I can manually go through every piece of music I have and edit all the Plex metadata (eg make the composer the artist, etc) but that seems like a recipe for future problems and much hair pulling.
The problem with depending on the folder structure for this information is that, if you don’t follow the structure that the program (Plex, in this case, but this would apply to any such program) recognizes, the program would have to guess at what your folder structure means, and that becomes a nightmare when a hundred people come up with a hundred different ways of organizing their music. The structure Plex defines is defined that way so the program doesn’t have to guess, which would require incredibly complex programming.
I think you’ll find, even if you modify your folder structure to Plex’s liking, that you won’t be satisfied with the metadata that Gracenote provides anyway. I’ve found them to be quite inaccurate, and especially error-prone for classical music.
I put in the time (and yes, it was indeed a significant effort) to get my embedded tags into shape, as “correctly” as possible. I had to make two concessions: 1) putting the composer in the Artist field so Plex will show it to me that way, and 2) the three Title tags (TIT1, TIT2, and TIT3, per the ID3 spec) are correct, except that TIT2 has the complete track title, which should only be the movement title (of a symphony, for example).
My headaches regarding my music collection are essentially gone after doing this. If Plex ever does add proper support for the various tags that would make classical music manageable, I will only have to fix those two concessions to be up and running as it should be.
(The last two links above lead to feature request threads. I hope you’ll add your vote by clicking ‘Like’ on the first post in each thread, if you haven’t already).
Thanks beckfield, that’s interesting. I take your points about the issues with focusing on Folders alone.
I’m happy enough (my wife would say “anal retentive enough”) to spend the time needed to ‘correct’ my data but I’m concerned that these changes may not hold through thick and thin. Will Plex maintain those changes through future application updates or library refreshes or moving the data from a computer to a NAS or anything else?
If they’re embedded in your media files, and they conform to the industry standards, then the info is “in the bank.” It’s up to Plex to support the standard, which is easier to do than guess at your folder structure. And, since the tags are embedded in your files, Plex won’t touch them. Plex has long had a policy of not modifying your files (the limited ability to delete media files being the exception).
There is a procedure for moving your data to another location that will allow Plex to keep track of its own information (watch history, etc.). I don’t have time to find it right now, but it’s referred to in a lot of forum conversations. I think it’s somewhere in the Help system.
Using dBpweramp as my CD ripper, I have set the classical naming protocol as: [genre]/[tag]composersort/[album]/[conductor]-[tag]orchestra/[track]-[title].
This gives me the following folder structure for a specific piece of music:
Symphony/Mendelssohn,Felix/Symphony No. 3 in A minor/Kurt Masur-Gewandhaus Orchestra, Leipzig/01-Andante con moto.
If I now edit Plex to use composer for the artist tag and conductor - orchestra for the album tag (see the attached screenshot) will that work?
I don’t know if that folder structure is enough to confuse Plex or not. Since I got my embedded tags squared away, the folder structure doesn’t matter as much, so I haven’t spent any time investigating it. I notice, though, that the ‘Album’ tag in the metadata doesn’t bear much resemblance to the actual album title (Mendelssohn - The Symphonies, The Piano Concertos, …). Titles like that are one of the reasons classical music is so difficult to deal with in any media manager. I haven’t tried one yet that seems to get it right.
Only way to know is to try. You can always try again.
