Like I imagine to be the case with many folks, here, most of the movies on my server started out named something like “Sparky.2003.REPACK.BluRay.720p.5.1.AAC.OMFG.mkv”. Because I thought it was helping the Plex’s media matcher and also so that things would look nice in the player, I’d rename something like that to “Sparky (2003).mkv”.
However, I’ve noticed two changes to Plex which probably makes this moot and/or a bad idea:
I’m noticing that, when I start playing movies from my server, it shows that verbose original name (i.e. with the “.REPACK.BluRay.720p…” stuff). I presume that Plex is looking in the metadata (like the “title” tag or “filename” tag?) to decide what to throw up on the screen, instead of the filename.
I’ve also noticed that Plex now lets the user grab subtitles (Yay! Like… mega YAY, guys!), but the subtitles it finds also includes some of that “720p”, “webrip”, “HDCAM”, stuff, so I imagine that Plex is using some of those filename keywords to try to find subs which are properly timed to the specific movie I’ve got. Indeed, many subtitle files have tailing info which exactly matches the tailing info on the movie files, so it would be great if Plex could search for subs using the original filename.
It would be great if the subtitle searcher could have access to those keywords but that the user not see them.
So, optimally, I think I would like to adjust my filename and metadata (keeping in mind that I’m exclusively mkv and mp4 for my movies) so that:
Plex displays a “user-friendly” name when the user starts playing the movie
Plex is able to use as much of the tailing info from the original filename such that it has a better chance of finding properly-timed subs.
Plex has the best chance of finding a match for the movie (it already does a great job at this, so I’m not as concerned with improving this as I am with the first two items)
So… assuming that I have tools for automatically massaging any of the metadata and filenames of the movies, does anybody have suggestions on where I should put the “user-friendly” name and where to preserve the original filename?
Just go into settings and the agents and either turn off or move " Local Media Assets" to the bottom of the list for all, then do a fresh library scan once it has completed for each library you need to do a Refresh metadata this will present a warning about locked data, don’t worry about that and let it go.
Depending on the size of your library this will take a little while but everything will look nice and clean
Apparently, the “title” meta tag of each and every one of the various video, audio, and subtitle streams in your MKV file has been sprayed by the release group with their “stench mark”.
Get MKVtoolnixGUI to take a look at these tags directly and to edit them individually.
I have the ffmpeg suite. I have the MP4Box suite. I have the mkvtoolnix suite. I can automate any of these tools with bash/python/whatever. Editing the metadata is not the issue. Even automating the changes to the metadata is a non-issue. What I’m trying to find out is how to best set the filename/metadata to: 1) present a “stench-mark”-free title to the user when they play it, and 2) allow Plex to use the “stench mark” to find more accurate subtitle matches.
I guess, specifically, what I’m trying to find out is:
What is the sequence of filename/metadata that Plex uses for the title to present to the user? (eg. “If it’s a MKV, it checks for a ‘TAG:title’ tag. Then, it checks for a ‘filename’ tag. Then, it checks for a ‘TAG:filename’ tag, and then it just checks the filename. If it’s a MP4, it checks for…”)
What is the sequence of filename/metadata that Plex uses for searching for subtitles?
Ideally, these two paths of data sources would be different such that we could have Plex end up with different values.
This is just the Title metadata of the item in Plex, after the media has been scanned and matched.
Matching will be most successful if your filenames follow the Plex recommended naming guides, obviously.
This can also be influenced by the presence of embedded tagging if Prefer local metadata is enabled (or the priority of the Local Media Assets agent, if you are using the legacy scanner). In my experience it’s not helpful (and frequently harmful) to have Prefer local metadata enabled for well-named popular movie files.
Or the Title can always be edited manually and the field locked.
This is just the filename.
Note that including details like resolution, source, etc., can help find better matches. I rename files to match the Plex naming guides, and I preserve that additional information in square brackets [ and ].
The user can see the filename when getting information about the media and when searching for subtitles, but it isn’t shown in the normal “pretty” views.
