Server Version#: 1.19.3.2764
Player Version#: (Plex for LG) 4.29.5
I really want to like Plex. But the more I mess with it, trying to add my various medias, the more I’m getting upset with it. Browsing around in the forums makes me feel like the Plex authors care little about their software since it’s commercialized and advertised on the boxes of all kinds of products. For instance, Trakt doesn’t exist. So that means that after I’ve added my +90tb of data into Plex’s database, I have no way of transferring over my watched status, and will have to do it manually. Sure, there are some plugins that might do the trick, but the latest I saw was that Plex is removing plugins like that in favor of Webhooks. The Webhook to Trakt though doesn’t even allow bi-directional sync, just a scrobble of what your watching, and it costs MONEY to do even that (you have to be a Plex Pass member for Webhook access AND you have to be a Trakt VIP to access their Webhook API)! That’s just nonsense. But regardless, that’s not my biggest issue and the cause of this thread.
When I first installed Plex and added just my Movies, I was left with a HUGE list of movies to watch, but none of the sparkles. None of my movies had poster art and they were displayed as just a colorless gray box with the filename as a caption (not even the movie title). I didn’t understand why. Plex uses the exact same file structure as Emby, down to the poster and background art. I’ve even got my metadata stored locally in each movie’s folder as .nfo, .xml, and .txt, yet Plex didn’t even look at it. After days of dealing with it, I finally learned about how to prioritize the “agents” used to get the metadata. I reinstalled Plex clean and THEN it started to look right.
Fast forward to TV Shows. Once again, my folder structure matches exactly how it should be because Emby uses the exact same. I’m a bit upset that Plex doesn’t offer the banner view, but if that’s how Plex is then so be it. The problem I had here was that much of the information about shows don’t seem to fit right, and they definitely don’t link like I think they should. For instance, if I click on SpongeBob, I have no information ABOUT the show. I see the list of seasons, and then a list of actors, but the artwork for the actors are based from other shows (like Tom Kenny is a picture of Nute Gunray from Clone Wars). If I click on the actor, I don’t get any information about them, just a list of other shows they’re on. Shouldn’t it show a picture of the actor (not a character) and clicking on them talk about the actor? Maybe I’m just wrong, but that’s how Emby works…
I’m now trying to work with my Music. I spent YEARS matching my music with MusicBrainz and properly embedding all the correct tag data. Before I started adding my music to Plex, I made sure my setup matches all the rules (which, unsurprisingly, is exactly like Emby again). Emby has artwork and metadata for every album in my server. Details (reviews?) about every release. If I pick an artist, I get a photo of them, a background (that changes over time) about them, and details about the artist/band. However, Plex, once again, has just some plain solid colored boxes for most of my artists, clicking on an artist results in that same colored box and a list of their available albums. Where is all my hard work? Where is the artist and background art? Where are the details about them? I’ve spent a good couple of days going over all the settings and they should be working. I’ve even reorganized the “agents” to use embedded data first, still nothing. I can go in manually and add biographical information about each artist, add their picture and backgrounds. But why should I have to do that for 1,000s of CDs? Shouldn’t Plex pick up on that stuff automatically? There are settings inside Plex server to enable/disable them and I have them turned on (and configured with my personal API keys where necessary) but Plex doesn’t seem to want to use any of it.
So what’s going on here? Am I just totally lost and worse off than a complete idiot installing it on their computer who have no idea what they’re doing? Here I thought transitioning from Emby would be simple because all rules for paths and artwork are EXACTLY THE SAME. Why am I having such a difficult time here? Can somebody please help a guy out?
-Aaron
ps, Am I experiencing all this agony because I’m not a Plex Pass user? If that’s the case, it seems pretty crappy to have a lot of fundamental functionality be locked out unless you pay for it. I mean, I don’t think it’s worth it. I just want to be able to access my stuff from my TV directly without having to have something like Kodi running on a Raspberry Pi to act as an inbetween.
