Plex General Discussion And Troubleshooting Thread (1 Viewer)

[John Dirk]

I searched and found several Plex-related threads here, but not a general one for discussion and/or troubleshooting. That, then, is the purpose of this thread. It would also be good to know who among us uses this solution.

I'm relatively new to Plex, having dabbled with it a few years back but only gotten serious a couple of months ago. At this point I have the server running on my HTPC and clients on every TV and computer throughout my home. In my case, that's about 10 clients. The server is fed via my Synology 923+ NAS with a current capacity of about 22TB. Up until a couple of weeks ago I had an NVidia Shield Pro for my HT room but found the Plex for HTPC app performed about as well so, for now anyway, the Shield is gone.

Overall I'm very happy with Plex but the one area I do continue to have issues with is film matching and [seemingly random] cover-poster overwriting. For older films mostly, Plex can be pretty abysmal matching titles with metadata. I also noticed on several occasions, after I'd meticulously corrected mismatches and edited posters, Plex would arbitrarily re-scan the library and reintroduce errors I'd already corrected. Checking other forums, including Plex's site, I found this was a fairly common complaint and that there was no straight-forward solution for it aside from manually placing posters in each movie folder and then instructing Plex to use only local data. That seems ridiculously arcane to me and I was surprised the company had not addressed it with a simple setting.

In any case, I'd be interested in thoughts regarding the above and also hearing about others experience with Plex.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Yes, the occasional re-writing of meta and art does happen. I don't have a lot of movie/TV on mine so far (a few series and a handful of DVDs. Will start ripping Region B Blu-rays to avoid the region switch hassle), I use it mostly for music. Did have to change the setting to use local meta only. For movie/TV, it does want metadata to be able to match what's on themoviedb.org and thetvdb.org . My video playback is using the AppleTV apps Infuse and Plex. I also use those apps on my iPad and iPhone. Remote music playback on my phone is from Plexamp, music playback at home is on a Wiim Mini reading the Plex DB.

 

[Ruz-El]

There doesn't seem to be a for sure, 100% solution for locking info, even using the Locks though for tags and what not is seems pretty solid.

I find for the most part that if you manually select the poster art you want, provided it's not the default one they typically don't change after that. At least it hasn't for me for some time after updates. I've been running my plex server on a Qnap for years and for the past year the poster art seems more stable.

 

[John Dirk]

There doesn't seem to be a for sure, 100% solution for locking info, even using the Locks though for tags and what not is seems pretty solid.

I find for the most part that if you manually select the poster art you want, provided it's not the default one they typically don't change after that. At least it hasn't for me for some time after updates. I've been running my plex server on a Qnap for years and for the past year the poster art seems more stable.

Right, but when you're working with MKV rips you usually don't have that option. What really confuses me is, when Plex does overwrite my posters, it doesn't replace them with a different [updated from the web] poster in most cases. Instead it's usually some random snapshot of a scene from the film.

 

[John Dirk]

There doesn't seem to be a for sure, 100% solution for locking info, even using the Locks though for tags and what not is seems pretty solid.

I find for the most part that if you manually select the poster art you want, provided it's not the default one they typically don't change after that. At least it hasn't for me for some time after updates. I've been running my plex server on a Qnap for years and for the past year the poster art seems more stable.

Hasn't been the case for me thus far. I've manually updated several dozens of posters only to find them replaced with random snapshots from the film a few days later. I do believe if I download posters and place them in each folder as appropriate, the problem would be solved but that amount of work is entirely impractical for even moderately sized libraries. Plex really needs to fix this as it's a huge sore point on an otherwise excellent product.

 

[ScottHM]

You can set your library to "use local assets" for artwork. You create a folder with the same name as the film, put the film and your image file (also with the same name as the film) into that folder. Also, if you check "prefer local metadata" you can set the titles using metadata in your media file. This is easier for mp4 files than mkv files since it can be done from Windows Explorer and I believe you need third party software to change the metadata in a mkv file.

Also, you say it mismatches your film with the data. Do you use the format TITLE_(YEAR).MKV for your media file names? This almost always works well for me.

I have over 3200 films on my Plex server and while it took some time to get used to it its' been mostly smooth sailing for several years.

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[Ruz-El]

I'm lazy with mine, but doing a quick check, any that I've updated poster art wise have so far stuck.

I don't edit any file metadata pre-loading into plex, and my server has .mp4, .mkv, .avi etc. I just select the one I like best from the options when I load and match them in PLEX. The only time I download a poster for the folder is if the film doesn't have any poster options.

 

[John Dirk]

You can set your library to "use local assets" for artwork. You create a folder with the same name as the film, put the film and your image file (also with the same name as the film) into that folder. Also, if you check "prefer local metadata" you can set the titles using metadata in your media file.
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Thanks. As stated in post #5 above, I already know I can achieve the desired result by completing the arduous, manual process you describe. My question is, why doesn't Plex have a simple setting that allows me to decide whether or not I want my metadata automatically refreshed. Seems to me this should have been obvious to the developers.

 

[Ruz-El]

Thanks. As stated in post #5 above, I already know I can achieve the desired result by completing the arduous, manual process you describe. My question is, why doesn't Plex have a simple setting that allows me to decide whether or not I want my metadata automatically refreshed. Seems to me this should have been obvious to the developers.

You can turn off some of the scanning under settings library:

and under scheduled tasks:

 

[ScottHM]

My question is, why doesn't Plex have a simple setting that allows me to decide whether or not I want my metadata automatically refreshed.

I suppose it's because they feel that people who don't want things done for them are willing to perform their own "arduous, manual processes".
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[Josh Steinberg]

My question is, why doesn't Plex have a simple setting that allows me to decide whether or not I want my metadata automatically refreshed.

It definitely does because my metadata doesn’t refresh itself automatically, but the setting may be called something that’s not obvious.

I have the “scan my library automatically” setting turned on so that whenever I drop a new file in there, it notices it and adds it. But I have all of the various “upgrade/update libraries automatically” settings turned off - my guess based on the behavior you’re describing is that it’s a library upgrade setting that you might have switched on.

Within the metadata for each library item, you can press the “lock” icon which will prevent a library upgrade from overwriting your manual changes. For example, the Plex movie database wants to spell the title “Se7en” but that’s useless to me because then I have to remember that to find it, instead of just looking for “Seven”. So I charged the “sort” title to “Seven” while leaving the title displayed as “Se7en”. But I also “locked” both of those changes so that next time the library goes through an upgrade, it won’t reset itself to “Se7en”.

In the five years or so I’ve been running Plex, different system upgrades have wanted to automatically run library upgrades, and those are what have caused my manual metadata changes to go screwy. I usually don’t let it run the library upgrade unless it’s absolutely required, and even then, only when I’m ready to deal with it.

My general finding with Plex is that it has tons of customizable options like that, but it’s not always apparent because the naming of those options is counterintuitive to what it sounds like it’s talking about.

 

[John Dirk]

I suppose it's because they feel that people who don't want things done for them are willing to perform their own "arduous, manual processes".
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Aren't you taking this "friendly discussion" a bit personally?

 

[ScottHM]

Aren't you taking this "friendly discussion" a bit personally?

No, I just thought "arduous" was a little over the top. Of course when we want to customize things there will be a bit of work involved.
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[John Dirk]

No, I just thought "arduous" was a little over the top. Of course when we want to customize things there will be a bit of work involved.
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Fair enough but I did say in the first post, I'm pretty new to Plex and also, overall very happy with it.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I appreciate the tips posted in here about the various scanning and "library upgrade" options. I'm certain my music metadata problem happened after a library upgrade and I had something active that shouldn't have been.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m currently in a spot where I will have to soon undergo a library update because Plex phased out compatibility with the former databases they used in favor of their own, and I need to make the transition because it’s getting wonky with identifying new additions. But I have a lot of customization that’ll be a pain to recreate so I’ve been putting it off. It’s not my idea of a fun day off to redo hundreds of custom changes to simply keep what I already have.

 

[Ruz-El]

I appreciate the tips posted in here about the various scanning and "library upgrade" options. I'm certain my music metadata problem happened after a library upgrade and I had something active that shouldn't have been.

That one mucked up my libraries too, especially with release dates were it default set a bunch to 1969-01-01 or something like that. I make sure to lock those fields now. Same with sorting and what not since I like to sort Lastname, First name, but have it show Firstname lastname in the library.

 

[Ruz-El]

I’m currently in a spot where I will have to soon undergo a library update because Plex phased out compatibility with the former databases they used in favor of their own, and I need to make the transition because it’s getting wonky with identifying new additions. But I have a lot of customization that’ll be a pain to recreate so I’ve been putting it off. It’s not my idea of a fun day off to redo hundreds of custom changes to simply keep what I already have.

If I remember right, I just updated the movie library I had and it kept the lock fields. After that, sorting by "unmathached" and "duplicate" made fixing things easier.

I have a separate movie library for adult titles that was a disaster to match in the first place, so for that one I manually transfered the files to the "new library". It was a pain too. Silver lining in that since Letterboxd allows certain adult, TMDB has more titles. I'm not 100% sure plex pulls from there, but it sure seems like it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

TMDB has more titles. I'm not 100% sure plex pulls from there, but it sure seems like it.

It’s one of the databases it used to pull from (there was a setting you could adjust manually to select it) but they are phasing out TMDB in favor of their own.

 

[Al.Anderson]

... What really confuses me is, when Plex does overwrite my posters, it doesn't replace them with a different [updated from the web] poster in most cases. Instead it's usually some random snapshot of a scene from the film.

If Plex is inserting a frame from the film it usually means it hasn't matched the film. For me that's usually because I didn't have a year in the title, or it was the wrong year.

Right, but when you're working with MKV rips you usually don't have that option. ...

I'm not sure what you mean here. I use mkv almost exclusively and there's I've not run into anything that Plex limits for mkv's. If you were trying to add your own image to an mkv file, then you can do that using the utility MkvToolNix (it's free); although I've never had to do that to keep a selected poster in Plex (I use it to add a poster to some of my home videos).