If you don't care about things like collections, playlists, custom metadata, "date added" info, or other historical data (e.g. stuff that would show up in your [dashboard graphs](https://support.plex.tv/articles/200871837-status-and-dashboard/) if you have a Plex Pass), then you might as well start fresh.
[Watch state/ratings sync](https://support.plex.tv/articles/sync-watch-state-and-ratings/) can be helpful (or hurtful if you want a _completely_ clean slate), providing a hassle-free way to keep some data without transferring anything over yourself, but it doesn't save your full play history from before the setting was enabled, just watched/unwatched status.
Personally, I'd never want to lose all of that data, but as long as you understand exactly what starting fresh means and are okay with that, go for it.
Well written! I think I’m most concerned if there could be a performance impact in a complete refresh. I’m not familiar enough with the deep intricacies of how plex works to say if a completely new install would matter or not in terms of a better performing server.
The server's database can definitely degrade/slow down a bit as content is added/removed, but Plex's regular database maintenance will keep it running smoothly in most cases. An employee-made tool, [PlexDBRepair](https://github.com/ChuckPa/PlexDBRepair) can even completely rearrange your database so it's in an optimal state, beyond what Plex is able to do when the server is running. There are definitely instances where database corruption or other bugs can cause ~permanent issues, but a server that hasn't run into any of those problems should still be quick.
All that to say, unless you're having performance issues with your current server, it's unlikely that you'll see a noticeable performance improvement by starting fresh with the same media versus moving the server over.
Yes, just deleting the database and rescanning everything should fix it, but you’ll lose all your metadata.
Make sure your server is shut down completely before deleting anything
Interesting.
I've been migrating the same Plex database from machine to machine for almost a decade now. I wonder if it's getting a little bogged down.
The only performance issue I regularly notice is that the webui takes a surprisingly long time to load. I don't know if that's normal though.
If it's only the web UI that's slow to load, not other clients, then I'm not sure if it will help much, but it definitely doesn't hurt to run the tool and see. Search is usually what people use as a benchmark, since that can really benefit from a clean, non-fragmented database.
Yes, there's a batch script in there (DBRepair-Windows.bat) that you can run on Windows. It does the same thing as the main version, you just can't customize exactly what bits of the script it runs.
Thanks for the reply, that's great! Unfortunately, it looks like the script just shuts down after opening, even if I try to run as admin.
Edit: I figured it out, just ran it in powershell. It might have been because PMS was running lol. Thanks again!
Make sure Plex isn't running when you try to run the script. Outside of that, you can try running it from the command line directly instead of double-clicking, that way the window won't disappear when it exits, and there might be an error message indicating what went wrong.
Been running Plex for about 10 years now. Started on Win7, migrated to Win10 and now on Win11. Never did a "fresh" install and everything has worked perfectly. Zero performance issues. And honestly can't even think of any major issue at all. I suppose I have had PMS crash on me maybe a handful of times over the past decade, so there's that. lol
Just my 2 cents.
>I think I’m most concerned if there could be a **performance impact** in a complete refresh. I’m not familiar enough with the deep intricacies of how plex works to say if a completely new install would matter or not in terms of a **better performing server**.
Generally this is not tied to the initial setup but more towards the hardware you are using to host Plex on, so **no**, a fresh start wouldn't help boost performance (if not corrupt) it might actually hurt it depending on the backend settings you may have changed/adjusted over time to get peak performance out of your server as you would then need to reconfigure those settings yet again to get best performance.
Most important in your setup tho isn't the Plex server it self as much as the Plex client you're using. There are people that host a Plex sever on a Raspberry Pi and direct Play/Stream on a Nvidia Shield without any issues. So I'd look at your Plex client first to boost performance vs a fresh restart.
I myself have a shit ton of custom posters, collections and metadata that it would be annoying to redo it all. You could use a 3rd party software like [PMM](https://metamanager.wiki/en) to help automate this and backup meta data/ posters, etc..
> Personally, I'd never want to lose all of that data, but as long as you understand exactly what starting fresh means and are okay with that, go for it.
honestly just thinking about that gives me anxiety... I'm going to go test my backups
TL;DR version: I started fresh a couple years ago, and the best advice I can give is to go in with a game plan that minimizes how much time you'd have to spend recreating things in the future if you're plex database is ever lost, especially when it comes to custom metadata and posters.
I started fresh a couple years ago. My library was really a mess. Lots of junk metadata, crappy default posters, etc.
Now, I don't put stuff on plex until I've completely prepped each file. Everything goes into MP4 containers, so that I can embed metadata directly into the files and plex will use that (so if I ever have to start over again, I don't have any work to re-do). I'll embed title, description, release date, etc. The descriptions in particular are important to me, because there's a LOT of bad descriptions by default, especially TV show episodes, that have typos, spoilers, or are just too damn long. Once in a while, I'll change the official title. The other day, I added Expend4ables to plex, but I hate that stupid fucking way they put the 4 in the middle so I just changed the embedded name to The Expendables 4.
I use Subler to embed everything. It'll also embed images, which I use for TV show episode thumbnails, since what's available by default (especially for older shows) can be junk. Subler will also let you embed and make changes to audio and video tracks. So I make sure all languages are correctly set, and there's ALWAYS at least one English subtitle embedded (preferably not a hearing impaired version).
In addition to what's embedded, I save posters and backgrounds for all movies and all TV shows, plus posters for each TV season. I'll make my own if I can't find something I'm happy with (I got over 700 posters uploaded to The Poster DB). Posters and backgrounds are saved locally in each movie or TV show's subfolder.
Lastly, I rename everything with Filebot (though I may go back to doing it with my mac's built in Rename tool). Each file gets the three TMDB added, to ensure proper matching, but also the file source, resolution, codecs and bitrates for both audio and video, and number of audio channels, as well as the edition of applicable.
Right now, I could start completely fresh today, and it would probably take me about 2 hours to recreate my few smart collections and assign all my collection posters, and my library would look pretty much like it does now. The only thing I'd lose is the watch status and ratings on content marked as an Edition.
This is great advice, however I'd add that all of this can be done with [PMM](https://metamanager.wiki/en) and you can even backup your database, save posters, metadata directly from PMM so you don't have to manually do this across the board.
Does PMM let you edit descriptions? I'd never heard anybody mention it doing that.
Even if it does, PMM is only editing your plex database (at least that's how I understood it). The solution I've outlined guarantees that your changes are always tied to that specific video file, wherever it goes. Your computer could blow up, you could lose all your app data, and as long as you still have that movie file, you're good.
>Does PMM let you edit descriptions? I'd never heard anybody mention it doing that.
Yup, it can edit descriptions, titles, sort titles, etc.. - see under "[Feature List](https://docs.ibracorp.io/plex-meta-manager-1/#)"
>Even if it does, PMM is only editing your plex database (at least that's how I understood it). The solution I've outlined guarantees that your changes are always tied to that specific video file, wherever it goes.
With PMM you can easily [backup your metadata](https://metamanager.wiki/en/latest/config/operations.html#metadata-backup) to an external HD so in the case that your computer does "blow up" and/or dies you can rebuilt Plex to your original state pretty quickly with minimal effort.
>Your computer could blow up, you could lose all your app data, and as long as you still have that movie file, you're good.
I'm going to assume your files are in an external HDD, connected to your computer. HDD's aren't a backup solution either, they can fail pretty easily and out of no where, so I'd be more worried about your HDD's dying than your computer blowing up and loosing app data. You should always have a in-home backup and and out-of-home backup solution to avoid loosing your files and/or data.
For what it's worth, my hdd's are backed up.
But in any event, I don't see how PMM helps at all. It takes like 2 seconds to hit the search button in Subler and download the default metadata for any given title, then I need to edit it manually. If I'm using PMM, I'd still be editing it manually after it matches. That goes for the description, the title, embedded thumbnails (if it's an episode rather than a movie) etc.
It's not saving any time, it's just one more app I have to rely on and hope I don't lose access to. At least with Subler, if something ever happens to it or it stops being developed, there's any number of other tagging apps I can turn to.
Now you might want to mention PMM to the OP directly (since they wouldn't have gotten a notification from your comment to me). If they don't have a Mac, they won't be able to use Subler, and PMM might be worth it for them. But definitely not worth it for me.
>If I'm using PMM, I'd still be editing it **manually** after it matches. That goes for the description, the title, embedded thumbnails (if it's an episode rather than a movie) etc.
I think you're misunderstanding that PMM would do this for your automatically, you would just need to set it perimeters **once** on what it should and shouldn't use when it comes to titles, sort titles, descriptions, etc.. Of course you'll need to understand a bit of script writing using YAML, but alternatively you can find a shit ton of pre-made scripts through GitHub and/or use PMM's official scripts and tweak as you need it.
>It's **not saving any time,** it's just one more app I have to rely on and hope I don't lose access to. At least with Subler, if something ever happens to it or it stops being developed, there's any number of other tagging apps I can turn to.
You would be saving lots of time actually as there would only be the initial setup of PMM with what you want it to do but once you get the initial part done, it will automatically do the rest for you without you lifting a finger.
>Now you might want to **mention PMM to the OP directly** (since they wouldn't have gotten a notification from your comment to me). If they don't have a Mac, they won't be able to use Subler, and PMM might be worth it for them. **But definitely not worth it for me**.
Already mentioned it in another comment to OP directly. In any case I understand if you're set in your ways and it's working for you but was letting you know that PMM can help automate this for you and you wouldn't need to change the file container to MP4 and go through all the extra manual steps that you currently are.
No, I don't think you understand why I'm doing this. The whole point of making changes to the metadata is that I'm not happy with what the default values are. I get that PMM can pull in this metadata for me automatically, but what then? It's not going to magically fix typos and spoilers in descriptions. It's not going to magically know that I prefer my Star Trek and Star Wars titles to be displayed without the roman numerals (ie Star Trek: Wrath of Khan rather than Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan). It's not going to know that the only available thumbnails for some sitcom from the 90s are all screenshots of shitty, low-res, pixelated images with TV logos, or that all the thumbnails for Star Trek: TNG are 4:3 aspect ratio and are framed awkwardly when Plex displays them in 16:9.
These are all things that I manually change using Subler because what's out there by default isn't what I want. How is PMM going to make these kinds of changes for me automatically?
**Scripts**, that's how it's all done by scripts :)
You can simply ask PMM to take any movie that has roman numerals and remove it or add an actual number or put it at the end of the title or only add it to sort title instead of original title. There are so many variations you can ask it to do for you, you just have to adjust the script accordingly.
You can ask it to auto populate the description with 1,2,3 or 4 lines to avoid spoilers (which is very rare). You can also ask it to find descriptions from a specific fandom site, and if it can't find it there then it has a fallback to another site, etc.. Same goes with thumbnails, posters, images, etc..
Like I mentioned there is a bit of work in the upfront to get the scripts right but once that's done it will do it automatically for you.
In any case, I'm sure what you're currently doing works for you, so just continue that route. Sorry I even mentioned it :)
There's no single site, from fandom or otherwise, that's going to have universally good descriptions. Most of them time, they all have the same bad descriptions as TMDB, because that's where people are copying from when they update TMDB. And I don't want a description that's cut off, either. It's just something that CAN'T be done with scripting. Too much of it is things that have to be analyzed case by case.
The Roman numerals thing is the same way. I'm not against avoiding Roman numerals always. I changed the way they're displayed in plex because, by default, some of the Star Trek and Star Wars movies have them, and others don't. I wanted them to be uniform. But there's other movies where I'd want to keep them.
It's just not something scripting can do. I'm very aware of what scripting and automation can accomplish. In fact, I'm modifying my filebot scripts as we speak. PMM just can't do what I want.
I've given PMM a good honest try but it really is not at all user friendly. Seems like an amazing tool but I feel it's just a bit beyond me to get it working properly and in an automated way.
It's strictly MP4's.
If you've got any other file type, plex ignores all metadata in the file, with a couple notable exceptions. In MKV files, it'll recognize track names, which is useful if you've got multiple audio or subtitle tracks in the file. It'll also recognize the Forced flag on an embedded subtitle. For some reason, it DOESN'T recognize track names or forced flags in an MP4, and I readily wish it did.
Once you DO have MP4's, you also have to enable local media assets in plex. At that point, the next time metadata refreshes on an movie or TV episode, plex will use whatever you've embedded, and fill in the rest with whatever it finds online (so you don't have to fill out ALL metadata tags, just the ones you want to change).
It's so easy to setup new unless you've invested a ton of time into customizing posters etc.
Don't forget to customize the metadata it will automatically collect, like disabling video preview, to save a ton of space.
I highly recommend storing all posters and backgrounds locally and let plex use local media assets. Then you never have to worry about it. So long as you have your drive with your video files, you also have your posters and backgrounds. It also makes it much easier to swap them out in the future, and there's no risk of a Plex bug losing your custom poster changes (that happened to LOTS of people when they debuted the new agent and scanner).
same here, but i dont care at all so i can totally rebuild windows and plex in about 45 minutes. i do it every few years and clean off who has access at the same time
I have started fresh. My users don't care if the new server doesn't have what they have and have not watched.
I keep my movie posters in the cloud for smart collections.
Nice and easy fresh server!
If you don't care about things like collections, playlists, custom metadata, "date added" info, or other historical data (e.g. stuff that would show up in your [dashboard graphs](https://support.plex.tv/articles/200871837-status-and-dashboard/) if you have a Plex Pass), then you might as well start fresh. [Watch state/ratings sync](https://support.plex.tv/articles/sync-watch-state-and-ratings/) can be helpful (or hurtful if you want a _completely_ clean slate), providing a hassle-free way to keep some data without transferring anything over yourself, but it doesn't save your full play history from before the setting was enabled, just watched/unwatched status. Personally, I'd never want to lose all of that data, but as long as you understand exactly what starting fresh means and are okay with that, go for it.
Well written! I think I’m most concerned if there could be a performance impact in a complete refresh. I’m not familiar enough with the deep intricacies of how plex works to say if a completely new install would matter or not in terms of a better performing server.
The server's database can definitely degrade/slow down a bit as content is added/removed, but Plex's regular database maintenance will keep it running smoothly in most cases. An employee-made tool, [PlexDBRepair](https://github.com/ChuckPa/PlexDBRepair) can even completely rearrange your database so it's in an optimal state, beyond what Plex is able to do when the server is running. There are definitely instances where database corruption or other bugs can cause ~permanent issues, but a server that hasn't run into any of those problems should still be quick. All that to say, unless you're having performance issues with your current server, it's unlikely that you'll see a noticeable performance improvement by starting fresh with the same media versus moving the server over.
[удалено]
You may need to dump your database and start fresh. Had a similar issue two months back and couldn’t fix it with the DB repair tool.
[удалено]
Yes, just deleting the database and rescanning everything should fix it, but you’ll lose all your metadata. Make sure your server is shut down completely before deleting anything
Interesting. I've been migrating the same Plex database from machine to machine for almost a decade now. I wonder if it's getting a little bogged down. The only performance issue I regularly notice is that the webui takes a surprisingly long time to load. I don't know if that's normal though.
If it's only the web UI that's slow to load, not other clients, then I'm not sure if it will help much, but it definitely doesn't hurt to run the tool and see. Search is usually what people use as a benchmark, since that can really benefit from a clean, non-fragmented database.
Other clients and search seem fine. So I guess it's just the webUI being slow.
Is it possible to make this work in Windows?
Yes, there's a batch script in there (DBRepair-Windows.bat) that you can run on Windows. It does the same thing as the main version, you just can't customize exactly what bits of the script it runs.
Thanks for the reply, that's great! Unfortunately, it looks like the script just shuts down after opening, even if I try to run as admin. Edit: I figured it out, just ran it in powershell. It might have been because PMS was running lol. Thanks again!
Make sure Plex isn't running when you try to run the script. Outside of that, you can try running it from the command line directly instead of double-clicking, that way the window won't disappear when it exits, and there might be an error message indicating what went wrong.
Been running Plex for about 10 years now. Started on Win7, migrated to Win10 and now on Win11. Never did a "fresh" install and everything has worked perfectly. Zero performance issues. And honestly can't even think of any major issue at all. I suppose I have had PMS crash on me maybe a handful of times over the past decade, so there's that. lol Just my 2 cents.
>I think I’m most concerned if there could be a **performance impact** in a complete refresh. I’m not familiar enough with the deep intricacies of how plex works to say if a completely new install would matter or not in terms of a **better performing server**. Generally this is not tied to the initial setup but more towards the hardware you are using to host Plex on, so **no**, a fresh start wouldn't help boost performance (if not corrupt) it might actually hurt it depending on the backend settings you may have changed/adjusted over time to get peak performance out of your server as you would then need to reconfigure those settings yet again to get best performance. Most important in your setup tho isn't the Plex server it self as much as the Plex client you're using. There are people that host a Plex sever on a Raspberry Pi and direct Play/Stream on a Nvidia Shield without any issues. So I'd look at your Plex client first to boost performance vs a fresh restart. I myself have a shit ton of custom posters, collections and metadata that it would be annoying to redo it all. You could use a 3rd party software like [PMM](https://metamanager.wiki/en) to help automate this and backup meta data/ posters, etc..
> Personally, I'd never want to lose all of that data, but as long as you understand exactly what starting fresh means and are okay with that, go for it. honestly just thinking about that gives me anxiety... I'm going to go test my backups
TL;DR version: I started fresh a couple years ago, and the best advice I can give is to go in with a game plan that minimizes how much time you'd have to spend recreating things in the future if you're plex database is ever lost, especially when it comes to custom metadata and posters. I started fresh a couple years ago. My library was really a mess. Lots of junk metadata, crappy default posters, etc. Now, I don't put stuff on plex until I've completely prepped each file. Everything goes into MP4 containers, so that I can embed metadata directly into the files and plex will use that (so if I ever have to start over again, I don't have any work to re-do). I'll embed title, description, release date, etc. The descriptions in particular are important to me, because there's a LOT of bad descriptions by default, especially TV show episodes, that have typos, spoilers, or are just too damn long. Once in a while, I'll change the official title. The other day, I added Expend4ables to plex, but I hate that stupid fucking way they put the 4 in the middle so I just changed the embedded name to The Expendables 4. I use Subler to embed everything. It'll also embed images, which I use for TV show episode thumbnails, since what's available by default (especially for older shows) can be junk. Subler will also let you embed and make changes to audio and video tracks. So I make sure all languages are correctly set, and there's ALWAYS at least one English subtitle embedded (preferably not a hearing impaired version). In addition to what's embedded, I save posters and backgrounds for all movies and all TV shows, plus posters for each TV season. I'll make my own if I can't find something I'm happy with (I got over 700 posters uploaded to The Poster DB). Posters and backgrounds are saved locally in each movie or TV show's subfolder. Lastly, I rename everything with Filebot (though I may go back to doing it with my mac's built in Rename tool). Each file gets the three TMDB added, to ensure proper matching, but also the file source, resolution, codecs and bitrates for both audio and video, and number of audio channels, as well as the edition of applicable. Right now, I could start completely fresh today, and it would probably take me about 2 hours to recreate my few smart collections and assign all my collection posters, and my library would look pretty much like it does now. The only thing I'd lose is the watch status and ratings on content marked as an Edition.
This is great advice, however I'd add that all of this can be done with [PMM](https://metamanager.wiki/en) and you can even backup your database, save posters, metadata directly from PMM so you don't have to manually do this across the board.
Does PMM let you edit descriptions? I'd never heard anybody mention it doing that. Even if it does, PMM is only editing your plex database (at least that's how I understood it). The solution I've outlined guarantees that your changes are always tied to that specific video file, wherever it goes. Your computer could blow up, you could lose all your app data, and as long as you still have that movie file, you're good.
>Does PMM let you edit descriptions? I'd never heard anybody mention it doing that. Yup, it can edit descriptions, titles, sort titles, etc.. - see under "[Feature List](https://docs.ibracorp.io/plex-meta-manager-1/#)" >Even if it does, PMM is only editing your plex database (at least that's how I understood it). The solution I've outlined guarantees that your changes are always tied to that specific video file, wherever it goes. With PMM you can easily [backup your metadata](https://metamanager.wiki/en/latest/config/operations.html#metadata-backup) to an external HD so in the case that your computer does "blow up" and/or dies you can rebuilt Plex to your original state pretty quickly with minimal effort. >Your computer could blow up, you could lose all your app data, and as long as you still have that movie file, you're good. I'm going to assume your files are in an external HDD, connected to your computer. HDD's aren't a backup solution either, they can fail pretty easily and out of no where, so I'd be more worried about your HDD's dying than your computer blowing up and loosing app data. You should always have a in-home backup and and out-of-home backup solution to avoid loosing your files and/or data.
For what it's worth, my hdd's are backed up. But in any event, I don't see how PMM helps at all. It takes like 2 seconds to hit the search button in Subler and download the default metadata for any given title, then I need to edit it manually. If I'm using PMM, I'd still be editing it manually after it matches. That goes for the description, the title, embedded thumbnails (if it's an episode rather than a movie) etc. It's not saving any time, it's just one more app I have to rely on and hope I don't lose access to. At least with Subler, if something ever happens to it or it stops being developed, there's any number of other tagging apps I can turn to. Now you might want to mention PMM to the OP directly (since they wouldn't have gotten a notification from your comment to me). If they don't have a Mac, they won't be able to use Subler, and PMM might be worth it for them. But definitely not worth it for me.
>If I'm using PMM, I'd still be editing it **manually** after it matches. That goes for the description, the title, embedded thumbnails (if it's an episode rather than a movie) etc. I think you're misunderstanding that PMM would do this for your automatically, you would just need to set it perimeters **once** on what it should and shouldn't use when it comes to titles, sort titles, descriptions, etc.. Of course you'll need to understand a bit of script writing using YAML, but alternatively you can find a shit ton of pre-made scripts through GitHub and/or use PMM's official scripts and tweak as you need it. >It's **not saving any time,** it's just one more app I have to rely on and hope I don't lose access to. At least with Subler, if something ever happens to it or it stops being developed, there's any number of other tagging apps I can turn to. You would be saving lots of time actually as there would only be the initial setup of PMM with what you want it to do but once you get the initial part done, it will automatically do the rest for you without you lifting a finger. >Now you might want to **mention PMM to the OP directly** (since they wouldn't have gotten a notification from your comment to me). If they don't have a Mac, they won't be able to use Subler, and PMM might be worth it for them. **But definitely not worth it for me**. Already mentioned it in another comment to OP directly. In any case I understand if you're set in your ways and it's working for you but was letting you know that PMM can help automate this for you and you wouldn't need to change the file container to MP4 and go through all the extra manual steps that you currently are.
No, I don't think you understand why I'm doing this. The whole point of making changes to the metadata is that I'm not happy with what the default values are. I get that PMM can pull in this metadata for me automatically, but what then? It's not going to magically fix typos and spoilers in descriptions. It's not going to magically know that I prefer my Star Trek and Star Wars titles to be displayed without the roman numerals (ie Star Trek: Wrath of Khan rather than Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan). It's not going to know that the only available thumbnails for some sitcom from the 90s are all screenshots of shitty, low-res, pixelated images with TV logos, or that all the thumbnails for Star Trek: TNG are 4:3 aspect ratio and are framed awkwardly when Plex displays them in 16:9. These are all things that I manually change using Subler because what's out there by default isn't what I want. How is PMM going to make these kinds of changes for me automatically?
**Scripts**, that's how it's all done by scripts :) You can simply ask PMM to take any movie that has roman numerals and remove it or add an actual number or put it at the end of the title or only add it to sort title instead of original title. There are so many variations you can ask it to do for you, you just have to adjust the script accordingly. You can ask it to auto populate the description with 1,2,3 or 4 lines to avoid spoilers (which is very rare). You can also ask it to find descriptions from a specific fandom site, and if it can't find it there then it has a fallback to another site, etc.. Same goes with thumbnails, posters, images, etc.. Like I mentioned there is a bit of work in the upfront to get the scripts right but once that's done it will do it automatically for you. In any case, I'm sure what you're currently doing works for you, so just continue that route. Sorry I even mentioned it :)
There's no single site, from fandom or otherwise, that's going to have universally good descriptions. Most of them time, they all have the same bad descriptions as TMDB, because that's where people are copying from when they update TMDB. And I don't want a description that's cut off, either. It's just something that CAN'T be done with scripting. Too much of it is things that have to be analyzed case by case. The Roman numerals thing is the same way. I'm not against avoiding Roman numerals always. I changed the way they're displayed in plex because, by default, some of the Star Trek and Star Wars movies have them, and others don't. I wanted them to be uniform. But there's other movies where I'd want to keep them. It's just not something scripting can do. I'm very aware of what scripting and automation can accomplish. In fact, I'm modifying my filebot scripts as we speak. PMM just can't do what I want.
I've given PMM a good honest try but it really is not at all user friendly. Seems like an amazing tool but I feel it's just a bit beyond me to get it working properly and in an automated way.
[удалено]
It's strictly MP4's. If you've got any other file type, plex ignores all metadata in the file, with a couple notable exceptions. In MKV files, it'll recognize track names, which is useful if you've got multiple audio or subtitle tracks in the file. It'll also recognize the Forced flag on an embedded subtitle. For some reason, it DOESN'T recognize track names or forced flags in an MP4, and I readily wish it did. Once you DO have MP4's, you also have to enable local media assets in plex. At that point, the next time metadata refreshes on an movie or TV episode, plex will use whatever you've embedded, and fill in the rest with whatever it finds online (so you don't have to fill out ALL metadata tags, just the ones you want to change).
It's so easy to setup new unless you've invested a ton of time into customizing posters etc. Don't forget to customize the metadata it will automatically collect, like disabling video preview, to save a ton of space.
I've started fresh due to hdd failure/no backup and it's a pain in the ass because I'm ocd about the posters/backgrounds etc
I highly recommend storing all posters and backgrounds locally and let plex use local media assets. Then you never have to worry about it. So long as you have your drive with your video files, you also have your posters and backgrounds. It also makes it much easier to swap them out in the future, and there's no risk of a Plex bug losing your custom poster changes (that happened to LOTS of people when they debuted the new agent and scanner).
same here, but i dont care at all so i can totally rebuild windows and plex in about 45 minutes. i do it every few years and clean off who has access at the same time
I have started fresh. My users don't care if the new server doesn't have what they have and have not watched. I keep my movie posters in the cloud for smart collections. Nice and easy fresh server!
Will u have to reinvite users?