Question on the new Plex Agent and metadata errors.
How does data correction work on the new Plex Agent with regards to Metadata? As someone who spends a silly amount of time fixing stuff on TMDB, how do those fixes get to Plex now? I noticed in many cases, especially when the IMDB and TMDB contradict each other, Plex seems to pick IMDB over TMDB. Is that assessment correct? If so is there anyway to fix this? When using TMDB agent I can easily correct any mistakes I find in the metadata. Here's a use case I had recently. The summary was wrong on a film (this is an obscure movie). I went in and fixed it in TMDB. The plex agent is still pulling the incorrect IMDB summary. So now Letterboxd and TMDB is correct, but Plex/IMDB is wrong. I frequently am adding high quality posters, actor pics, credits, etc... I don't do this only for Plex (mostly for Letterboxd), but it's a nice bonus.
As of now I still use TMDB agent because if I spot a mistake in my library I can correct the mistake. This comes up with Letterboxd all the time. If there's a mistake then it's super easy to fix. I know this agent will be phased out completely soon, hence the worry and the post. To summarize:
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What does one do when they see a mistake in the Plex Agent metadata. Correct TMDB, IMDB, both?
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How often does the new plex agent pull data from TMDB? Using the old TMDB agent it's pretty fast since it pulls from the source, but now the data needs to get pulled to the new Plex database first. Does this process run every day?
Posted Jun 1, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC
TMDB is primary, IMDB/TVDB are secondary.
Wait up to 72 hours for changes on TMDB to propagate down to Plex.
Thanks! I did switch over a lot of films and the results are mixed. If you're interested in reading a small essay about what I found continue. I got carried away with responding to you, but it's more for posterity in case anyone googles this post so you don't have to read/respond! I could be wrong about all this too and if there's a solution I'm missing somebody please let me know.
Anyways: Correct me if I'm wrong, but after testing I realized that Plex uses some wonky rules and it's not a hard and fast TMDB primary vs IMDB secondary. For example, for summary they don't necessarily pull TMDB as primary, rather I think they actually pull whichever field is the largest (see examples below). The release date is pulled from IMDB... I think always. At first I thought there might be a rule saying pull whichever is earlier, but then I found an example where that's not the case. This field definitely seems IMDB is primary, but that one example might just be a mistake and it might be earliest after all. IMDB is almost always earlier than TMDB so its kind of hard to find cases. Cast seems to always go to TMDB. Crew and Genre I think are TMDB primary as well. Those are kind of hard to check because in the case of Crew IMDB is almost always more complete and in case of genre the two almost always align. Cover seems to come from TMDB most of the time, but I can't tell if it's all the time. My guess is they actually pull the largest file of the two or have some file size rule, but that's purely a guess.
Edit: Title seems to pull from IMDB. The Adventures of Sadie (USA) is chose over Our Girl Friday (original). This is based on the "Use original titles" flag being unchecked in the setting, so that makes sense because TMDB doesn't give that option.
Here's some examples: 1) The Adventures of Lucky Pierre. The cover is pulled from TMDB and so is the cast order and photos. The summary is definitely pulled from IMDB though and IMDB is longer. The year is also pulled from IMDB since it shows 1961 vs 1962.
Adulterio a la española. Again year is pulled from IMDB 1976 vs TMDB 1975 despite TMDB being earlier. Here the summary is TMDB because IMDB doesn't have one. So it does pull from TMDB if no IMDB if found. Cast list is again TMDB.
Adrienn Pál. We have year from IMDB. Cast from TMDB. Poster from TMDB. The interesting thing about this film is it was an example of my theory that they are pulling the longer summary. This time the summary field was populated by TMDB not IMDB. The difference being TMDB is a much lengthier summary.
Nothing really too annoying or problematic. I don't have a strong preference for summary and the few that I do I can edit manually. Bigger summaries are definitely not always better though I understand the logic behind that choice. The year is a bit more annoying. My file naming system is all based on TMDB because I use filebot to pull from TMDB when naming. By defaulting to IMDB this creates a minor discrepancy between my file names and Plex names. It's not a big deal because the Plex agent seems good about matching regardless, but I do like to have the Plex year be the same as my file system. If anyone reads this who has the ability to make changes to the Plex agent, my one suggestion would be to use TMDB theatrical release date field not the IMDB release date. That would align Plex with Mubi, TMDB, Letterboxd, Plex.