hi guys and welcome back to another apricorp video thank you so much for coming back this week and
checking out our new video it's an absolute pleasure to have you back with us now you may
have seen some of my teasers the last few days about what this video was going to be about and i
tried not to reveal too much but today is finally the day where we can tell you what the project is
so today we're going to be looking at plex meta manager or pmm for sure so what is pmm well if you
guys have used plex for quite some time and you want to freshen up your libraries you want to make
it a little bit more user intuitive and something similar to the lines of netflix for example
in terms of the way libraries are presented then this is going to be the add-on for you now it is
an independent application or technically a script but we're going to be able to run it in docker and
we're going to be following some instructions now the official documentation is the best place to
follow the official guide which you can find here on github on the plex meta manager but we've also
written a guide ourselves on docs the ibricorp.io so as you can see here we've started to write up
the guide that's going to accompany this video so if you like you can follow this particular guide
the written guide that we've done to match what our video is today and if there's any confusion or
anything you're not sure about be sure to jump in our discord and ask for some help we're more than
happy to help we've also got the main developer of the application in there too so hopefully we
can answer your question alternatively we always recommend checking out the official
docs as well as it can cover stuff a little bit more comprehensively that isn't necessarily shown
in the video and you can always find that under our useful link section here on our documentation
pages and just to give you a quick example of what plex meta manager is capable of here's
what our collections are so here we have some collections for example trending got popular top
rated you know best of this year or best of that year oscar-winning etc etc and the beauty of this
is that we will have these added and refreshed all the time as a little bonus for you we'll also
be showing you how to get a seasonal collection like that for christmas to automatically update
and keep things moving and freshen up your library so here's just a couple of the features that pmm
can provide you so you can create and update plex collections using a variety of sources
including tortoli so if you wanted people to know what was popular on your plex server
it would be able to do that you can add media that you want that's in collections for example
imdb to top 250 movies and have it added to radar and sonar for you through the script you can have
custom posters custom content add custom overlays including 4k and hdr banners using yamls to edit
media metadata such as titles to sort titles and descriptions and you can add custom episode orders
for plex via the yamls as well so guys if you're using plex and you want to freshen up your library
give your users a more seamless experience and one that is constantly updating and has a bit of
life to it then this is going to be the video for you so stick around and let's get stuck into it
alright guys so like i said we're on the docs page now and we've got all of our instructions written
out here that we're going to be following along to now before we start the video i do need to make
it very clear to you guys that i would consider this topic a little bit more advanced so if you're
a complete beginner to setting up libraries or setting up plex then please have a look at some of
our other beginner oriented videos like you know plex tips and tricks things like that so please
please be careful make sure you're reading the instructions as we provide them and on top of that
remember that you're taking the risk of messing up your library if you don't do things correctly
or if something goes wrong so what we're going to do at this stage as normal is i'm going to move
this documentation over to my other screen and you guys can follow along with me if you like the rest
of it we're going to be starting the install and just getting straight into it all right so here
we are on our unraid server osiris so as usual the first place we're going to head to is the
app store so let's go do that search for plex meta manager and you'll see the option here by
roland's repository once you've got it go ahead and click on it and click to install now in the
template we're going to see various different options starting from the top to bottom let's work
them out so the network type for this one it's not as important but i would still highly recommend
you set the custom docker network and that's because if you wanted to refer to sonar and radar
or plex via hostname it's going to make your life easier so i always just do it anyway adding it to
our custom docker network for the time to run is exactly as it says what time do we want this
script to run now keep in mind depending on what setup you have it can take quite some time to run
this so if you're not too worried about your processing time or impact on your server then
i guess you can pick any time you want but preferably something overnight and then on
top of that preferably a time that doesn't clash with your collect scheduled tasks for example and
that way you can sort of clean up after itself the divider character we don't need to change you can
leave that there screen width we also don't really need to change the config path so that's going to
be our app data location make sure that matches what you want and that's pretty much it those are
the options that we have to configure everything else is left as is once you're ready go ahead and
click apply now under our docker tab we can see the application is here the docker container is
there we'll left click and click start or if you've got yours off the store then it should
already be started however it may stop and the reason is it may not have a config file the other
thing you might notice is that even if we run it and click on logs there's nothing going to
be in the logs here and the reason is because it's actually waiting to execute the script at the time
that you have set but this can make it difficult when troubleshooting because we can't actually see
where it might be stuck if the script was to run so what we've explained in our documentation
if necessary is to left click click on the console and you can paste this command python
plex metamanager.pi python r that will then execute the script manually and then if there
is anything wrong with your config then it will be able to tell you and you'll be able to see it
so let's say we've got that going that's fine nothing's really going to happen just yet so what
we actually need to do then is stop the container so now we're going to navigate to our folder
the appdata folder that we created for the plex metamanager app now in here there are three files
that we need to create one is the config.yml one is movies.yml and the final one is tv.yml now on
our documentation we've actually got examples for you so let's go and have a look at those now if
you're following our documentation you'll notice that on the sidebar we've got the configs there
so let's start with configuration file so this will be our config.yml as we've described in the
top here as we've written be sure to update all the fields relevant to your environment
including but not limited to all these parts so of course instead of having hashes for a token
make sure you're putting in the correct tokens but let's go through it together and i'll help explain
what it's doing so as we cruise through the file we're going to be looking at these things here
so this is our libraries this is where we're mapping the libraries that we have this needs
to match the name of your library in plex so in myplex environment the movies library is called
movies and tv is just tv so in here we then have a file that's going to be the file that we have
to create and it's where it's referenced so config at this stage if you followed our setup is our app
data folder so the root folder is app data slash plex meta then we have the movies.yml file in
there we're then also saying we want to include these lists as well now what are these lists if
you go to the github they've got some template lists of metadata that you can use so if you
don't want to set up your own you can use these template ones that other people have created and
added to the repository which is really cool so there are actually different types of ones you can
get on there different ones that you might want to use so this is pretty customizable i wouldn't
say you have to use these sources i'm just giving you a standardized list that you can use
and this comes from the original template so in here we've got movie charts studios imdb genres
and people and what it's saying is anything in our movies yml we want as well as these the same
goes for tv so there's our tv.yml and we also wanted to show charts and networks for example
then we get into some settings so what kind of settings you want to change or modify there is a
whole list here that can be amended for your setup now there are plenty of settings here and i highly
recommend you read the official documentation just to make sure you understand each particular
function usually the name is pretty suggestive of what the parameter will do but i highly recommend
you still read it anyway so once you're happy with all that this one here again i've tested this
myself and i've had no issues myself so if you're happy to use this this is what we're providing
but if you'd like to change it just make sure you understand what's going on under plex we want our
url so make sure you configure your plex url with the port then you will need your plex
token now there's a variety of different ways to get your plex token so the best and easiest
way i've found is to go into an item let's say this one here click the three dots go to get info
click on view xml once it opens in the url bar go all the way to the end and you'll see your plex
token at the end add the plex token in here and then keep moving on the next thing we've got is
the the movie database so i highly recommend you create a free account there create an api key and
add that in here for yourself tortoli same applies there make sure the url and the api matches then
do the same for radar with radar and sonar it's really important that the root folder location
as well as the quality profiles match exactly what's in your application so this is the quality
profile i use and this is what it's called so i spell it exactly as is with spaces and all and
that's our root folder path inside of radar same applies to sonar make sure you do that as well and
then you've got tracked so if you wanted to use tracked which we'll explain to you shortly then
you will need your client id and client secret if i go back to the main page here for documentation
we've also listed how to create the tracked api so that's what you put in that's what you put into
the redirect uri click save and it will give you your id and secret the next two files we have some
different versions for you so the first version is what i'm using and then the second version
here is from our community member drazeezy so big thank you goes to drazeezy for sharing his config
and helping actually create this documentation quite often we'll ask the community if anyone is
knowledgeable on a particular subject and wants to help create the documentation and that just means
we can help better represent what the community understands and what the community wants to see
so thank you very much for your contribution we really appreciate it so here's what our tv
yml looks like now in here there's nothing that needs to reference the sonar or anything like
that however you might want to change certain names of things for example if you wanted this
collection to be called you know uh ibra core popular then you might want to change that to
ibra call popular and as you roll down then you can see all the stuff that's in this file now
like i said if you have something that's not part of the original templates but you want to set it
yourself this is how you do it you've got the emmy winners for example register as a template then it
asks what the list is that we're using so then it's basically got a url directly to that list
and the summary is the description that people see when they click on the collection now if we
look at drizzy's tv config you can see it's a lot more cleaned up and you know very specific to what
his interests are so as we can see here we've got template studio collection there's the different
studio collections and general collections that he's got in there we've also then added editing
tv series metadata so in this yaml you can see how to sort titles are set for multiple shows as well
as adding custom names and summaries for each of their seasons so as you can see you can customize
it the way you like and have it reference that data in multiple levels here's some extra examples
we've provided for you as well again thanks to drizzy he wrote these parts up then there's
also setting up custom tv episode orders so if you had a specific order that you wanted something to
show up in plex it will actually override plex's automated metadata agent so it is quite a powerful
application and that's why you need to be very careful because it can mess up your library if
you are not careful after tv setup then we've got our movies config and this will be our movies.yml
and the same thing applies guys we've got a template here for you to use and if you
like it use it if you want to customize it go for it drazeezy also added his as well there is one
extra thing that really stood out to us from jazzy that we really appreciated and that's this holiday
movie collection so if you want for example to have lists run for holidays a collection
that's just for holidays for example christmas and every year you want it to refresh for christmas
and have you know top trending christmas movies or whatever the case might be this is the one for you
every season you can just go and say i want this collection shop on my plex user's home page a lot
of instructions there and it's very very detailed so i highly recommend you follow that through
if you're interested in setting up the holiday collections so once you've created our three files
that's the main configuration done now the rest of it is pretty much hopefully
fingers crossed automated so if we scroll down we'll follow our documentation here as it says
so we've gotten up to this step we've created the three files and we've made sure it all matches
what we want if you wanted to use tracked then we need to authenticate it so as it says we'll
stop the container and follow the instructions for either tracked or my anime list and add the
relevant values to your config yml now we've already done that because we've done the file
first so on your first run like i said we'll start it up click on it again and go to the console
once we run this command on the first run it's going to ask you to authenticate with tracked
you click on the link as it says and it will take you to another page to sign in with tracked and
tracked will ask you for your permission in which case you allow it and then the script will pretty
much proceed you only need to do it once and once it's done you're right to go now believe it or
not guys that's pretty much it because if you've configured the files that's going to go ahead and
work but i'm going to show you a couple of other things that are really really important so believe
it or not guys that's pretty much it once you've done this it will start creating your collections
for you so there's a lot of things it can do so let's have a look at the config real quick
and let's have a look at sonar for example you can see there's a few parameters here these are some
important ones so the first one we're going to see is search so do we want when pmm runs and says
it runs a list of imdb's top 250 movies it'll check plex you'll find which of those 250 movies
you already have and put them in a collection let's say 150 of those movies are missing do we
want that to be added to radar and then do we want radar to go ahead and search for it the other way
around is do we have content in plex that's not in radar and not in sonar so then it will actually
allow you to add that content to radar and sonar you never say do you want it to be monitored
you know maybe you wanted to add something but not actually monitor it we can do that
so we've got add which is false and then we've got monitor and then we have search so you have
all three levels there as separate parameters and that the script can actually run for us
so using this particular config file that i've used it actually took me about three hours on the
first run and about two hours on the second run after doing all the renaming that i needed to do
so it can take some time but if we have a look here under movies we've got our collections and
then on the tv we've also got our collections too now if you're a plex user and you want these
collections to show up on your user's home pages the process is pretty simple go to the collections
view in the three dots section here we'll click it click on visible on and then pick where you'd
like the collection to show up once you've ticked these three boxes if we then go to settings go to
libraries then under the libraries if we click on manage recommendations these are the lists that
we've created from this point you can then you know change the order that you want them to appear
in or whether you want them on just your home screen or your user's home screens for example
so if we go back to home we can see all of our collections that we've created right here so
another good one for example would be doing that for the christmas collection so if you wanted all
your christmas movies you know maybe the 1st of december you could go in and assign that to your
users so it shows up on their home page you've got control of that and you can manage it the
way you like and i mean as you can see it really gives the user a better experience with plex and
makes it feel a lot more like the big names for example netflix where you can actually break down
into different categories and pick ones that you like you know in our scenario we've got even by
studios we've then got our genres we've then even got by actors you can go by directors producers
whatever you want however you want to set it up so guys that was plex meta manager i hope you really
enjoyed it i was wrapped when i stumbled across it last week and really put some time into it
and spoke with our community i think it really deserves some attention it isn't the simplest
thing to understand at first but as usual here at ibra cook we try to make it as easy as possible
for you guys to pick it up where we might have struggled so i hope this video got you going and
got your library looking really really nice if you have any more tips for pmm that you think others
should know please drop it in the comments below we'd really appreciate it please also feel free to
join us in our discord we'd love to have you there we're going to keep the content coming and we have
a lot of updates coming up we're especially looking for ways to improve our documentation
uh as well as finding all of our different ibra corp services so that's all the work in progress
thank you very much for watching and we'll see you in the next hebrew hall video