End of 3rd Party Plugin Support

[Fribb]

On July 15th, Plex announced the discontinuation of the 3rd Party Plugins, for good this time.

Since the discontinuation of Plugins back in 2018, Scanners and Metadata Agents have been exempt from this because of their more integrated use with your Libraries. So this deprecation only affected Plugins like WebTools, ExportTools or the Unofficial AppStore.

But with this announcement, it will impact everything 3rd Party related including Scanners and Metadata Agents.

The worst part is that the announcement also doesn't give a roadmap or "transition path" for those 3rd Party scanners and metadata agents. All they say is that they "are working on a solution".

https://forums.plex.tv/t/important-information-for-users-running-plex-media-server-on-nvidia-shield-devices/883484

[Tama47]

Is not updating the plex server to version 1.41.0 a viable workaround?

[Fribb]

Yes, this would be the temporary workaround for this.

But there are some caveats,

1. Clients that you use would still automatically update and they would, at some point, not be compatible anymore. This might not be for a while but it should be kept in mind
2. not updating your software, especially those that are accessible from the internet (like Plex remote access) could leave you open for some vulnerability exploits (if there are any and they are known).

This also only Applies to Users that run their Plex Server from an Nvidia Shield, with Version 1.41.0 that should go into Beta at the end of August 2024.

[ericflix]

Even though this only impacts Plex on Nvidia Shield, and I am sure next few months it will hit all versions. Is there any chance of future work on the MAL plugin for Jellyfin you played around with a few years ago (jellyfin-plugin-myanimelist)? I'd rather move all my anime to Jellyfin then have to rely on the Plex meta agent that has on multiple occasions messed up my TV and Movie libraries.

[Fribb]

Correct, this only impacts the Nvidia Shield in the first phase and then only the 1.41.0 Beta which will be released end of the month. So over the next couple of months, we will see the first fallout from this.

As for the Jellyfin Plugin, I don't think so. While my Python knowledge is severely limited because I only use it for the Agent, my C# knowledge is even more limited. I learned it and, as a Java Developer, is closer to what I know, everything around it is fairly new and unfamiliar to me. The bigger problem, which was also the reason I put the Jellyfin Plugin on ice is that the documentation of anything related to plugins is non-existent, or at least was when I tried to develop the Plugin. You were redirected to the Matrix chat to get help but your questions were drowned out by other questions. Unless the documentation has significantly improved, which I would assume that it didn't, I would be in the same problem as before.

Not to mention that Jellyfin doesn't support custom resolvers like Plex does with their Scanners. The Feature request still only has 5 upvotes which is already 2 years old while the underlying discussion of it is already 5 years old. So Unless someone picks that up and implements this, you will still be bound to the general season organization structure. And then you can directly just use the other Plugins in Jellyfin.

Still, with this announcement, they did say that they are working on a solution and that they won't fully remove the Python-based plugins without a "viable alternative".

Unfortunately, scanners might be a bit more complicated since there is no plan to support those anymore. Unless Plex decides that they extend their built-in scanners to be more flexible "if the need arises".

With all of that being said, the overall thing to take away here is that I hope that they deliver what they say and that they deliver a viable alternative for 3rd party agents. Hopefully, this also includes the scanners.

Only if they don't do that and whatever they deliver is so bad that it isn't "viable", then I might look more closely into Jellyfin as an alternative. But, again, there are, at least for me, too many pieces that rub me the wrong way with Jellyfin that it is not an alternative to me.

Unfortunately, we have to wait and see and roll back to a working version if we need to, to keep using the 3rd Party Agents.

[ericflix]

Sad news... As Jellyfin does support NFO files. Maybe a MAL plugin for TMM or a separate Java app that do renaming, pulling support files and generating NFO files for series/OVA/movies and episodes for series/OVA?

[Fribb]

I think that such a thing is rather unlikely. This would be a fairly big Project that you would have to manage and, especially the renaming part, already exists in a far better capacity already, I don't think that there needs yet another renamer for this.

I mean, I currently use ShokoServer with the ScriptRenamer which works in most cases even with MyAnimeList (though, since the source is AniDB, their naming could include the year of the release which then requires the .match file for my Agent)

Creating the NFO files could be an Idea but I would consider this more of a workaround for the "I can't get the Plugin to work". The better way would be to just do the Plugin. IIRC, I already could and did get Metadata from the Plugin into my Jellyfin test server but the overall Hurdles I had to navigate and my general lack of understanding with Jellyfin, the non-existent documentation, the lack of help and my general lack of knowledge with C# and how this all works killed the motivation for me.

I mean, I also thought about some Standalone Project that then manages your Anime Metadata and writes them to your Plex server through the API but it doesn't look like this is possible. And then there would have been the question about how that Standalone project knows when you add a new item to your library to search and update that item.

On the other hand, maybe Emby could be a working alternative. It looks like it has support for MyAnimeList and also integrated a "flattened" view of a single-season show. However, just like Plex, you get a fairly downsized feature list with the free Version and would need to pay for everything. This would be fine for me since the features do look great. There also seems to be an absolute episode ordering that is available there.

I don't know, I haven't really made a decision about this yet. I want to wait for Plex to present their alternative first before I explore other avenues to make a decision.