Each thing in Plex that can have a rating [movie, show, episode, album, track] has three ratings "boxes" or "fields". Critic, Audience, and User.
The Critic and Audience ratings are typically managed by Plex, pulling from whatever you specify as the ratings source for the library; this is what determines the images that are displayed in the Plex UI. The User rating is the star rating assigned by you to the item.
It's doing this "behind Plex's back", so there can be some seeming inconsistencies in the way things are displayed in the UI. This guide is intended to clear up some of these things.
<h4>Setup</h4>
Here's our starting point if you want to run through this yourself:
Set up a brand new Library with only one movie in it. Ensure the Ratings source on the library is set to Rotten Tomatoes:
*`rating1`, `rating1_image`, `rating2`, `rating2_image` are set to match the ratings that Plex already has assigned to those fields (critic/audience). The order here is arbitrary.
*`rating3` is set to be the user rating and it's image (`rating3_image`) is set to IMDb just because we have to pick something.
*`reapply_overlays` is set to true to ensure that Kometa always updates the overlays as we run things. This should NEVER be required in a typical scenario, it's being done here just as belt-and-suspender insurance.
*`reapply_overlays: true` should NEVER be used in a live/production environment without a very specific reason, make sure to switch this back to `false` when finished.
* Kometa has added those two ratings to the poster using the values already stored with the movie. The icons and values are correctly associated simply because we made sure they are in the config file.
* It gave it an IMDb icon because we told it to in the config file. ([Why does it say 250 instead of IMDb?](#why-do-different-images-appear-for-the-same-source))
* It's displaying 6.0 since 3 stars on a 5-star scale is 60%.
You and I both know that the IMDb rating isn't 6.0, but Kometa is just doing what it's told. Nobody but us humans know where those numbers come from. As an example, let's change the icons to "prove" that Kometa doesn't know or care:
*`reapply_overlays: true` should NEVER be used in a live/production environment without a very specific reason, make sure to switch this back to `false` when finished.
* Note that the existing RT ratings numbers (`93%` and `96%`) display on the poster as `9.3` and `9.6`. This is happening because we just told Kometa that those ratings were IMDb, and IMDb ratings are on a 1-10 scale. Kometa doesn't "know" where those numbers are from, it just does what it's told to do and places the value (critic/audience/user) in that rating box.
* That first overlay showing an IMDb rating of `9.3` is not evidence that Kometa pulled the wrong IMDb rating; it just shows that it has been told to display the number in the critic rating box (whatever that number is) as an IMDb rating. All three of those overlays mean the same thing; Kometa read a number from a field and stuck it on the poster formatted as requested.
Now let's actually update the ratings and push some numbers into those boxes using library operations. We'll start with making that user rating accurate:
*`reapply_overlays: true` should NEVER be used in a live/production environment without a very specific reason, make sure to switch this back to `false` when finished.
*`reapply_overlays: true` should NEVER be used in a live/production environment without a very specific reason, make sure to switch this back to `false` when finished.
Running the above will put the Trakt User's personal rating into the critic box and the TMDb rating into the audience box. Note that we haven't changed the rating images yet.
* under `operations` the attribute `mass_critic_rating_update` was changed to `mdb_trakt` from `trakt_user`. (This step requires MDBList to be configured)
*`reapply_overlays: true` should NEVER be used in a live/production environment without a very specific reason, make sure to switch this back to `false` when finished.
MDBList is not a live reflection of third-party sites such as CommonSense and Trakt. The data on MDBList is often days, weeks and months out of date as it is only periodically refreshed. As such, the data that Kometa applies using `mdb_` operations applies may not be the same as you see if you visit those third-party sources directly.
*`reapply_overlays: true` should NEVER be used in a live/production environment without a very specific reason, make sure to switch this back to `false` when finished.
MDBList is not a live reflection of third-party sites such as CommonSense and Trakt. The data on MDBList is often days, weeks and months out of date as it is only periodically refreshed. As such, the data that Kometa applies using `mdb_` operations applies may not be the same as you see if you visit those third-party sources directly.
This config file is the **only linkage** between the ratings we are setting and the icons we want displayed, as we've seen above.
You can see that the Plex UI still shows the RT icons with the Trakt and TMDb numbers we put into the relevant fields, since again, it has no idea those numbers got changed behind its back.
## Why do different Images appear for the same source?
As seen in the Images above the IMDb rating image says `250` instead of `IMDb` and the Rotten Tomatoes rating images has the certified fresh logo vs their normal logo.
This is because the Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope is in the IMDb Top 250 list as well as being Certified Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes and that gets reflected by the rating image.
