3 issues (Subtitles, Split Apart, Collections)

General Discussions
1

I have a “Movies 3D” library, which is defined to be a Plex Movies library. Among many movies there, I have:

  • Hobbit, The (1) - An Unexpected Journey (3D) (part 1) (Extended Edition) (2012) (1.6.2) (H-SBS).mkv
  • Hobbit, The (1) - An Unexpected Journey (3D) (part 2) (Extended Edition) (2012) (1.6.2) (H-SBS).mkv

And I have the same pairs for the other two movies (6 MKV files total).

Plex automatically joined these pairs together to form three single movies. That would normally be fine with me, except that when we were watching with subtitles, when the second half of the first movie began (you could tell when it began because the movie was interrupted by the Plex caching progress display screen), the subtitles no longer worked during the second part. I paused and went into the stream menu, and sure enough the subtitle track was selected. I turned it off, unpaused, then paused again, turned it back on, played again, and still the subtitles didn’t work. It doesn’t appear subtitles work in second parts of “joined” movies. (My LG TV handles all the 3D stuff, so the fact that these are 3D movies is irrelevant.)

I tried to Split Apart the movies, but alas, that option is missing for all three of these movies. Let me remind everyone that this is indeed a standard movie library. The option is supposed to be available for movie libraries. The “Split Apart” option is just missing. The popup menu for the 3-dot overflow options displays with no problems (none of the menu is missing - it displays fully on the screen).

So, the next logical step for me was to “Unmatch” the movie. Surely I could get Plex to see two different movies at that point. NO! Of course not. Why on Earth would that work. After “unmatching” the movie, Plex still insisted on keeping these two files married until death do they part… at this point I doubt that even Dr. Manhattan could get around the bulletproof file merging automation of Plex coders.

Finally, I tried renaming each of the files: I replaced “Part 1” with “first” and “Part 2” with “second” and had Plex rescan my files. Finally, this worked! It appears I am more powerful than Dr. Manhattan.

Anyway, 1) subtitles should work in second parts of joined files, 2) the Split Apart option shouldn’t disappear in movie libraries, and 3)… there is more…

Even though Collections were already disabled for this library, Plex still apparently felt compelled to form a Hobbit collection that I just now deleted since I’m not a fan of Collections.

Anyway, I was obviously able to work around all this stuff by unmatching and renaming files, but now these movies don’t have any meta information - I had to provide titles and movie covers manually for each file. I hope these bugs can be fixed soon.

3

1: Interesting issue. Are the subtitles built into the file, or an external subtitle file? Try the opposite kind to see if that works for the file.
-Either way, I’d say legit bug.

2: Split apart option is for when multiple copies of a single file are detected. Some people like having the same file, but in different resolutions, and leave it up to the viewer to pick if they want a smaller one. (Maybe the server can pick the different version for you depending on the capabilities of the device?). It’s not for if you have a split video file, which is occuring here. You came upon the correct option, which is to change the keyword (Part 2) to something else. The article on how to name movie files has a section on the keywords Plex recognizes and seamlessly combines them into a single entry.

If we cannot get subtitles to work in multiple-file entries by resolving issue #1, then for now match both files back to the movie. At this point Plex might think they are two different versions and recombine them, but since you aren’t using the keywords in the above article you will be able to use the Split Apart feature. This allows them to both automatically get the metadata for the movie, but you can edit them to put in a (Part 1) and (Part 2) into the title for your own information on which one to play first.

3: Double-check that you have collections disabled. EDIT the library, and go to the ADVANCED section. Scroll to near the bottom of this page, there should be a Minimum automatic collection size drop-down box. Check to see if that is disabled INSTEAD OF the Collections drop down further down. THAT Collections drop down is just to set whether collections will show in the main Library tab or not, it doesn’t keep Plex from automatically creating collections if you add in enough movies that are part of a set.

I do think they need to organize the edit library section to keep those two entries for collections next to eachother, AS WELL AS renaming the first one to indicate it is for automatic creation of collections. The drop-down pick of Disabled next to the word Collections does seem at a quick glance to think it means you disabled creating collections entirely.

4

  1. The subtitles are built into the file. If I didn’t find the workaround I already did, I might take the time to do this, but I’m not willing to pour more time into this now that I’ve worked around it. But as you said, either way it’s a legit bug that needs to be fixed. I really just posted for the purpose of reporting the bug to Plex.

  2. Split apart isn’t an option, but I strongly feel it should be an option in this case. Any time software automates some kind of behavior, that’s fine, but at the very least the user should have the option to undo that assumed behavior.

  3. I don’t have a “Minimum automatic collection size” option at all there. These are all of the options that appear (in order of appearance):

  • Scanner
  • Agent
  • Use collection info…
  • Prefer artwork…
  • Include adult content
  • Country (used for release…)
  • Visibility
  • Enable Cinema Trailers
  • Enable video preview thumbnails
  • (Red Delete Preview Thumbnails button)
  • Collections (currently disabled)
5

As per divideby0’s remark.

Based on your current naming, there’s nothing to split up. Splitting an item apart will produce dedicated library items for each underlying set of files. In your case you’re not using different quality versions of the same movie but you named them to be considered a set of “stacked” files (files to be played in sequence). Therefore there’s no option to split those apart.

When it comes to stacked files – can you verify the tracks in your individual files are (a) the same and (b) in the exact same sequence in both files?

6
  1. Odd. My library options are much more numerous. What server version are you on? If it’s too out of date, we might be seeing different interfaces.

I see that a lot of features of the library disappear when I use a different scanner. Using the current up-to-date scanner called Plex Movie, I have:
-Scanner
-Agent
-Visibility
-Enable Cinema Trailers
-Certification country
-Use original titles
-Prefer artwork based on library language
-Use local assets
-Prefer local metadata
-Find Extras
-Only show trailers
-Allow red band trailers
-Localized subtitles
-Include adult content
-Minimum automatic collection size (still shows even if I disable collections below)
-Ratings source
-Enable video preview thumbnails
-[DELETE PREVIEW THUMBNAILS] button
-Collections
-Ad detection

Using the Plex Movie Scanner, the agent for it changes to the Personal Media agent, which strips a lot of the options you don’t see. Possibly because this media is not matched against an online source (TheMovieDB), they aren’t relevant. In fact, Minimum automatic collection size makes no sense, since these files aren’t matched against TheMovieDB’s database, which includes collection info.

7

From the list it seems the OP’s library is still set to use a legacy agent (e.g. The Movie Database or Plex Movie (legacy))

8

tom80H, as I already said in the post before you replied, I think there should still be an option to split apart “stacked” files as you call them. I’m sure most prefer it the other way, but I actually prefer to have Hobbit movies parts A and B separated.

To divideby0 (shall I just call you Undefined?) - my server version is 4.63.0. I changed the library scanner to Plex Movie. I’m hoping this doesn’t carry any unforseen consequences… I want to say that I had it set to Plex Movie a long time ago, and then for some reason I changed it back. I guess I’ll find out! Thanks for the Collections tip.