A picture is worth a thousand words (Newbie)

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I have just re-named 1900 movie filenames one by one and checked each one is matched to the right movie. Split into 4 alphabetical folders, taking care to name files correctly. Do you know how long that took!!!

Last folder has 390 titles prefixed with “The”. Once loaded to Plex, 380 of these had “The” missing from the 2nd title. All of these appeared in the wrong place alphabetically!! I have now edited each one and locked the titles. The same thing happens with the prefix “A”

This can’t be right!!!

I would appreciate any advice!

The standard rule for sorting titles in English is to skip “A”, “An”, and “The”.

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As darcilicious mentioned, this is standard practice. Otherwise a big portion of your items will all get collected under the letters A and T. Which then fails to make them easier to navigate to using the index letters, because once you’ve jumped to e.g. “T”, you may have to scroll through an awful lot of movies before eventually reaching your target.
If you are still convinced that your way is better, see: Always missing "The" "El" "Der" "Die" "Das" - #3 by OttoKerner

Tip: Filebot

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I’m always open to advice and I’m far from convinced that I’m right. Having read a few posts and watched a few YouTube video. It seemed to suggest it was critical that the movies were named correctly. Even suggesting using some bot? I just thought, “If that’s the way it’s got to be, I’ll just get on with it”. Unfortunately I was totally ignorant about the “A” “An” and “The”

So it’s ok to just miss them out?!! Que sera sera?!!

If that’s the way it is, then that’s the way I’ll do it! (Wish I’d known before!!)

Thanks for the advice.

Not sure what you mean here.
Yes, naming is important.

I need to re-name:

“M:\Movies n_the_d\The Beautiful Country (2004).mp4.MP4”

“M:\Movies n_the_d\The Beguiled (2017).mp4.mp4”

“M:\Movies n_the_d\The Best of Me (2014).mp4.MP4”

“M:\Movies n_the_d\The Bank Job (2008).mp4.mp4”

“M:\Movies n_the_d\The Beach (2000).mp4.mp4”

As:

“M:\Movies n_the_d\Beautiful Country (2004).mp4.MP4”

“M:\Movies n_the_d\Beguiled (2017).mp4.mp4”

“M:\Movies n_the_d\Best of Me (2014).mp4.MP4”

“M:\Movies n_the_d\Bank Job (2008).mp4.mp4”

“M:\Movies n_the_d\Beach (2000).mp4.mp4”

Etc. Etc.

No, absolutely not.
You need to use the official title of the movie. It it contains an “A” or “The”, you include it of course into the file name.

The “Sort Title” is separate from the Title. Plex will generate it automatically.

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That is what I did. But plex was omitting “The” from the sort title.
Then “The Warriors” was getting thrown to the end as if it was being alphabetically recognised as “Warriors”
Once I had edited the sort title to include “the” it appeared in the correct place alphabetically.

Yes, and we explained above that this is intended functionality and why it is made that way.
And I linked a way to change it.

I overthink things sometimes, my apologies.

To recap:

Enter titles correctly to include “The” etc.

Don’t adjust the sort title.

Then:

“The big Switch” will appear with the B’s

“The Cassandra Crossing” in the C’s

“The Experiment” in the E’s

Etc. Etc.

We lose the imbalance with too many “The” “A” Etc!

If I want to find:

The Delinquents – I look in “D”

The Italian Job – I look in “I”

Etc. Etc

Thank you for your kind advice

Precisely

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“This is the way”

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if you have large library, sometimes the ‘search’ is faster than trying to navigate down many letters or libraries.

Only from Plexweb/Other.
The 700 Clicks required to ‘Search’ on devices (the ones I own) - is a Real and Present Danger (of Rage) in the Plexiverse (not that anything can really be done about it).

IF the ‘Letter Stack’ was on the same side of the window as the Starting Point - or Heaven Forbid - the ‘A’ letter in the stack was actually the starting point - we could get to the browsing bit a bunch of clicks sooner… that would be nice - yet to be realized, but nice.

NONE of these ‘features’ or ‘shortcomings’ can even be enjoyed - without correct and proper file naming and structuring. Before you can begin to loathe Plex properly, you first have to set it up right…lol

huh?

from the main screen at least, search is just a couple clicks up/over, and if I know what I want, that is definately faster than scrolling down to the applicable library, over to the library tab, and down the list (even if using the jump letters).

I use it all the time on roku and shield.

Of course if I don’t know what I want, then I’m usually browsing the many hubs I put on the home page, then if necessary go the recommended pages of a movie/tv library.

~90% of the time I never leave the home page.
~5% of the time I may use search to go directly to something
~5% anything else that doesn’t fall into the above

Yea, it’s easy enough to click 10 times to get to the search area - then the searching begins - which basically means I don’t ‘Search’ on devices armed with it’s ‘Remote’.

Isn’t the goal in Plex:
to be completely overwhelmed by your media and when you find something you didn’t know you had - you watch it?

That’s what I do!

:wink:

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I love setting up playlists for media I forgot I had or using friends shares. With large Libraries I find it very useful.

which is one reason why I don’t go deep diving, and rely on the hubs to surface interesting content.

continue/on deck/recently added + top unplayed movies + rediscover (partially watched shows) + start watching/top rated tv (not sure what the difference is there).

and recently played movies/shows, so I don’t have to go into the library to rewatch something.

plus other similar hubs from shared servers are enough to keep me on the home screen most of the time.

Hubs. Learn em, love em.

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I really love the hubs on my Roku - that show me the same dam Alpha list they’ve been showing me since 1943, but yea… that’s a ‘feature’ that sometimes can be helpful.

hmm, I will have to double check the roku, but I thought that was fixed.

its definitely random on the shield.