I would like to request an enhancement that relates to file/folder naming. Currently, you allow for naming files/folders as such:
/Movies/MovieName (release year)/MovieName (release year).ext (from the support page: Naming and organizing your Movie files | Plex Support)
An example you give is: Batman Begins (2005) {imdb-tt0372784}.mp4
This is the way I do my files/folders. What I would like to do is be able to add a “Sort Title” identifier to the file name. In my case, I like to keep all the movies that begin with the word “The” grouped in the T’s. If Plex could read the folder/file name and hard code the “Sort Title” then I won’t have to go in after every upload and manually correct the “Sort Title”. I thought something like: “The Lorax (2012) {imdb-tt1482459}”, could be changed to: “!The Lorax! (2012) {imdb-tt1482459}”. In my example the exclamation point denotes what I want inserted into the “Sort Title” of the movie. Of course your delimiter may vary. I don’t care what the “Title” of the movies shows, it can be either “Lorax” or “The Lorax”. I’m just asking for the “Sort Title” enhancement. If needed, I guess you could make the naming as follows: Title !Sort Title! (Year) {imdb-tt####}.
Thanks
If you want to disable Plex’s automatic “Sort Title” functionality, which excludes “A”, “An”, and “The” when sorting for presentation in the Library, you can do so.
Plex should automatically eliminate articles (A, The, An, etc.) from the Sort Title fields now. If that isn’t happening for you, you need to look for a reason why it isn’t.
Thanks for the info. My Preferences.xml file did not have the line: ArticleStrings = "", so I added it at the end of the file. I hope this is the answer to my request. However, I’m confused as to why PMS is removing words like A & The, without this entry being in my Preferences.xml? Next time I upload a movie with “The” in the title I guess I’ll find out if adding the value worked or not.
But, still allowing for predefined “Sort Titles” might be a nice feature. Yes, I’m mainly working on titles beginning with the word “The”, but then I thought about other uses, such as…
What if I want all my James Bond movies sorted together? During the naming of the files/folders I could include (to use my example) !james bond 1965!.. !james bond 1966!.. !james bond 1967!.., etc.
Or
!star wars 01!.., !star wars 02!.., !star wars 03!.., etc.
My frustration was the missing word “The”, but the feature request to import a “Sort Title” from the file/folder name has other valid (in my opinion) reasons.
By default Plex removes articles and follows normal English sorting rules.
So when you add the “empty” entry you’re overriding that and telling it NOT to remove any articles.
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I understand your other point, and I disagree. I personally don’t think file and directory names are the right place to encode that sort of “presentation” or “relationship” data.
For instance, what’s the right order to watch Star Wars? What’s the first movie named? Ordering is a level “above” the movie, not a property of the movie itself.
Volts,
Thanks. I do agree with you, however after spending a considerable amount of time ripping my “Star Wars” collection, giving the files and folders the correct naming structure. I then had to go into Plex and update the “Sort Title” on each film to show in the order I want them sorted in. If I were able to add the “Sort Title” while doing the naming of the files/folders, it would just save me one step. Which would thus, save me time. I don’t know how long it took to find all the movies, update the “Sort Title” and move to the next movie when I did “Star Wars” and my “James Bond” collection.
Thanks for agreeing it’s a valid suggestion. I wish there was a better way than having it in the name of the file/folder, but unless they can read an XML file located somewhere, that I could fill out, I’m stumped as to what the best solution would be.
I don’t know much about the “Collection” feature, but from what I do know, it still requires some manual work after the titles are uploaded. I’m just saying that being able to set how I want them sorted, without a lot of setup work in the GUI, would be nice. Since I have my video file and have to name it accordingly (title (year) {imdb#}), if I could also set my sort title, it would save me some manual work after the file gets uploaded into PMS. Work the file once, via the file name, instead of at least twice (once on the file, once to update the sort title, and maybe a third time to add it to a collection).
I’m all about being lazy, and working the file once sounds better than working it two or more times.
Again, just a thought for a future enhancement if it ever happens, who knows.
