"Behind The Scenes" folder issues

Full disclosure:

  1. I use Media Center Manager and have it’s agent set up for the Metadata and local assets management.
    (http://www.mediacentermaster.com/)

  2. I am running the DVR Beta 1.2.0.2838

I want to start adding the extras that come on the bluray disks
My path is d:\Movies\Movie Title (year)\Movie Title (year).mkv
And:
d:\Movies\Movie Title (year)\Movie Title (year)\Behind The Scenes\Movie Title (year) - Gag Reel.mkv
d:\Movies\Movie Title (year)\Movie Title (year)\Behind The Scenes\Movie Title (year) - Interviews.mkv
Both Extras show up as “Recently Added Movies” and as entries in the Movies page next to the movie itself. They do not show up inside the specific movie’s page like I would expect.
What am I missing?

I use Media Center Manager and have it’s agent set up for the Metadata and local assets management.

If you replace the scanners and metadata agents of Plex with a 3rd party solution, I assume nothing is guaranteed to work as described in the documentation.
Go into the properties of your movie library and tell what it says for ‘Scanner’ and ‘Agent’ on the ‘Advanced’ tab.

d:\Movies\Movie Title (year)\Movie Title (year)\Behind The Scenes\Movie Title (year) - Gag Reel.mkv

I’d say this is one folder too much.
It is supposed to work like this:

d:\
   Movies\  <-- this folder points the library to
      Movie Title (year)\
         Movie Title (year).mkv
         Behind The Scenes\
            Gag Reel.mkv
            Interviews.mkv

You cannot mix the ‘subfolder method’ described above with the ‘file name suffix method’, which works like this:

d:\
   Movies\ <-- this folder points the library to
      Movie Title (year)\
         Movie Title (year).mkv
         Gag Reel-behindthescenes.mkv
         Interviews-behindthescenes.mkv

If you have different ‘versions’ of the main movie in the folder, make sure they are all ‘matched’ with the same metadata agent, or all your local extras get ignored.
So the following may turn out problematic, especially if the different versions were added at different times:

d:\
   Movies\  <-- this folder points the library to
      Movie Title (year)\
         Movie Title (year) - 1080p.mkv
         Movie Title (year) - SD.mkv
         Behind The Scenes\
            Gag Reel.mkv
            Interviews.mkv

My bad, The “Behind The Scenes” folder is a subfolder of the movie, not a sub sub folder (copy paste error on the users part)
Everything is checked and the Scanner is set to “Plex Movie Scanner”. The Agent is set to “Media Center Master”.
“Use local metadata provided by Media Center Master” is also checked under “Agent”

I’m a “subfolder method” kind of a guy. Question, do ALL subfolders under each movie have to be called the same? as in “D:\Movies\Movie Name (year)\Behind The Scenes”
I know I have subfolders called “Extras” for other different movies. Should I stay with “Behind The Scenes” for every movie I add extras to?

I usually only get single movies, If I do have a normal movie and it’s 3D version, I have a separate folder on the OS and a separate library for them in Plex.

I REALLY appreciate your help with this!!

@FredBrodeur said:
Everything is checked and the Scanner is set to “Plex Movie Scanner”. The Agent is set to “Media Center Master”.
“Use local metadata provided by Media Center Master” is also checked under “Agent”

I have Zero experience with MCM, so I don’t know how the use of its custom Agent influences the recognition of local extras.
It is pretty possible that MCM doesn’t know about them yet - so whenever you use MCM, local extras may not work at all.

I’m a “subfolder method” kind of a guy. Question, do ALL subfolders under each movie have to be called the same? as in “D:\Movies\Movie Name (year)\Behind The Scenes”
I know I have subfolders called “Extras” for other different movies. Should I stay with “Behind The Scenes” for every movie I add extras to?

Extras won’t work. Everything in a folder called Extras is completely ignored by Plex.

There is a list of possible folder names, which then serve to ‘group’ the extras in the clients
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200220677-Local-Media-Assets-Movies
(scroll down to ‘Organized in Subdirectories’)

The above is achieved with the ‘filename suffix method’:

Wow! It took me two days to go through 874 folders, rename “Extras” folders to “Behind The Scenes” and adding “Interviews” and “Featurettes” folders per the link you gave me. I also was able to correct some subtitle files that were’n’t named right while I was at it.
One thing I noticed was that when I delete a movie via Plex, the folder and all associated files to that movie were not deleted. So I had a lot of folders with a lot of files just taking up space on my NAS. This is a separate issue.
I’ll reboot the Plex server on Sunday morning and retry the “Behind The Scenes” in the individual movie home pages.
Thanks again for helping me with this, really appreciate it.

Rebooting didn’t help so I downloaded the newest non Beta version of Plex, Installed it on my Synology NAS and fired it up again. No joy. So I’ve been trying different agent and scanner configurations and I still don’t see my subdirectory based files in the movie page. I’m going to move to inline so I’ll be back in a few days I guess…

Did you refresh your library after you did all the renaming?

@FredBrodeur said:
I’m going to move to inline so I’ll be back in a few days I guess…

Why not trying with one movie first? This is done in mere minutes.

As I said above: the reason why it doesn’t work may be your use of the MCM agent.

SO!!! Have some good news and some bad news.
My 3D, 4K and Sci Fi folders are now all “inline” using the ‘filename suffix method’ and WORKING!!! Thanks OttoKerner!!!

I didn’t do just one movie because I read “You can’t combine the methods”

My Movies folder is a little weird, some are showing Extras and some are not working. Some have no summary and other have summaries, even though there are both movie.xml files and movie title.xml files that have summary info in them.

Adventures in Babysitting (2016) no, summary
Bad Moms (2016) no, summary
Bubba Ho-tep (2002) no, summary
Chef (2014) maybe deleted scene may not be local one
Despicable Me (2010) no, no summary
Despicable Me 2 (2013) YES, no summary
Hancock (2008) YES, no summary
Horrible Bosses (2011) no, no summary
Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014) no, no summary
Mystic River (2003) no, summary
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) no, summary
Pulp Fiction (1994) no, summary
The Matrix (1999) no, no summary
The Matrix Reloaded (2003) no, no summary
The Matrix Revolutions (2003) no, no summary
The Monuments Men (2014) no, no summary
The X Files (1998) YES, no summary
The X Files, I Want to Believe (2008) YES, no summary
Transformers (2007) no, summary
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) no, summary
Transformers:Dark of the Moon (2015) YES, no summary
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) no, summary

Maybe I’ll let it rest for a day…

@FredBrodeur said:
My Movies folder is a little weird, some are showing Extras and some are not working. Some have no summary and other have summaries, even though there are both movie.xml files and movie title.xml files that have summary info in them.
Plex doesn’t read XML files, so having these does no purpose.

@FredBrodeur said:
I didn’t do just one movie because I read “You can’t combine the methods”

I meant ‘You can’t combine the methods within the subfolder of one movie’.
Sorry, if I wasn’t clear.

@MovieFan.Plex said:
Plex doesn’t read XML files, so having these does no purpose.

By default, it doesn’t.
Unless you use the MCM agent, but then you might lose the local extras again…

When using the default Plex agent, Plex does actually read XML files, but it fetches only one thing from them: the IMDb ID of the movie (if present).
This will then be used to improve the ‘matching’ accuracy of the movie (so Plex fetches metadata for the right movie from its online servers.)

So for the movies that have no summary, take a look at their Plex XML info.

If a movie has a guid=idmb.... then it is matched with the ‘Plex Movie’ agent (the Plex default).
In this case, the Plex naming guidelines apply and you might have to verify the proper filename of your movie.

If If a movie has a guid=none then it is unmatched. In this case You should see no metadata at all. (or maybe a title which was read from the embedded title metatag - but this only works for mp4 / m4v files)

I don’t know what it shows in the guid= if you match a movie with your custom MCM agent. This is a 3rd party extension, so all bets are off.

Let’s focus on one movie for now, Bad Moms:
This is the guid line: guid=“com.plexapp.agents.mcm://9c5a71121eef4fe55a195f907185e571f0dbecff?lang=en” librarySectionID=“1” studio=“Merced Media Partners” type=“movie” title=“Bad Moms” originalTitle=“Bad Moms” contentRating=“R” plus a lot more from here.
This is the folder:

I’m also attaching the xml file:
So how do I tell the MCM guy how to fix it so Plex can us the info they collect?

@FredBrodeur said:
guid="com.plexapp.agents.mcm://9c5a71121eef4fe55a195f907185e571f0dbecff?lang=en"

Yes, this tells us that the movie has been matched with the MCM agent. So all that happens is out of Plex’s hand.

So how do I tell the MCM guy how to fix it so Plex can us the info they collect?

I can’t tell you. MCM is not an official partner of Plex.
All I know is that he uses an own agent that doesn’t behave like the Plex default agents.

You can try a Fix Incorrect Match with this movie and switch the agent to the default ‘Plex Movie’ while doing so. This will switch the agent and hopefully Plex will then recognise the extras.

What @OttoKerner said. Check the agent settings for that. Is the local media agent even listed under it?

I will give “Fix Incorrect Match” a try! Who should MCM contact if they want to become an “Official Partner”?

Thanks for the help!

I don’t know if we have any official partners for 3rd party scanners. I would like to think that you found that scanner in https://forums.plex.tv/categories/scanners-and-agents. If the devs of MCM have questions on how to incorporate extras or how to trigger the local media assets agent from in their code, they can post a question in there.

I’ve switched back to Plex Media scanner and now it’s working. Only problem is I now have ~860 movies that are not matched, If I click on match under the triple dots on the left side (No “Fix Incorrect Match” option) I can click on match, then if I switch from auto to Plex Movie, it matches right away and I get the extras downloaded.
But the poster is wiped out and I have to go back in to select a poster for the movie. Is there a way to do this quicker than clicking on 860+ movies?

@FredBrodeur said:
But the poster is wiped out and I have to go back in to select a poster for the movie. Is there a way to do this quicker than clicking on 860+ movies?

Unfortunately not. Plex tries to keep the poster it used before, but the MCM agent somehow set the wrong path to the poster file, so that you only get a blank, now that you switched scanners. You’d have to Plex Dance the movie(s).
(try this first with one single movie).