I have a separate library for my 4K movies and for most movies in my 4K library, there is a 1080p or lower quality version in a main “Movies” library. I found something strange when i moved this this configuration. If I go into the “4K Movies” library and start playing a movie, the “Continue Watching” section in any client will show the movie that i started watching. Now if i click on the movie from the Continue Watching, it will continue playing the movie from the non-4K movie library. I expected it to continue playing the last version i was playing, which was the 4K version.
i posted the method I use for multiple version and libraries here:
I think of it as a feature, because as far as I can tell, all of the apps that I use, as well as the people I share with, seem to pick the correct version automatically. Some apps apparently don’t have that feature, or it doesn’t always work as expected.
I had already set an option to not show the 4K section in dashboard, recently added, etc. In fact, that’s why the Now Playing is showing the version from the other library. When i set the 4k library to show in the dashboard, then start a movie in the 4k library that also has a different version in another library, i get two of the same movie showing up in the now playing. It’s strange but i guess i can live with it.
Behind the scenes, plex must maintain one database record for the media but multiple records for the different libraries, pointing to the same media entry. The Now Playing must query the locations table for the movie, finds two records and displays two items. Seems like that shouldn’t be the default behavior because i’m only actually playing one video.
The other downside to only maintaining one media entry for the multiple library locations is that the metadata is shared across the two. Changes made to one affect the other and vice versa.
Maybe I don’t understand, but wouldn’t you want to disable the “Show in Dashboard” for your 1080p library?
As I said before, most of the apps I use seem to automatically select the best version automatically, so it doesn’t matter to me which library is showing up on “Continue Watching” Having said that, I don’t have any 4K media, or a device that could play them, so I don’t know if my workaround would apply in this case. It seems to work for playing back by bitrate for remote and local users, but maybe not for specific resolutions. That is, the 4K version might have a lower overall bitrate, even though the quality and resolution is actually higher. Plex might assume, incorrectly, that the higher bitrate is the best version in this case.
No, my 1080p library has over 3000 movies in it. My 4K library is just a handful of 4K UHD discs that i’ve bought and ripped. I put them in a separate library because if found that when i have them in the same library as all my main movies as just a different version, when a remote user tries to stream a movie that has a 4k version, it will transcode the 4k movie instead of transcoding the 1080p version. I have my remote users limited to 720p 4mbps. Transcoding 4k kills my CPU but transcoding 1080p is easy. So in order to prevent this, i’ve put them in a separate library. Plus it makes it very easy to find them when i want to watch them.
I have my 4k library hidden from the dashboard for this reason.
I wish there was a better way that Plex could stack the versions but transcode the lower quality instead of trying to transcode the 4k version. If they had that logic I would combine my libraries.
@WatchTowerPlex said:
I have my 4k library hidden from the dashboard for this reason.
I wish there was a better way that Plex could stack the versions but transcode the lower quality instead of trying to transcode the 4k version. If they had that logic I would combine my libraries.
I wish it would use the lower quality for the transcode as well. I created another topic to discuss this issue.
