as i’ve been learning, Plex Media Server can be very particular about file- and folder-naming conventions on movies in my library. i use IMDB as the source to draw data from. i’ve had to fool around a bit on titling to get some movies to populate with data correctly, like the Star Wars episodes for example.
but i have one lingering movie that’s still stumping me. “Death Race 2000.” I’ve manually input the correct release date and year per IMDB data (1975), but no matter how I try to title the movie, e.g., Death Race-2000, the year still shows in Plex as 2000 instead of pulling the correct 1975 from IMDB. That “2000” in the movie’s title is throwing Plex a curve I guess. I’ve also gone into the movie’s metadata and corrected it there, but Plex still won’t budge. It dates the movie as from the year 2000 instead of 1975.
Anyone have a tip for a workaround or solution? I know this might seem pretty mundane, but without the proper data, Plex isn’t able to draw any of the cast, posters, backgrounds, etc.
If you need to keep the technical information, put them in square brackets or after a separator. In the given way you might well impact the matching process with the additional information.
Example:
Death Race 2000 (1975) [1080p].ext <- Plex will ignore content in square brackets
Death Race 2000 (1975) - 1080p.ext <- Plex will consider content after the release year brackets section and after a [space]-[space] as arbitrary text (e.g. used to distinguish multiple versions of the same video, even if the arbitrary text won’t show within Plex)
thx. all my movies have the curly brackets instead of square, but that’s an easy find-and-replace to change them. but i haven’t had any issue with them prior to this. BTW i tried the IMDB title id u suggested & it didn’t do anything.
this might be a bug or something. the metadata won’t refresh. it’s similar to what happened on two movies I had from 1978 – “Superman,” and “Movie Movie.” For some reason, Plex was pulling the data from Superman into Movie Movie, and when I manually edited all the data in Movie Movie myself, it took all that data and overrode the original Superman data. Even after I deleted Movie Movie from my library and tried to refresh the Superman data, it kept the Movie Movie data in Superman’s fields.
Aside from the curly bracket issue, I title all my movies carefully and make sure the metadata in the actual media file is either correct or cleared out (I’ve been using a Mac OS X app called “Kid3” to do simple title and, if necessary, cast data editing).
thk u gentlemen for your kind and helpful replies. the square bracketing seemed to have at least let Plex grab the correct year. although the Plex Metadata Refresh is still not effective but that’s fine b/c I can point to my own posters and backgrounds, and add cast data in the media file’s metadata with Kid3. one out of more than 1,000 movies ain’t too bad so i’m not complaining.
i’ll also perform the Plex Dance. thx again gents. appreciate it!
yes, it can also do basic tagging of movie files too (MP4 format primarily, not so much with MKV). actually, i got a tip from another user on this Forum about it. he used it to add Cast information to movies that had no cast info. there’s a thread on here about enabling Cast editing in Plex, but this was one user’s solution. I use it mainly for title and on rare occasions cast, if there is no IMDB info to pull from. the only downside is that if you input the cast names manually, although it does tie it to the performer’s IMDB photo (if spelled exactly the same, including diacriticals), it doesn’t indicate the name of the character they play in the movie. but i can probably count on one hand out of all my movies the number that required me to add cast info.
Finally figured it out. Gave myself a deserved thump on the head afterward too.
I clicked the “Refresh Metadata” option, available on the lower right side of the movie cover thumbnail on my Movie index page, and though it did nothing, it did bring up the option “Match” the next time I clicked the menu. I clicked “Match” and though it brought up no matches, it did give me the option to search again via my agent, which I did. That search brought up DR2K and once I clicked that as the title to match to, the refresh did take place and all the data was populated correctly.
BTW this is the only way I could also get “Alien3” to work. For some reason, even when I copy-pasted the title from IMDB, I just couldn’t get a match. Something about that SUPERSCRIPT character is not being recognized by Plex, perhaps. Anyway, the “Refresh” then “Match” functions helped me fix “Alien Cubed” as well. Hehe.
Angular brackets are normally a sign for Plex to ignore what’s between them. Having them in a regular title is a problem for sure.
I’d look out for alternate titles of this show and use these.
