This has been asked a few times, but the answer has always been “you’re doing it wrong”. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t an actual fix or feature that I’m missing…
I have about 900 movie files in a Movie Library, all named “Movie Name.m4v”. In the case of direct sequels, like Cars and Cars 2, those files are named “Cars.m4v” and “Cars 2.m4v” (similarly, “Despicable Me.m4v” and “Despicable Me 2.m4v”, etc.). For some reason, Plex is merging those files. I don’t know why it needs to do this, since they do NOT have the required “pt2” or “Part 2” or any variation of that in the filename or metadata (it does merge Godfather, Godfather Part 2, and Godfather Part 3 though, which makes perfect sense, albeit unwanted sense). Is there any way to disable this feature? I really don’t want to go through and manually rename 900 movie files manually.
You don’t have to rename these movies manually. I use The Renamer to help me rename my media. FileBot is another popular programs. Both of these programs are better at guessing what your movie is and renaming it accordingly. Make sure to include year in Renamer settings, Drag and drop Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 into The Renamer and the files will include the proper year.
I figured that’s what the answer would be, but I don’t think it’s the correct one. I understand that Plex is doing what it’s been written to do, but I would file this under “bug” because the naming convention makes sense for movies with multiple releases, but not for movies that don’t. For instance, Frozen would need the year because there have been multiple movies with that name. Despicable Me should not, and does not, because there’s only ever been one movie released with that name.
Here’s why I think it’s a bug. When Plex parses the name, I believe it evaluates everything before the extension, and if that string ends with a number, it assumes it should merge that file with other files with the same name and a lower number or no number. Having a year in the file name in parentheses tells Plex to not merge the files, which is why people continually recommend having the year… But that doesn’t fix the bug. The files should only be merged if the number at the end of the file name is immediately preceded by “pt” or “part” or “cd”, etc, in accordance with the naming convention. If the letters before the number are NOT those specifically mentioned, it should not try to merge the files.
I understand what you’re saying; however, if you look at the imdb.com, the year is in the title. In the end, I just want Plex to match my movies each and every time - following the naming guide and using a program to rename automatically keeps me from banging my head against the wall.
It is always better, if you want to use Plex, to follow Plex’s naming conventions exactly no matter what you think is better or what you think it “should” be.
Trying to force Plex to conform to your conventions will only result in your frustration and Plex failing to work correctly.
Use The Renamer or FileBot and get the file names correct for Plex and both you and Plex will be happier. Having the year in the filename at the end in parenthesis impacts nothing negatively and allows Plex to work correctly.
Is Plex’s behavior a bug? No. It is the behavior Plex’s developers have chosen and it works pretty well for almost everybody.
You can continue to insist that this a bug with Plex - in the end it doesn’t matter. Emby uses the same movie naming conventions as Plex. I know that if I add the year to file name per Plex or Emby recommendations, it will be matched properly in both Plex and Emby.
I’ve gone through and renamed all of the files to conform to the file naming documentation. Plex STILL stacks movies incorrectly. To restate, I have changed all 900+ of my movie files to conform to the Plex documentation, and the outcome has not changed. I am NOT trying to get Plex to conform to MY file structure, I AM trying to Plex to conform to Plex’s documentation.
I would like to open an official bug report with Plex, if anyone from Plex looks at this. The simple solution seems to be to allow people to disable auto-stacking or auto-merging. I’m not sure why that’s so strange a request.
Something is not working correctly. Pick one of the movie sets and move them out of the scanned location. Update the library, Empty Trash, and Clean Bundles. Exit the server and move the movie set back into the scanned location. Restart the server and wait several minutes before opening the media manager and then update the library. Give the server a couple of minutes to match and gather metadata. Save the Plex Media Server log, Scanner log and the contents of the PMS Plugins Logs folder. Zip up files and attach to a post.
