Good morning, JuiceWSA,
I really appreciate your trying to help me solve this problem. I’m going to respond to your points as best I can.
“The Apartment:
You have items in that folder that are NOT Extras and are NOT the Movie.”
Every file in that folder contains a video. I didn’t know what two of the videos contained until this morning when I played the disk in my Blu-Ray player, so they had dummy names yesterday. As it turns out, each file contains a scene of the film with a commentary by a film historian, so I have renamed those two files accordingly.
“The Awful Truth:
You have items in there that are named ‘like’ a movie, but have an Extra Tag. Let’s try not to confuse Plex if we can prevent it.”
This folder contains one audio file from Lux Radio Theater. The rest of the extras files contain audio and video. Plex plays all of these files properly. However, I just added quotation marks around The Awful Truth in the file named "inside The Awful Truth-featurette.mkv. By the way, “inside The Awful Truth” (with lower-case i) is the name of that video.
“Normally if I am ‘upgrading’ an item I will just name it the same and replace the item by copying right on top of it - then analyzing when done (just to make sure). IF I’m upgrading a Movie that has Extras, the original version is REMOVED from the server, the trash is emptied and the bundles are cleaned before adding it’s upgrade and Extras back to the server.”
On one occasion, when I allowed a Blu-Ray file to overwrite a DVD file, Plex continued to show the metadata as 480i instead of 1080p. These days, I either give the DVD movie file a dummy name before ripping the Blu-Ray disk or I first move the DVD movie file to a different part of my NAS and scan the Plex files before ripping.
General Comments:
I understand that Plex has rules, and I’m trying to learn those rules. But by analogy, If I’m driving my car and turning the steering wheel to the right, I expect my car to turn to the right. If the car turns the left on some occasion when I’m turning the steering right, I will want to know why that happened. Since updating Plex the other day, I’m getting inconsistent results. Let me explain.
The DVD version of The Apartment does not have any extras. I copied the folder containing the DVD version of the movie to a remote part of my NAS, deleted that folder from the Media Folder, and scanned the Plex files before ripping the Blu-Ray disk. The thumbnails appeared in Plex and played until I renamed several of the extras files. After reading your most recent comment, I copied the folder containing the Blu-Ray version of The Apartment and the extras files to a remote area of the NAS, deleted that folder from the Media Folder, scanned the Plex files, performed the clean bundles operation, scanned the Plex files again, created a new folder for The Apartment in the Media Folder, copied all the video files from the remote location, and scanned the Plex files again. The thumbnails still do not appear when I click on The Apartment in Plex.
To test the system two different ways, I first copied one of the extras files from The Apartment folder to The Asphalt Jungle folder, which contains a DVD version of the movie. The extras file from The Apartment appeared as a thumbnail when I clicked on The Asphalt Jungle and it played properly. I then copied an extras file from a DVD folder (not The Asphalt Jungle) to The Apartment folder. When I clicked on The Apartment, the thumbnail associated with the copied extras file did not appear.
In summary, the extras files from The Apartment appear as thumbnails when I transfer the extras files to other movie folders, but thumbnails do not appear under The Apartment when I transfer them into the folder for The Apartment. For some reason, thumbnails will not appear under The Apartment.
On the day that I ripped the Blu-Ray for The Apartment, I also ripped Blu-Rays for two movies that were virgins in my movie collection (that is, I never had a DVD for either of these movies). The first movie has only one extras video, which appeared under the movie’s name and plays properly. The second movie (Into the Woods) has several extras videos, which initially appeared in Plex as thumbnails but disappeared as I was renaming the extras files. When I copied these extras files to a different movie’s folder, thumbnails appeared under that movie’s name and they played properly. As before, I copied an extras file from another movie’s folder, but a thumbnail didn’t appear under this new movie’s name. In other words, this is the same problem I experienced with The Apartment, but without a pre-existing DVD file.
On the day that I ripped the Blu-Ray for The Apartment, I also ripped a Blu-Ray disk as a replacement for DVD that has a lot of extras files. The Blu-Ray disk has only one extras file that was not included with the DVD version of this movie. Before ripping the Blu-Ray disk, I gave a dummy name to the file containing the DVD version of the movie. When I clicked on the movie’s name, all the thumbnails from the DVD appeared in Plex, and all the thumbnails from the Blu-Ray appeared in Plex. Equally important, all the thumbnails played properly even after I renamed that new extras file. So, unlike the case of The Apartment, Plex handled this movie as expected.
In summary, I don’t see a pattern that explains why thumbnails for The Apartment and Into the Woods will appear in Plex and play properly when I copy their extras files to another movie’s folder (e.g., The Awful Truth; The Asphalt Jungle), but no thumbnails will appear when I copy another movie’s extras files to the folder of The Apartment or Into the Woods. Of course, I don’t understand how Plex works. I’m just happy that it works most of the time.
