I have both in my collection and cannot get Plex to distinguish them. They are both sorted as two versions of the same movie.
How can I tell Plex to treat them as two separate movies?
Using the subtle distinction in alternative titles is not enough: Jane Austens Emma vs. Jane Austen’s Emma.
I found this thread, which seems related, but deals with another problem, if I understand correctly:
This poster already has a way to assign the movie manually but cannot find it in the list.
Whereas I don’t even get to the point of assigning one of the two versions to a different movie.
“If using the (non-“legacy”) Plex Movie agent available in Plex Media Server v1.20.1 and newer, you can also include the IMDb or TheMovieDB ID number in curly braces to help match the movie. It must follow the form {[source]-[id]}.”
I added two files named as above to my Test Server and here’s what Plex got:
The new scanner + the source ID has made it a drop kick to add things to Plex. I haven’t ‘fixed’ one in a long time. You owe it to yourself to bone up on the Plex naming conventions for Movies and TV. There’s a similar source ID tag for TV shows too.
And helpful reply: Adding the source ID worked instantly.
As for “owe it to yourself to bone up on the Plex naming conventions”, imho (or not humble ) this is just not how things should work these days. At least not exclusively and primarily. There should be some amount of content recognition.
Just gonna say Nope. I don’t want Plex keeping records of data on my private server. My using fingerprinting it looks at the content of files on my system and not just file names. especially with the current system you cannot differentiate mock/demo libraries vs real content. Plex doesn’t know what I have on my server, rather it just knows what I have asked metadata for.
Yea, there’s the ‘dream’ way it work and how it works. Once I figured out the “Plex” way of naming/organizing files my life got a lot easier. Now if we’d just get feature parity among the clients life would be really good! I have to remember which clients support the TV extras while I’m adding them.
For most users requesting metadata is already a strong indicator of what’s on their server. So sending expressive filename metadata already tells Plex a lot about the user’s collection, if Plex actually wants to collect that data and profile users. Do they?
Sending perceptual hashes that does not change that much. Afaik perceptual hashes are, well, hashes. They are one-way functions.
So let’s say my server is sending the perceptual hash of a private video, there will be no match on the other side and no way to re-construct content from the hash. At least that’s my humble understanding of the technology. I will gladly change my view if somebody knows better.
The concern is also fixable by making the feature optional. Completely or users may restrict usage to some libraries. In fact, for private videos it would not even make sense to use the feature, since there would be neither matches nor metadata.
In any case the feature has two sides:
Sending perceptual hashes to request metadata (which btw in a content-based setup includes filenames)
Sending perceptual hashes and filenames or “matching data” for the perceptual hashes to build the database behind it.
At the very least the second aspect should be configurable and opt-in.
I would opt-in as part of a collaborative effort to build something like MusicBrainz for video (so … VideoBrainz?) or Wikipedia and Wikidata. But it is totally legit that not everybody user wishes to do so.
Yes, it is a “dream” way in the sense of: We are not there yet. Not even close wrt Plex.
It is not a “dream”, though, in the sense, that this is unachievable. The technology is already there and continues to mature: The goal is continually becoming easier to achieve and with better results.
Yes, for now succumbing to “the Plex way” and doing “the Plex dance” and other things makes life a lot easier.
The point is, that for many people figuring out the Plex way is not easy: The forum is loaded with requests on library management.
So aside from the philosophical question, how much humans should succumb to technology vs. the other way round, there is a very practical aspect, that all in all the current system works ok at best. It takes time and energy of ordinary users and helpful forum contributors. Time and energy that should better be used to e. g. enjoy a film or take a walk outside.
Content-based file matching might be a “dream” now. That does not mean, that it isn’t the right direction to go forward.
Imagine a Plex, where you can just dump stuff into a staging folder, then automagically Plex creates a well sorted library (based on your preferences for how things should be sorted).
) this is just not how things should work these days. At least not exclusively and primarily. There should be some amount of content recognition.
