Tonight I added the movie “Split” (2016) [According to IMDB, 2017 according to the Plex Movie Database] and discovered that there were at least FOUR different movies named “Split” released in 2016. Unfortunately, the “Fix Match” tool provides precisely ZERO additional information, so selecting the correct match is trial and error and a lot of hoping that each time one tries again the results are in the exact same sequence!
Aside from the inconsistency between the two movie databases, it would be VERY HELPFUL if some additional info about each potential match could be shown instead of just a title and year. Either integrated into the selection list or perhaps something that pops up when the mouse hovers over each selection? For example, the director’s name, or the first couple starts from the credits or a short description of the show – any or all of these would be very, very helpful.
This would be especially helpful at times like this when there are many films with the exact same title and also when the movie database is using a different year for the film’s release than the one the studio used.
Or since the match system is usually drawing from places like The Movie DB or IMDB, maybe just a link that would open the related page in a new window!
The PlexMovie database and BoxOfficeMojo say that “Split” (the one starring James McAvoy, not the others) is from 2017, but IMDB, TheMovieDB, and WIkipedia all say it is from 2016. To me, that is a “dispute” since the databases disagree about the movie year. Most likely, all are correct from a specific point of view, but that doesn’t actually resolve the dispute, specially for a movie title like “Split”, which IMDB lists as FOUR DIFFERENT movies, all from 2016!
That’s only one example, I have encountered many others by trusting various sources (like those above, plus DVD/BluRay packaging and even listings on Netflix or Amazon) that didn’t match what PlexMovie finds.
Hence a request for additional information and/or the link to the source data for each match in the “fix match” tool. Hopefully, that will allow us to correctly match things on the first (re)try rather than requiring several [tedious] experiments as is now the case.
I don’t get why we can’t just specify an IMDB id. Sometimes I can’t even get it to find what I’m looking for when searching, but I’m looking at an IMDB page for it. It would solve the problem of bad duplicates too.
The definitive authority on release date is the IMDb. At least for Plex.
Look up your movie on IMDb
Scroll down to ‘release date’, there is a link ‘See more’
(this link is not present on mobile phone browsers)
Here are the release dates of one of the ‘Split’ movies:
The first 2 dates are in 2016, BUT they are only from pre-screenings at film festivals.
The official release date of a movie is when it goes into distribution and is generally available in cinemas.
And that is in this case 2017-01-20 for USA
So this particular movie is from 2017.
So that must be why the PlexMovie agent changed my movie file named “Split (2016)” {EXACTLY as it is named in the IMDb reference you provided] to 2017. Everything I had learned when first starting to use Plex was that my file/folder names for movies should match what I see in IMDb. Well, what I see is what you show, but that is NOT what Plex used – as you stated, Plex looked deeper to find a date that Plex has decided is appropriate. Like I said, all are correct from some point of view. Not sure when things changed from matching the movie’s title & date from the top of the movie’s IMDb page – apparently I missed that memo.
I’m not saying I don’t care what other people(of authority) are saying here. I’m saying I do NOT care what ANY site shows for year other than themoviedb. It’s MY authority and has never failed!
But you can. Execute ‘Fix Match’, clear out all search input fields but place the IMDb ID into the ‘Title’ field.
Sometimes that even works. I had many failures even trying that, probably because the “IMDb ID” isn’t even shown on a movie’s page. It is apparently just embedded in the URL. And FWIW, sometimes the IMDb web site cannot even find movies by their own ID! I have a few instances where the ID didn’t work, but the title (year) worked in a search. It is rare, but it happens.
Regardless of IMDb’s abilities, I REALLY wish that what I manually type into the search input fields wasn’t reset to whatever Plex wanted (sometimes not matching my movie’s filename at all) any time I want to try again without existing the fix match tool. The values I enter should remain, at least until the fix match tool is restarted.
Hello all
I am not trying to open something new. I have been looking for a way to prevent doing a lot of manual work on editing metadata just because the Plex Agent cannot find a movie on The Movie DB or IMDB despite the fact they are there. Here one example https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090092/ - this happend with many others like The Man Without a Map (1968 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203695/?ref_=fn_al_tt_6) and so on. Is there a way we can enter the IMDB link so Plex can retrieve all the information? Leaving it ro search and return several results but none of them are what you are looking for is quite disappointing.
Thank you
It’s been some time… but I feel this suggestion should be now be kind of covered.
When manually matching an item, Plex is listing the title, poster, release year and description to pin down a particular release. To go the extra mile you can also enter the IMDb or TMDb ID of a release to the title field in the match/fix-match dialog.
When going for the automatic match you can include the IMDb or TMDb ID of a release in the file/folder names.
Therefore I’m considering closing it as implemented.
