Okay, so I have the following two titles in my movies library:
When ripped from their DVDs, they yield two separate parts each of one whole production. Because of this setup, I don’t think Plex knows what to do with the metadata from TheMovieDB. Plex will acknowledge in “Get Info” that there are two separate parts being associated with each listing, and the metadata will show the combined total runtime, but in both cases it will only play the first part of each while not otherwise acknowledging the second parts, so basically I’m only seeing half of the content in question. Oddly enough, when I put the movie that came in between (https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/16768-an-evening-with-kevin-smith-2-evening-harder) into my library, Plex acknowledged both files with a little two in the corner of the display poster, and allowed me to split the listing into two separate ones that I was able to manually relabel, and now I’ve got separate working listings for the Toronto half and the London half. This split option does not seem to be available for the two in question. Am I going to have to somehow combine the two halves of each video into singular, larger videos to make the metadata work, or is there some kind of trick I’d have to use in naming the files?
@jwickert said:
Plex acknowledged both files with a little two in the corner of the display poster
Plex sees two identical copies. To handle multi-part movies add -part1/ -part2 at the end. An Evening with Kevin Smith (2002) -part1.mkv An Evening with Kevin Smith (2002) -part2.mkv Sold Out - A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) -part1.mkv Sold Out - A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) -part2.mkv
etc…
More info here → https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200264966-Naming-Multi-File-Movies
They’ve always had Part 1 and Part 2 on the file names. Never changed a thing. For An Evening with Kevin Smith 2, the files were marked with “Toronto” and “London” instead of Part 1 and 2 and it worked for that. It also worked for “Invasion of Astro-Monster” and “Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero”, which are technically separate movies and marked as such in my file names, but TheMovieDB recognizes as the same movie.
For the original “An Evening With Kevin Smith”, I changed the file names to exactly what you posted, verbatim (“An Evening with Kevin Smith (2002) -part1.mkv” and “An Evening with Kevin Smith (2002) -part2.mkv”) and when re-added to the library, I was able to split the listing into two separate parts in the library. However, Sold Out did not have the same outcomes with the suggested file names listed(“Sold Out - A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) -part1.mkv” and “Sold Out - A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) -part2.mkv”) and still show up as a single listing. I’m including a screenshot to show that Sold Out is the only one still combining both parts into one listing that only allows for playback of one part. Ideally, for ease, I’d prefer to be able to have both parts of Sold Out just show up like the other movies, as individual listings, if I can’t just have Plex ask me which part to play from a single listing. (which would maybe be a nice update to the software later)
Sounds like Plex actually saw “Sold Out - A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008)” as a true stacked(multi-part) movie. As you stated you were able to split the other movies apart. You should not have a number 2 on multi-part content and should not be able to split them.
So, in a nutshell you must trick Plex in thinking the movies are the same but use different file names,
You might try. Sold Out A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) Sold Out - A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008)
Then you can split them and name them whatever you like within Plex.
The ‘tag’ is part1 or part2.
the hyphen is the generic separator between sections of a file name.
if you butt the hyphen up against the ‘tag’ - bad things will likely happen… like Plex getting confused thinking -part1 is the wrong tag for a movie extra - or something.
If:
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008).xxx
is a single movie file, listed once at TMDB and you just happen to have two parts of that listing the name is:
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) - part1.xxx
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) - part2.xxx
You will NOT get a Blue 2 because it’s just a movie in two parts - part one plays, then part two plays (if your client supports that action). There will be nothing to split:
(named as shown above)
If you have two ‘Versions’ of the same TMDB listing, then you would name them:
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) [New Jersey].xxx
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) [The Hanoi Hilton].xxx <— or whatever
(Note: whatever is in a [Bracket] is ignored by Plex, but windows isn’t confused and Plex will see them as two ‘Versions’ of the same movie)
Resulting in:
From here you can Split the Merged items and assign different posters with edited descriptions if you want to. They will at that point be two separate items - but… and it’s a big nasty butt… when you play one of them Plex will think you’re playing both of them. Nice, eh?
You combat that situation by becoming a contributing member at TMDB and creating a second listing for your alternate ‘Version’.
Easy…
lol
Note 2:
Since that item has already been matched (a couple of times) and you’ve been fiddling around with it while it’s been in the library you’d better shine up those Patent Leather Dancing Shoes and prepare for…:
@JuiceWSA said:
The ‘tag’ is part1 or part2.
the hyphen is the generic separator between sections of a file name.
if you butt the hyphen up against the ‘tag’ - bad things will likely happen… like Plex getting confused thinking -part1 is the wrong tag for a movie extra - or something.
is a single movie file, listed once at TMDB and you just happen to have two parts of that listing the name is:
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) - part1.xxx
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) - part2.xxx
You will NOT get a Blue 2 because it’s just a movie in two parts - part one plays, then part two plays (if your client supports that action). There will be nothing to split:
(named as shown above)
If you have two ‘Versions’ of the same TMDB listing, then you would name them:
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) [New Jersey].xxx
Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008) [The Hanoi Hilton].xxx <— or whatever
(Note: whatever is in a [Bracket] is ignored by Plex, but windows isn’t confused and Plex will see them as two ‘Versions’ of the same movie)
Resulting in:
From here you can Split the Merged items and assign different posters with edited descriptions if you want to. They will at that point be two separate items - but… and it’s a big nasty butt… when you play one of them Plex will think you’re playing both of them. Nice, eh?
You combat that situation by becoming a contributing member at TMDB and creating a second listing for your alternate ‘Version’.
Easy…
lol
Note 2:
Since that item has already been matched (a couple of times) and you’ve been fiddling around with it while it’s been in the library you’d better shine up those Patent Leather Dancing Shoes and prepare for…:
I hope we don’t find out it’s an MP4/M4V file with bogus metadata in the Title Fields…
If that’s the case:
If you have embedded metadata in the Title Field of MP4/M4V files. Plex will read this info and prefer it over a perfect file name/structure, but you can combat that situation by moving Local Media Assets to the bottom of every agent list you can find. All tabs in TV Show and Movies here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200241558-Agents
Just drag LMA to the bottom of the list and drop it. If you do have embedded metadata this will cure the issue, if you don’t it won’t matter. LMA will do what it has to from the bottom.
(and again, for emphasis…)
Renaming/restructuring is best performed OUTSIDE the library and you’ll need to write a new bundle for the show so The Plex Dance® was invented:
You know, times like this I would really like some feedback from Plex software.
Here’s an excerpt from my post I made in the feature request section which got no love from the community.
I think adding another option such as troubleshoot or even change Get Info to something like Get Info/Troubleshoot would be helpful.
An example of this could include information such as… File found:X:\Movies\Avatar (2009).mp4.
Some info about the container, codec (video and audio), etc…
Attempting to match file. Local Media assets is enabled.
Checking for embedded metadata. Metadata found. Attempting to match metadataRARBG.COM - Avatar.x264-RARBG.
Checking TheMovieDb.com. Warning/error/success/whatever…
Unable to match “RARBG.COM - Avatar.x264-RARBG” on TheMovieDb.com.
unable to connect to TheMovieDb.com. The site may be temporarily unavailable.
or
Match found. “Avatar (2009)”
From here, info about the artwork, synopsis, release date will display and report errors/successes, etc…
This info can go on for all the agents that are enabled in order.
I suppose this could be a challenge to implement in some ways but I don’t think it would be to hard as Plex can parse the log it already maintains(if logging is on). I mean, the information is already there. We(the average human) just need a way to understand that info. Sure this isn’t foolproof but I think with this type of information at our disposal we could fix some issues our self. Or at the very lease know what to present and ask on the forums.
end excerpt …
I telling you… I believe this would help alot of people out. If we had this and everybody knew about it, the forums would practically be a graveyard.
I actually know of no other software that doesn’t inform you of any errors/warning from something.
That’s like MKVToolNix not letting you know the file you added is not valid or VirtualDub simply not loading a file without letting you know it can’t handle files encoded in divx.
Holy ■■■■…I never realized that it would transition from one part to the next if it didn’t have the blue number two and recognized it as a proper multi-parter. I might have to Plex Dance the first “Evening With” back into Plex the way it was, because it makes more sense for it and “Sold Out” to play basically seamlessly like that. “Evening With 2” can stay as is, though, as a split as each part takes place in a different city so each is more of a unique video. Though, when I can find time, I’ll have to look into editing things on the TMDB end so that maybe it’ll look cleaner and not have that “double playing” issue.
I just started building my library and had no idea that that plex could accept movies files split into two parts I’ve been naming the second part Part 2-featurette so that it would show as an extra.
Whenever I’ve seen the “2” appear in the corner where PLEX found two different versions of the same film but sorted them with the same metadata, I’ve been splitting them. Will plex play one and then the second one immediately after, or is the second version basically lost?
