I’m new here, so if this is in the wrong place, please move it and point me to the right location, thanks…
I know that Plex sometimes combines multi-part movies to play as one long movie.
I know that Plex will also merge movies with similar titles but those can be split apart if desired.
I also know that I can search duplicates to find the merged movies with similar titles, but I don’t see any way to search multi-part movies that have been combined. HOW DO I search those to fix them ?
4, the problem I am having is that I am trying to add and edit several James Bond movies (1960s-present) and some of them are being merged (but I can easily split apart by finding duplicates)… However, sometimes movies disappear completely and I have no idea where they are. They are still on the hard drive in the folder but no longer being shown in Plex movies and I can’t find them anywhere (except in the folder). So my question is….
How do I find missing movies that appear to be missing in Plex but still reside on the HD ? I am guessing that they got combined as multi-part movies but they are not showing as duplicates. Is there a way to search multi-part movies (similar to how duplicates are searched) ?
Ouch! I only have 7650 movies to go through to do that. Perhaps in the next release Plex could provide a way to search combined movies as they do for duplicates?
Also, one particular movie in question (that seems to be missing) is named “James Bond (2008) Quantum of Solace.mp4” so I’m not sure why Plex is having a problem with that one. No mater what I search for (of that file name), the movie does not appear to be in Plex. (Ex. It does not come up when I search “Solace”, or “quantum”
Ok. Cool, thank you - I’ll look into how to search with wild cards in windows file manager…
For this particular problem though, the missing movie is just a normal name - it doesn’t include anything like pt1 that would suggest it’s a part of something else. Is there an easy way to find missing movies that are not showing as duplicate ?
Easy, unfortunately not.
You could use WebTools NG to export your library into a CSV file. If you use the highest detail evel, you get a comprehensive table which you can open in a spreadsheet app and filter and sort to your heart’s content.
That sounds complicated and over and above what I would know how to do.
Maybe someone could suggest a feature update to the powers in charge to include a search option (in addition to duplicates) that would read, “Stacked” or “Multi-Part” and then Show all combined movies when selected and searched for those types ?!
Anyway, thanks for the help.
File name “James Bond (2006) Casino Royale.mp4” is still hidden even after moving it, emptying trash, cleaning bundles, and putting it back. I’ll try renaming the file to simply, “Casino Royale (2006)” and see if it shows - otherwise maybe I can burn another copy of it and try that? I Don’t know, (mystery unknown), but thanks for the help today
Always look up media titles at the sources which Plex is also using. IMDb.com and TheMovieDB.org for movies,
and TheTVDB.com and TheMovieDB.org for TV shows.
That way you can see which titles will be recognized.
With mp4 files there is an additional thing which can throw off media matching in Plex: embedded meta tags. If you don’t closely verify the content of these tags, it is very much recommended to tell Plex not to give too much importance to them.
You do that by disabling “Prefer local metadata” in the properties of the library.
(very often, ripping or encoder software is filling these tags with nonsense or even shameless self-advertising)
Wow! Interesting (about the ‘prefer local metadata’). I was wondering about that and have just now turned that off - thank you.
I am aware of the movie files not being recognized if they are not named as Plex is expecting them, but I was trying to keep the files organized on the hard drive, but I see now that “organized on the HD” is pretty much irrelevant and obsolete since they can be easily organized with Plex .
That being said, I do keep them somewhat organized into folders as follows which I think helps…
D:/Movies/
D:/Movies/Letter A
D:/Movies/Letter B
…and so on…
And where there are a lot of similar titles like James Bond films.
D:/Movies/Letter J/James Bond/
I also move the predicate in the file name such as, “Bank Job, The (2008).mp4” but even that can sometimes confuse Plex - especially with the “use local meta data” as you suggested.
However, I did rename the questionable missing movie files and sure enough, they are now showing in Plex. I have no idea where they went or how they were being hidden, but they are showing now
That being said, I do think it would be helpful if we could not only search duplicates but also searched movies containing multiple parts (to basically verify that they are correct and in the right order, if nothing else)
That’s yucky. In this day and age there is no need to use to such an ugly method anymore.
The movie’s title is “The Bank Job”, not “Bank Job, The”. Plex is using the title to match the movie. If you wantonly give Plex a wrong title, results may not be what you’re expecting.
Then you will have to add each of those Letter x folders individually to your Plex library. Otherwise Plex may sometimes merge all movies inside such a letter folder to be one and the same.
I was just reminded that there might be a simple method to find stacked videos:
sort the library by “Duration” and movies that seem to be extra long are probably merged ones.
Ok. Thanks. Yeah, I agree, but there was just a lot of files in the “Letter T” folder so I was trying to thin that one out. Same goes for the “Letter A” folder with the preposition A.
And yes, lots of folders :-). Maybe my computer wasn’t fast enough because it was kind of slow with thousands of files in a single folder, so I separated them out.
Excellent suggestion on searching by duration… it’s a little cumbersome, but I think I can start with that and see how it goes - thank you.
As Otto mentions, name the movie as it is named on IMDB or TMDB.
I’ve folders for T, The_#-L, & The_M-Z.
And all 29 folders (plus some others) are individually added to the “Movies” library (screenshot below).
You do not have to navigate the directory structure when adding folders to a library. You can type (or copy/paste) the path at the top of the “Add Folder” window.
The full path to “movies-hd” is /volume1/media/movies-hd/. When adding the folders, I pasted that path, then added A, B, C, etc. Much faster than clicking through the directory structure for each folder.
