I am running Plex Media Server version 1.24.5. I have some movies on my server, all of which are in separate directories, however Plex insists on combining 2 of these into a single title. Even though the movies are related, I want each movie to appear separately in my library and not be combined. I do have “collections” disabled. I tried deleting one of the files and rescan the library, but it insists on putting the second movie back in the title with the first one when I restore the deleted directory and it won’t keep them as separate titles.
How can I separate the 2 files into separate titles? How can I prevent this from happening in the future?
Please tell which movies.
It all depends on whether these movies are actually movies (and not series) and are separately listed at IMDb, or TheMovieDB.
I don’t know if you can prevent it from happening in the future, but Plex has a Split/Merge feature that will split a movie apart for times when Plex finds two files it thinks are the same title.
A little change in matching seems to have occurred over time so I’ll lay out the process that was recommended to me and works pretty well for titles that are the same but different. Since you didn’t name the movies I’ll go via my 2 usual fixes.
First: Two different movies with such similar titles they end up matching together.
To fix this, add the TMDB or IMDB reference to it. That usually solves it. Scroll about half way down on this article about naming to get the details but essentially you add {tmdb-#####} to the file or folder name and it forces it to match it.
If the movies are actually the same title but different movies add the year to the file\folder listing - that helps a lot.
Second: Two different versions of the same movie
If they don’t match specific titles at TMDB - for example Superman II Richer Donner Cut has its own listing but Mad Max Fury Road Black & Chrome does not (though it did for a bit so threw some stuff off which is why it comes to mind) - you’ll want to use the Split Apart function and then on the title that doesn’t have a listing at TMDB you want to also “Unmatch”. You’ll now just update the poster\background or other data how you like and it won’t get sucked back into the other title during a rescan. If you split without the unmatch it will just merge back again.
A last option - you can do alternate versions of movies as extras. Check out the local media naming and you can add it as an alternate version under the existing listing. I don’t like this way myself (I use the split\unmatch) but it’s an option some prefer.
I used to do the unmatch and generate assorted new versions of every one. Different poaster, name, description. But eventually I figured out that there was always only going to be ONE version of each movie that I would ever want to play so that became the main movie and all the other were relegated to Movie Extras as “Other” and given names like “Dir Cut” or “Extended Version” or “Specialized Version”.
