This had been a much desired feature for so long that I just assumed it would never happen, but there it is:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/
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]}.
/Movies
÷÷÷/Batman Begins (2005) {imdb-tt0372784}
÷÷÷÷÷÷Batman Begins (2005) {imdb-tt0372784}.mp4
So I tweak my Filebot script to add everything - oh great…curly brackets mean something else in filebot and you can’t simply escape them because of course you can’t. This is how you have to torture the code to make it work: {"{imdb-$imdbid}"}
Note that you need the ID in both the filename and the folder for this to work (I tried one or the other - nope). Adding over 30 characters to a Windows path name definitely won’t cause problems somewhere (Borat!) - but hey at least it’s finally a feature.
I tried it on some dumb Alligator X movie that never automatically matched before. Magic! Plex found it!
Then I went to the handful of other movies that never matched and now I’ve got some Korean MP4s with SRT subtitles. I have Filebot stick the IMDb code at the end of the SRT filenames too, but in order for Plex to recognize the SRT language, the language code has to be at the end of the filename, and everything before has to match the movie filename exactly. Ugh. So I can either deal with Plex telling me the subtitle language is unknown, or figure out some regular expression voodoo to strip out the three character language code from the end of the original filename then add the IMDb code then OMG I’m not a programmer I can’t do this i don’t even care about it anymore lol
Dear Plex: let us stick the IMDb code either in the filename or folder and be done with it. Kodi has been able to use “tt” followed by 7+ digits since before people even complained about it here - no curly brackets, no imdb, no dash, just stick it anywhere in the filename…literally anywhere - Batman Smells andtt0372784Robin Laid an Egg.mp4 will still match Batman Begins.
While writing this I thought of another option - mux everything into an MKV so there’s no worries about the external subtitles. But again, why? This should just work. It shouldn’t need to be in more than one place. And it shouldn’t need to be so long. Help a beaten down man out!
