I use the ‘Split’ option in the menu.
Put them both in the same directory with different names. Use Split, then name them accordingly in the Library.
E,g,
Maybe you guys and gals can help me understand it.
If I would just need some naming method for different cuts of a movie, then I could just let PMS recognize it as a duplicate, split that duplicate apart and after splitting, adding the titles of the movies to have different cuts as different “movies”.
From my point of view, the complexity of the underlying problem is how movies are handled as items in Plex.
Let me show you what I mean:
Here’s the XML data of a duplicate (one movie item with more than one “version” in it):
<MediaContainer ....>
<Video ...>
<Media id="..." ...>
<Part ...>
</Part>
</Media>
<Media ...>
<Part ...>
</Part>
</Media>
<Genre id="..." filter="genre=..." tag="..."/>
<Director id="..." filter="director=..." tag="..."/>
<Writer id="..." filter="writer=..." tag="..."/>
<Producer id="..." filter="producer=..." tag="..."/>
<Country id="..." filter="country=..." tag="..."/>
<Role id="..." filter="actor=..." tag="..." role="..."/>
</Video>
</MediaContainer>
Content:
Media - library data
Video - attributes about the how the movie was identified (agent, id) and the movie itself (studio, rating stuff, movie summary) and watched status
Media - general attributes about the audio and about video dimension
Part - one or many parts inside Media; in general holding attributes about the movie file itself (file name, details about A/V profiles, framerate, etc…
Stream - one or many streams inside each Part - the audio, video and subtitle tracks with their metadata.
The MediaContainer key contains info on library and is encapsulating the Video key which is containing one or many Media keys (more than one if you have a duplicate) which themselves contain one or many Part keys.
The Video container also holds subkeys for Extras, and visual representations like hubs or similar movies, about actors, about director and other staff.
One can imagine multiple ways of saving info about a “cut” into that structure.
If a cut would be assumed to be a label, then you gotta add such a label to any of the XML Video containers, for example. But I never saw more than one XML Video container for a movie.
What can be different for “different cuts of the same movie”:
- different age specifications (CUT vs. UNCUT) [an attribute in the Video XML key]
- different actors (like actors cut from movies: see below) [found as separate key under the MediaContainer XML key]
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/10-famous-actors-who-were-cut-from-hit-movies.html/ - different cuts often enough have different movie lengths. [an attribute in the Video XML tag]
- different summaries [also an attribute in Video]
To cover all these things for different cuts of a movie, one can clearly see that setting just a label for different movie files is not taking us the whole way.
I can clearly see why Plex guys shy away from touching that structure and completely rehaul it.
For example, if you just allow for more than one Video keys inside the MediaContainer key, then they still share the same list of actors (among many more).
I could imagine a different kind of structure like this:
<MediaContainer ... main container for a movie just as before>
<Edition id="..." label="Summer Festival Special Edition" ... > -- completely new container
***and here goes the movie container with all its sub-containers***
***everything else which was under the MediaContainer XML key before should also go here including list of actors***
</Edition>
<Edition id="..." label="Director's Cut" ... >
***and here goes the movie container with all its sub-containers***
***everything else which was under the MediaContainer XML key before should also go here including list of actors***
</Edition>
</MediaContainer>
In addition to that, all info on identification should go up to the edition level since different cuts could have different IMDB IDs, etc…
That would allow for real “cut handling” of movies, but it would mean that almost every aspect of the database would be relocated and lots of code would have to be touched to achieve this.
Of course, many other ways of labeling or structure changing would be possible, but you really should try to find out if you are just seeking for labels about which file is which cut, but it is okay for you to share all other details as “one movie” or if real edition handling is your goal.
The above mentioned change would also be able to handle duplicates for different cuts.
But I can see the numerous metadata handling difficulties, not to start talking about changing the UI and all players to offer even basic support of such a thing.
From a programmer’s view, such a change defines as a major project.
And, whenever I read about “Oh wait, why not just take additional strings of the file name” as info on a cut?" I can understand the reason behind it, but it would not serve ALL needs about edition handling very well.
I don’t want to attack anybody. I would be very happy to see such a solution. But I can also understand that the matter is more complex than it may seem at first glance.
Last time when I wrote about this in this thread, I got under attack from other forum users. Please bare with me this time. I don’t want to raid this thread, but having been a database programmer and XML coder for quite a few years, I just want to add my 2 cents.
People in this thread want differents things - ranging from a simple label to a full scale “cut handling”. The more complex solution would also serve the more simple use cases. The more simple solution would never come near to serve the more complex use cases.
Gosh, I am glad that I am not a Plex employee… I would have been tarred and feathered for this 
Have a wonderful evening everybody.
2 Likes
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. This isn’t trivial and the data structures matter.
You mentioned content/age ratings, cast, lengths, summaries. I think that scratches the tip of the iceberg. These all complicate (and prevent, IMO) any of the filename-based solutions proposed in this thread.
- Different subtitle files
- Different subtitle languages
- Different audio languages
- Different posters
- Different studios
- Different reviews, critic ratings, user ratings
- Different release years
- Different video codecs, bitrates, color depths, resolutions
- Different audio codecs, bitrates, channels, etc
- Different “Optimized Versions”
- Different Plex sharing restrictions
There are also a few common things that work poorly when following the Plex recommendation to Split editions of movies today:
- Different Plex per-user watched status for each edition
- Different Plex per-user ratings for each edition
- Media search & Search result presentation UX
- Admin functionality & edition editing
- Lack of multi-edition metadata sources
I’d like to see those things improved, and the UI/UX around Split editions improved. I think the end result is something more like “Magical Collections for Multiple Cuts/Editions” and not “filename parsing”
I’m also not a Plex employee, and I also don’t have any tar or feathers. 
Not a solution, a workaround.
Lots of us have come up with workarounds like this, it doesn’t actually give us real support for alternate cuts of movies. You’re specific solution doesn’t work for say Blade Runner which has more than one Extended Cut. You’d then need a sixth movie library. Then there’s the issue with library separation like you have with movies (I have multiple TV libraries and this applies to that as well) causing other issues. For example cast bubbles still don’t cross between libraries.
As others have pointed out there are pretty glaring problems with the way the Split function currently works. In the example you posted with Deadpool 2 and Deadpool 2 Super Duper Cut. If you were to watch one of those versions, they both get marked as watched. If you watch one of those movies and pause it, both versions show up in the Continue Watching area. There are other issues, this thread has like 400 posts about all of them.
I just want to clarify that the request for this feature is not because users have no way to watch the alternate cut. There’s 3-4 commonly used workarounds that still allow you to actually watch the video file within a Plex app. We know about all of them. The issue is that there are pretty glaring issues with all of them. We’d just like Plex to address a pretty common use-case for movie fans in a way that makes sense. While sorting out some of these things might be complex, alt cuts have been a mainstream thing since the late 90s and this feature suggestion has existed for 8 years… it’s time Plex tackled it.
Though it won’t satisfy everyone as others have pointed out, I still believe some combination of exposing the file name / flag in Select Version, Fixing the Watched Status Issue for Splits, and dealing with the Collection conflict issue here (Collection Display Issue - #6 by jeffp1717) would allow a lot of Plex admins to do wonders for making their libraries cleaner. If Plex doesn’t want to tackle a full-featured solution, addressing those three tent poles would at least move the needle for many of us.
1 Like
I’ve never had this happen. Watch one, only that one turns up in the continue area.
Personally I don’t think it’s such a large problem, but feel free to keep pushing the barrow.
Cool. The current implementation works like this and this is a issue many people face.
That’s nice. I’m sure there’s something you want in Plex that the 1,338 people who have voted for this (and the others who have who can’t vote due to the vote limit) don’t want. Lots of people think this is a large problem.
Again, people are aware of the workarounds… this is a feature request for an improved implementation.
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I will add to the ‘how is this not fixed already’ crowd.
Seriously.
You guys keep making me go back and look at Emby between the plug in BS and forcing stupid ass reviews on my screen. This just adds fuel to the fire.
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I certainly hope they don’t plan to remove RT reviews from movie info ages. If they cluttered the rest of the UI with that I wouldn’t want it either, but the movie info page is where that info should be. It’s a quick blurb that lets family or friends get a feel for the movie. If your interested in him criticism at all it’s also a great way to quickly see how critics you might follow thought of the film. To me the reviews and alt cuts fall under the same umbrella, features for fans or film. Plex should have more of these features, not less.
As far as Emby goes, I keep a non-used Emmy setup running as a backup. That way I can keep that library at least semi-maintained when we do likely have to switch over.
Same. Strange how it seems that some of the features that users want most are often the sane things Plex gives the least priority to…
5 posts were split to a new topic: Issues matching TV Show / episodes
I’m wondering this myself for the new justice league recut. Will it fall under justice league or zack Snyder’s cut?
It looks like it (“Zack Snyder’s Justice League”) has unique IMDB and TMDB IDs. As far as Plex is concerned it will be a different movie.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Issues matching TV Show / episodes
I just noticed that “versions” is now starting to be called out on the web player title page after I added the Justice is Gray version of Snyder’s Justice League
Admittedly this doesn’t help a whole lot (at least for me as everything is encoded using the same settings), but it’s giving me hope that something could be done, even if it’s a manual naming process
LOL, yea, I suppose that gives us a small amount of hope. 
That’s because the “version” is a variation in resolution or bitrate for the exact same movie.
I request Plex to formally support organization of movies that have multiple cuts / release versions, such as:
Theatrical Release
Director’s Cut
Extended Release
Uncut / NC-17 version
Edited for Television
Widescreen
The version can be user defined, as part of the file name.
I request they all be organized under that same movie title and that each version in the library be listed independently, in a ‘Versions’ section before the ‘Extras’ section. So that the desired version be easily selected for play. A tag ending in ‘-version’ could be used to identify alternate versions of the movie. The description of the version can be taken from the file name. e.g.
Movie Title (year) - {Version Description} - comments -version.mkv
A movie folder could contain just all ‘-version’ files (as well as Extras) or if an untagged movie file exists, it will be the primary version. {Version Description} in the file name will still identify which version the primary is.
Individual subtitles can be associated with each version. e.g.
Movie Title (year) - {Version Description} - comments -version.en.srt
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Plex already has versions (i.e. resolution & bitrate) which it can automatically detect from the file. So you might want to go back and edit your comment to replace “version” with “cut” if that is what you are intending.
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Nine… YEARS!!!
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FWIW there seems to be a lot of hinting around on Reddit by Plex staff that this will be addressed soon.
As a reminder of just how long this obvious feature hasn’t been addressed… there are now kids who are aware of director’s cuts of movies that are younger than this feature suggestion.
EDIT: June 24 - Jokes on me for believing vague promises from Plex.
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