[Implemented] - Multiple Cuts Of Movie

Haven’t read through all 700+ messages, was there any reaction regarding this feature request from Plex side ? If yes what did they say ?

Just noticed … In about 6 month we reach the 10 year mark for this feature request. Wow

If you read a few messages up, you’ll see a post that basically says they’re working on it.

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Yes. Back in September of '21 after being pressed for a response @elan basically indicated that they had passed over the feature request because they were aiming for perfection.

Afterwards the forums made a case that even a bare minimum feature would be better than nothing. Like the extra cuts being presented similarly to movie extras or even just viewing the file name in the version picker.

So later on in January 3 '22 after asking about any updates @elan seemed to indicate that they were now revisiting the idea.

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I really wish they’d go simple. I’m sure some users would REALLY want their individual versions to be tracked as Watched. I think the desire to have a version selector at all far outweighs caring about which version that gets played being marked as such.

Like, that’s how it functions right now. You watch either, and the movie as a whole gets marked complete. Fine by me. Just give me a dropdown near the play button to pick one if there’s more than one. Done.

As the world stands, I, nor my users have no way of knowing that multiple cuts exist. I kinda miss the little number in the corner. At least that was a visual indicator that there was more there than meets the eye.

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I would also really like a function that allows the selection of multiple film versions.

A simple dropdown menu in which you can select the versions (directors cut, extended cut etc.) is enough!

I don’t find the possibility of moving the other versions to an “other” folder really practical or nice.
Instead, each version gets its own film folder and is named according to the version, e.g. “Aliens - The Return Director’s Cut” and “Aliens - The Return Theatrical Version”

Not nice, but what can you do.
If Dolby Atmos, Auro and DTS:X come into play now, the title will be even longer:
“Aliens - The Return Director’s Cut Dolby Atmos”

You wouldn’t need that either if you could read your own tags from the .nfo and filter them in Plex. There are already filters for HDR, resolution, so why not filters for Atmos and co. ??

Please please add this option! This would make things a lot easier!

Best regards Pierre

That’s one of two things I want Plex to improve on, the ability to separate movies by different cuts like the Aliens theatrical cut and special edition or Terminator 2 theatrical edition, special edition, and ultimate edition.

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Come on Plex!!! 10 years of waiting???

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I don’t think votes matter, anyway. There’s no way gigantic requests like this get overlooked in favor of things nobody is asking for.

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There is when you are as arrogant as Plex and treat your paying customers with such contempt!

I found a temporary solution, i made a folder with the movietitle (year), and in that folder i have the theatrical release, and then an alternate cut, and an extended cut.

So what i did was place the theatrical release in the folder, and then followed it with the alternate and extended cuts so that the folder structure looks like this
Movietitle(year) < this is the folder name
movietitle.ext
movietitle_extendedcut-other.ext
movietitle_alternatecut-other.ext

adding -other to the alternate versions, allowed them to popup in the extras section

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This is a workaround, but one that still has a lot of problems. I tried this too, but you don’t get resume ability or, most importantly, you don’t get subtitles, you also can’t have alternate audio tracks, you can’t choose the artwork so it might have literally a frame of the fade between a shoe in the desert & an office scene that looks horrible.

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It has resume ability on mine, and i dont have a sub file for the cuts i have, but there is an option under the slider bar to click on a sub bubble and audio track

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I found a post on Reddit that worked really well for me. Maybe it will help some of you. From here:

Reddit Post

It turns out that even if you split the files they still have the same underlying ID so Plex thinks they are the same movie. You need to get one of the copies to have their own ID.

The easiest way to get a unique ID is to “unmatch” the extra cut of the film. This appears to detach it from the main cut. This is the reason it worked for me and not for you. I manually added the metadata for the duplicate copy after splitting and unmatching from the main copy.

The only problem with this is that you’ll need to manually specify all of your own metadata because the file will no longer be associated with an ID or a metadata provider. Obviously this is annoying but I found a super easy workaround.

Just make sure you “lock” all of the metadata fields that you want to keep BEFORE you do the unmatch. Once the file is unmatched it should keep everything you’ve locked and then you can edit the title (adding “Director’s Cut” or whatever) and Plex will think they are two different movies.

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Plex as a company are more interested in commercialising PM$ than fixing basic stuff like this.

Just migrate to another platform instead…community vote’s are just a PR campaign made to look like Plex employees GAS…just ask their product manager what their priorities really are :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(a simple feature such as this from 2012 and STILL not implemented? LMAO)

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I just checked & you are correct, it now does show an option for subtitles & resumes when you are in the middle of an extra track. That’s a big benefit. & shows that they are working on it. But it looks like at the very least it does not support Sidecar Subtitles. Because it doesn’t give me the ability to select them, even though the file is there & properly named. I justed tested it with an embedded subtitle in both an mkv & mp4 file & it still didn’t give the opportunity to actually use them. & I discoverd that the resume can’t really be reset. I tried starting from the beginning & stopping after a minute, stopping immediately, but those didn’t work. The only way to clear the resume is by playing it to the end, When I skipped to the actual end it didn’t but when I skipped to the last 40 seconds & watched the end it did.
I’m glad they are improving the feature, just hope it will actually be usable for the subs sometime soon. Though I’m more concerned with them fixing the other Subtitle issue 1st, lol

I would say that this isn’t “broken”. You can have all the cuts to a movie you want to by separating them and giving them different names. We just want a cleaner way to do that. But I would also say that I’m glad PLEX is trying to be profitable because if they aren’t making money, they vanish - and as a lifetime subscriber, PLEX hasn’t made a dime off me since I bought my lifetime pass for $75 in 2018. So I can’t complain about much of anything because I’m pretty sure they spent that $75 already.

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Well said… I’m in the same boat. Hard to be mad at them for trying to stay in business. But I do try… :slight_smile:

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So was just talking about this Request in another thread & re-read through a few things & realized there’s potential here similar to another suggestion I have to use the .plexmatch file to add custom episode sorting. But it would make sense that it could be use for the Cuts as well.

For those unfamiliar earlier this year Plex has implemented a new way to help match unusually named files for TV Shows. You use a file named .plexmatch & it will let you give Plex overrides for show names, season numbers, IMDB/TVDB/TMDB IDs, etc.
If this Metadata override option is something they are already using, why not use it for Multiple Cuts?

I won’t go too much into my TV Show Suggestion but essentially the way the .plexmatch file works is by having “Hints” for matching. I suggested using the TVdb Episode ID to manually match the episode even if you have it sorted somewhere else. Like when a movie comes after the final season & you’d like it to be the next season with a movie poster instead of Specials Episode 47.

So my idea, which I think is not nearly as good as the ones already suggested, but since Plex doesn’t seem to like those maybe this will be a system they can accept

Here’s an example mock-up of a movie .plexmatch file with multiple cuts
I’ll use an example from comment 453 for Star Wars

  • .plexmatch
# Star Wars Editions with multiple versions
# Assuming that Theatrical versions are in a folder named "Theatrical" within the "Star Wars (1977)" folder, & others similarly
cut: Theatrical: /Theatrical/Star Wars (1977) - Theatrical Release - 1080p.mkv
cut: Theatrical: /Theatrical/Star Wars (1977) - Theatrical Release - 720p.mkv
cut: Theatrical: /Theatrical/Star Wars (1977) - Theatrical Release - 480p.mkv
cut: Special Edition: /Special/Star Wars (1977) - Special Edition - 1080p.mkv
cut: Special Edition: /Special/Star Wars (1977) - Special Edition - 720p.mkv
cut: Special Edition: /Special/Star Wars (1977) - Special Edition - 480p.mkv
cut: Disney Release: /Mouse/Star Wars (1977) - Disney Release - 1080p.mkv
cut: Disney Release: /Mouse/Star Wars (1977) - Disney Release - 720p.mkv
cut: Disney Release: /Mouse/Star Wars (1977) - Disney Release - 480p.mkv

This would also make the different versions of a specific Cut grouped together under that cut however Plex may deal with that.

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@LostOnTheLine Thanks for your time and the mockup, but this seems like double work to me. Why not just show the filename in the drop down menu. If the file has already been named properly using something like FileBot a user can pick based on pre-existing information. Editing a text file for fleeting information ( I prune files I’ve watched instead of increasing the size of my HD ) seems like a lot of extra work.

And… in general, the word “version” can mean many things Plex Devs.

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In Plex, “version” means different resolutions of the same movie. You can prerender them if you want and Plex will pick one based on bandwidth settings. That is also the reason the version picker is vague, it is focused on bandwidth. I’m not saying they can’t change that or relax the meaning. That’s just how it is at the moment.

Emby seems to have a relaxed definition of version. For any movie with multiple files, they take whatever wording you put after the year and stick it in a dropdown box.

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