Intro and credit detection across multiple copies of the same show

Intro and credit detection in Plex is great and works well. However, if there are multiple copies of the same episode or movie only one will be analyzed to try and detect the intro/credits.

I maintain multiple versions of some shows on my server (typically a 4K copy and a 1080P copy). This is to minimise the need for transcoding if a user is watching locally on a TV where they are direct playing the 4K version, versus remotely on a mobile device where the 1080p version is more suitable and sits within my remote bitrate limit.

Often the two versions may be slightly different, for example one copy may have a recap at the start while the copy may not include the recap. Also, during the credits one version may have a preview of the next episode, while the other copy may not. This means the intro and credits timestamps may be different between episode copies, and the skip intro and credit features don’t always align.

Currently I manually skip forward the intro or credits if there is a misalignment.

It would be great if Plex could detect intros and credits for each copy rather than by episode to avoid the issue that arises where the timestamps don’t align.

I suppose the challenge with your use case is that Plex considers different versions to be different-quality versions of the same video (as in the exact same cut).

1 Like

Yes, as the 1080p releases don’t necessarily correspond to the 4K releases. A lot of the time the 4K releases are DoVi so I also get a 1080P release for those devices I have that aren’t compatible or require a transcode.