Hi everyone,
I’m having an issue with Plex not detecting some movie titles correctly. For example, the title “Play Dirty” isn’t recognized when I scan the folder, but if I rename the file to just “Play”, it’s detected and works perfectly.
The same thing happens with “Man of Steel” — it’s not detected unless I rename it simply to “Man.”
Has anyone else experienced this kind of issue, or know why Plex might fail to recognize these titles?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Best regards,
Franck
Please show the actual, complete file names and the folder structure they are stored in.
Do also mention if they are mp4 or something else.
Thanks for your reply!
Just to clarify, the full file paths are:
-
D:\Videos\Man of Steel.mkv -
D:\Videos\Play Dirty.mkv
I’m not sure why these two titles don’t show up unless I rename them. I have other movies in the same folder, like D:\Videos\The Nightmare Before Christmas.mkv, and they work perfectly fine.
Thanks again for your help!
I’d recommend applying the “Duplicates” filter to your library to see if they’ve perhaps been merged with other movies (possibly with similar names).
A useful way to help disambiguate movies is to include the release year (in parentheses) after the title:
D:\Videos\Man of Steel (2013).mkv
It’s also possible to include the movie’s ID from The Movie Database or IMDB (in curly braces) as the last part of the file name. See this support article for more information on that (it’s not usually needed except for edge cases):
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/
(If you end up changing the file names or paths, be sure to perform the Plex Dance to force redetection.)
Thanks a lot for your reply!
I’ve already tried all those suggestions, but unfortunately it didn’t make any difference.
There are no duplicate titles in my library, and none of the other video files could be confused with Man of Steel or Play Dirty, since all the other titles are completely different.
Thanks again for taking the time to help!
As an experiment, I copied a dummy mp4 file into my Movie library as “Man of Steel.mp4”. Plex picked it up fine.
Seems super odd that just copying your file to Man.mkv gets it to detect correctly. I tried that and Plex thinks it a movie called Hombre.
Have you tried copying a different file to “Man of Steel.mkv” just to see if its detected right? Trying to determine if its a Plex Agent issue or that file issue.
Clear the checkbox “Prefer local metatags” in the properties of the library.
Then perform the Plex dance with your file.
Hi everyone,
The “Prefer local metadata” option is already unchecked.
I also tried moving the actual Play Dirty file to another folder, then renamed a completely different video to Play Dirty — and the exact same issue happens. The file simply isn’t detected after scanning the folder.
Thanks again for your help and suggestions!
Can you Plex dance the file and provide a copy of your server logs?
I know this wont make you feel any better and possibly doesn’t even help, but here are the results of a test I just did.
Created a dummy file “Play Dirty.mp4” Matched as Lethal Weapon 2
Renamed the dummy file to “Play.mp4” Matched as “Game”, an animated short.
Renamed the dummy file to “Play Dirty (2025).mp4” Matched as 2025 movie Play Dirty starring Mark Wahlberg
Renamed dummy file to “Play Dirty (2025) {imdb-tt32491447}.mp4” Matched to 2025 movie Play Dirty starring Theo Rossi
Obviously, correct naming makes a big difference for this movie. I still don’t understand why just naming it Play works for you.
Hi everyone,
Just to clarify — this doesn’t seem to be a metadata issue, but rather that the video files simply don’t show up after the library scan.
I performed a full “Plex Dance,” but the files Play Dirty.mkv and Superman.mkv still don’t appear in my library.
Here’s the scan log for reference.
Thanks again for taking the time to help!
Best regards,
Franck
Plex Media Scanner Analysis.zip (80.7 KB)
Add the release year. How many movies titled “Superman” have theere been over the years?
I’m really confused.
I thought the movie would still show up even if the match was incorrect, since that can usually be fixed later with the “Fix Match” option. That’s what happens with some other movies.
A perfect example is Play Dirty — it’s a unique title.
Thanks for your help!
Are you absolutely certain that the “Duplicates” filter shows no results? If not, these should show as unmatched (no metadata) rather than not showing at all. Something’s not adding up.
Yes, absolutely certain — I double-checked the “Duplicates” filter, and there’s nothing there.
I also thought those files should still appear in the library even if they weren’t matched…
At this point I am going to repeat and highlight the requirement to have decent naming matching the correct naming schema. The files are being seen and matched to something: D:\Vidéos\Films\Superman.mkv and DEBUG - Updating media item 5040, size=25775404488, metadata_item_id=2426 Until you fix your naming trying to debug how plex is seeing/matching your media is extremely difficult.
