I have the Extended versions of the LOTR trilogy. They are in mp4 format on my plex server. Two of the movies work perfectly fine with have both pt1 and pt2 in teh same folder. However with the Two Towers. It will work fine from the Plex App on my MAC and Web Interface. But it will not work on my AppleTV nor iPhone.
Again the content from The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the kings works fine. But just this one will not.
If I move the pt2 to a standalone folder it will play fine on its own on my ATV, sot he content itself is fine. bUt even renaming etc… When it gets to the end of pt1 it moves to part two… I see a red “No Symbol” (0 with slash) and then it goes back to the initial page for the movie on Plex.
Notes:
Not all Plex Apps support playback of stacked media
All parts must be of the same file format (e.g. all MP4 or all MKV)
All parts should have identical audio and subtitle streams in the same order
Only stacks up to 8 parts are supported
“Other Videos” libraries or those using the “Plex Video Files Scanner” do not support stacked content.
To get a better overall experience, we encourage you to instead use a tool to join/merge the individual files into a single video. There are multiple ways you can do this and a quick search in your favorite search engine should give you some options on how to “join” files. An unofficial guide with one free tool has even been posted in our forums.
Related Page: Forums: Joining multi-part movie files with MKVtoolnix GUI: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/178888/howto-joining-multi-part-movies-files-with-mkvtoolnix-gui
This is just a personal observation, but when the official documentation suggests you not use (the buggy, hacked together with duct tape, baling wire and pocket fuzz, feature) and directs you to a place on the forum where you can learn how to join those parts into one Movie (in about a minute) I have to assume that’s really the best way to go.
Looking at the Return of the King which works fine…
One thing I notice is different is when I look at the file information. There is a Title on both the Return of the King movies but only on the second one of The Two Towers.
I am not sure if this is something I can just add or not.
The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) [Extended Version].mp4 <— correct example with [Brackets]
(all extra stuff not in ‘the real name’ at TMDB should go in [Brackets] so Plex will ignore it)
Compliant Examples:
A Movie Library/
…The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) [Extended Version]/
…The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) [Extended Version] - pt1.mp4
…The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) [Extended Version] - pt2.mp4
A Movie Library/
…The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002)/
…The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) - pt1.mp4
…The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) - pt2.mp4
FileBot (link in my signature) can really take the ‘sting’ out of renaming all your Movie and TV Show files to bring them into compliance. It can literally do 100s in seconds - if you let it.
A thing of beauty - and note the naming of once separate but now joined LOTRs Movies:
That’s the way it is with non-compliance, Terry.
Works one day, next day doesn’t work. Works sometimes, sometimes doesn’t.
Compliance works today, tomorrow and the next day.
Being basically lazy - it’s simply easier for me to go with compliance the first time and FileBot makes it so easy there’s really no excuse for remaining non-compliant.
That’s my motto.
Okay so I followed your advice, renamed to legit, etc… It will still play fie on web interface and on PLEX App for OSX. It will NOT play on any iOS device which includes my aTV and my iPhone.
Prepare to be amazed - and you’ll wonder why you haven’t been using FileBot all along.
The easiest way to get it going is to install it, open it and MOVE a hunk of poorly named movie files (not too many at first - 10 will do) outside the library (so Plex can’t see what you’re doing). Update Libraries, Empty Trash, Clean Bundles:
Drag those ‘moved files’ into the left pane of FileBot and drop. Click Match - with The Movie Database. It’ll happen almost instantly. Then click Rename. It’s done.
Drag them back into the library. Update the library.
Repeat.
I recently did my entire Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV Show (180 episodes) in one shot. It took about 5 seconds.
I have the exact same problem as TheDawgOfWar, with the same movie and everything. Like TheDawgOfWar, I’ve also walked through all the above suggestions with no work.
Watching the movie on the web, or on my FireTV yields the same results - it simply refuses to continue playing from pt1 to pt2. It just goes to black and exits back to the movie screen in plex (as if the movie had ended). The movie listing screen acts like I’m only halfway through the movie, and correctly shows the hours/minutes remaining, but when in the movie it acts like it’s own 1 hour & 45 minutes long (e.g. just pt 1).
Here’s how my files/directories look now:
/mnt/storage/media/movies/The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) [Extended Version]
jason@saturn /m/s/m/m/The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) [Extended Version]> ls -al
total 12095052
drwxr-xr-x 2 jason jason 4096 Mar 21 21:36 ./
drwxrwxrwx 3 root root 16384 Mar 21 21:31 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nogroup 5939873861 Mar 16 22:11 The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) [Extended Version] - pt1.mkv
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nogroup 6445428133 Mar 16 22:35 The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers (2002) [Extended Version] - pt2.mkv
I find it odd that this doesn’t work, especially considering that The Fellowship is just lumped into the root library directory, and has a less formal name, and “just works”
