On one library i have, I have multiple copies of the same video in different folders with different filenames. Sometimes this works perfectly fine, and sometimes it joins them together as two media items for the same video, and i have to tell it to split them apart. Is there a way to disable the functionality that does that joining on an individual library? Or if not at a library level, at the server level?
The dupes are because I’m using folder view for this library, with each actress getting their own folder. I’m running a script now to find all the dupes, and then I’m going to test using symlinks or junctions to reclaim the disk space without affecting the folder structure. Has anyone else tried using symlinks or junctions with Plex before?
If you just throw all the files into a single folder structure, and then leverage Plex’s metadata system I think you will have better success.
You can even use smart collections or playlists based on actors. I have one for a couple of actors/actresses where I tend to watch whatever they are in, and include an unwatched parameter in the collection.
That seems easier but doesn’t really work for my use case. Many of the files are downloaded directly from a subscription website, or I’m downloading an individual scene from a larger VOD. The VOD metadata collection is fairly good, but it has no idea how to parse it at a scene level (and even less of a clue about the subscription site downloads), so I’m reinventing the wheel a bit out of necessity. Or are you suggesting that I write a script to parse the filenames and apply actress names to the file metadata and then have Plex build collections from that? That doesn’t seem much different than just having the script create and populate the collections, which was something I was planning on doing anyways, just based on the folder name… ie, each folder would have a corresponding collection.
I am worried that having 700+ collections will cause issues in the Android client like I see with that amount of folders (I made a post about that problem under the Android section of the forum).
Folders create an OS level issue, you can easily create collections and shouldnt have those issues. Plex should batch those collections to only load part of the total as needed.
