Server Version#: 1.22.2.4282
Player Version#: n/a
I’ve been using my Plex server more or less happily for the past 7-8 years and have encountered a situation where movie files no longer match.
My directory structure is:
\Movies[genre][movie file or folder]
So, when I have a movie that’s just a single file, no extras, it’ll be something like:
\movies\Action\Master and Commander (2003).mkv
And when there are multiple files I’ll put them in a sub-folder or even a sub-sub-folder:
\movies\Action\Andy Sidaris\Do or Die (1991)\Do or Die (1991).mkv
This worked fine—very occasional issues over the years—until a recent (2021) update. Now, nothing seems to match, like, ever, and everything gets bundled into the last matched item. For example, I uploaded:
\movies\Westerns\Shane (1953).mkv
And it didn’t match. (Specifically, It comes up and says “Shane” with a year of “2021”, and doesn’t give an “unmatch” or “fix match” option.) So I match it manually. This involves selecting “match”, clicking on “Search Options” in the dialog, removing the date from the title (because the title will be “Shane (1953)” which won’t match anything), changing the Agent from “Personal Media” to “The Movie Database”, deleting the date (which will be “2021”) and maybe adding in the right date, and changing the language from “Dansk” to “English”, hitting Search and hoping you didn’t screw anything up because if you did, you won’t get any hits (and sometimes you won’t get any hits anyway because some things aren’t in the DB but more on that in a moment).
So I match it to the right “Shane”. Now I copy over more files. In this case “Unforgiven (1992)” and “Pale Rider (1985)”, which both happen to go into the Western sub-directory, but the following phenomenon occurs regardless of what sub-directory I copy them to.
In the client, “Shane” now has three files:
\movies\Westerns\Shane (1953).mkv
\movies\Westerns\Pale Rider (1985).mkv
\movies\Westerns\Unforgiven (1992).mkv
Well, hell. Now I gotta split these and repeat the process. OK, I think, maybe it’s mandatory now to have movies in their specific sub-folders? So I try that. I copy over:
\movies\Cult\Angel Eyes (1993)\Angel Eyes (1993).mkv
This shows up as “Angel Eyes (1993)” with a year of “2021” and I have to do the exact same matching process. For giggles, I followed up with:
\movies\SciFan\Independence Day (1996)\Independence Day (1996)-extended.mkv
\movies\SciFan\Independence Day (1996)\Independence Day (1996)-theatrical.mkv
And these showed up as two different, unmatched entries.
I sometimes mocked the Plex’s matching abilities but I am remorseful and penitent and would like to have those abilities back. Any help is appreciated.
