Merged files

General Discussions
1

Hey there, sorry if this has been asked before but I can’t seem to find the answer.

I have many home movies that we’ve imported into Plex and one have similar names like:

Family Picnic (1)
Family Picnic (2)
Family Picnic (3)

I’ve merged them into one file to reduce clutter but it will only play the first video in the merged set of files and won’t automatically go to the next one when the first one has completed playback. I can see under “file info“ that all X number of files are grouped into that merged file but how can I enable playback so that it will play one file and then the next and then the next and then the next?

2

Merging files means that Plex considers the files to be different-quality versions of the same video. You actually want to „stack“ the files — that cannot be done in the user interface but requires the file names to be modified.

e.g.

Family Picnic-part1.ext
Family Picnic-part2.ext
Family Picnic-part3.ext

See „Movies split across multiple files“ in the related support article.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/

Edit: alternatively you could merge/append the files using an app like MKVToolNix and only deal with a single file.

2 Likes
3

Thank you!

So should they be named Family Picnic-part1.ext.mp4? Or Family Picnic-part1.mp4.ext? Or just Family Picnic-part1.ext, and Plex will see the filename extension and recognize that it’s an mp4/mov/mpeg whatever?

Thanks again.

4

The “.ext” text in the example filename is a placeholder for the “file extension”. So if your files are .mp4 type, then your filename would be Family Picnic-part1.mp4. If they were .mkv files, then you would name them Family Picnic-part1.mkv.

Since you already indicated they are mp4, do the former.

2 Likes
5

Ah! So it just needs to have the -part1, -part2, etc., in the filenames, and then followed by the extension. Thanks so much for your help!

6

Does this not work with .mov files? It seems those still don’t want to play as a group.

7

File types shouldn’t matter but the support article is listing a number of prerequisites/conditions, e.g.

  • not all clients will be able to play stacked files
  • files must contain the same tracks in the same sequence

To verify if the files are properly stacked, check if the runtime in Plex is the full length of all stacked files.
If Plex recognizes that the files were previously associated as different versions, doing a Plex Dance might fix this.

8

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