Movie extras are missing in action. Problem Solved

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#:1.45.0.3013-1676042f
Player Version#:

I have been running Plex on my NAS for a few years. In addition, I have been organizing all my files via a mid-2011 Mac mini. Unfortunately, my Mac died recently, so now I’m trying to use a PC laptop until Apple releases the M2 Mac mini.

Today, I ripped two new blu ray disks each of which has movie extras. The movies appear on the main display and play, but the movie extras do not appear. I have assigned suitable dummy names to these files. I have tried the Plex Dance, but that did not work. Does Plex have different rules for Macs and PCs? Thanks.

This morning, I discovered that Windows 10 does not tolerate the presence of “.mkv” at the end of a file name.

If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging>

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Huh? Plex is fine with mkv files.

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MovieFan,

Perhaps I wasn’t clear. For years, I used MakeMKV running on a Mac mini to rip DVD and blu ray disks. The ripped files always had “.mkv” at the end of the file name. Recently, I had to use a PC running both MakeMKV and Windows 10 to rip two new blu ray disks. The ripped files did not have “.mkv” at the end of each file name. Thinking that something had gone wrong during the ripping process, I added “.mkv” to the end of each file name as I gave each file a unique file name. However, when I ran Plex, only the main movie appeared. When I removed that tag from each of the file names, the movie extras appeared in Plex, and the world was good again.

When I looked at my files using the PC, I noticed that all of the files are identified as MKV files in a separate column. Perhaps that is Windows’ way of telling Plex that these files are MKV files. Perhaps the “.mkv” tag really isn’t needed at all even when using a Mac. Not being a computer geek, I don’t know.

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By default, Windows hides file extensions for known file types in the File Explorer. You can over-ride that default in a couple of ways.

  1. Select the “View” tab and select (enable) “File name extensions”
  2. Click on the Options drop down, and deselect (disable)“Hide extensions for known file types”
    hide_extensions
    hide_extensions869×575 186 KB

What you may have been doing, since the file extension (the “mkv” part) was hidden was renaming a file from “My_MKV_file.mkv” to “My MKV_file.mkv.mkv”

Pretty sure the “.mkv” part is needed on all operating systems, even if you can’t see it. :wink:

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Hi, leelynds,

Thanks for the information about hidden file extensions on Windows-based PCs. Your guess about “.mkv.mkv” makes sense. I started thinking along the same lines as I read your discussion about hidden file extensions.

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FYI - the .mkv at the very end is called the extension, not tag.

If these are extras than the “.mkv.mkv” will fail because extras need to follow a specific naming pattern.

Theatrical trailer-trailer.mkv ← Works
Theatrical trailer-trailer.mkv.mkv ← Fails

What comes just before the extension must be the type of the extra. Having .mkv twice, the last one is the extension and the first one is read as the type. There is no mkv type so it will not get classified as an extra.

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Thanks. I was wondering why the movies played even with the double extension.

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