Plex Media Server version?
Maybe check file/folder permissions? Make sure Plex Media Server has read access.
Plex recommends using individual movie folders when you have cover art, subtitles, etc.
I’m not aware of any library restrictions on mixing stand-alone movies and movies in their own folder. I did not see anything in the Plex documentation, and it does work, at least with my small test library.
If you are running PMS 1.20+ and using the new Plex Movie agent, you can add the IMDB/TMDB ID to the folder and file name.
Plex Docs → Scanners & Agents → Upgrading a Movie library to the use the new Plex Movie Agent
Plex Docs → Your Media → Naming & Organizing Your Movie Files
I’ve PMS 1.21.1.3830. It matched The Battle of Chile and downloaded metadata without issue using the new Plex Movie agent.
/Movies/The Battle of Chile Part 1 (1975)/The Battle of Chile Part 1 (1975).mkv
As mentioned in the “Naming & Organizing” document, not all Plex clients work well with multi-part movies. You will have better results combining the files into one movie.
You can combine the files using MKVToolNix. You may have to convert them to the MKV container first. I do not know if MKVToolNix can import AVI files.
[HowTo]: joining multi-part movies files with MKVtoolnix GUI
For external subtitles, Plex supports the following formats:
- SRT (
.srt) - SMI (
.smi) - SSA (or ASS) (
.ssaor.ass) - WebVTT (
.vtt)
Reference: Using Subtitles → Adding Local Subtitles to Your Media.
Suggest using SRT if possible. It is seems the most compatible across platforms and the least likely to cause video transcoding (If the client does not support the subtitle format, Plex will burn the subtitles into the video stream, which requires that the video be transcoded).
Subtitle Edit is a good Windows/Linux tool for converting, modifying, etc subtitles.
Check EmmGunn Software for Mac subtitle tools.
There are others available as well. Google can help you find them.
