Movie names and Collections problem

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Hi,
I’m having a problem. I’m sorry, but I am not an expert in such things and may not use correct terminology, but will explain as best as I can…

I have approximately 1000 movies. The movie filenames are in the following structure:
Movie Name (year) PG 1080p CD1.mp4

On the actual platform it seems to deal with this quite well. Finds all the data and a poster etc, displays the movie name only, so perfect!

But on a few, even though it has still found the movie, and has all the correct data, the name shows as the filename instead of just the movie name. It shows the content rating and the resolution exactly as is the filename.

This is a little annoying as I have to go into the info and turn the lock orange and delete the superfluous text. OK, no probs.

But here’s the problem… every couple of weeks, they’re ALL BACK!! I have to do it all again.

It was starting to get annoying! But today something worse has happened…

In the recently added strip, on home, it has a whole bunch of movies that are NOT recently added. They are years old. It has also reverted a lot of names back to the entire filename, even though it has identified the correct movies, the posters are all different… BUT, all of my collections are now EMPTY!! So I have to go back and re-tag everything. This is EXTREMELY frustrating, oh and it also thinks I have about 200 more movies than I actually have!

It’s like it emptied the library from some reason, rescanned the entire folder and basically started again! I can’t have this happening all the time, what is wrong if anyone knows and how do I stop it from happening? How do I make my changes of the movie name and the collections STICK!?

Thanks for any help!

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Item showing “file name” instead of movie title

That’s probably files with embedded metadata. If you have configured a library to use embedded metadata, it’ll show that information – e.g. for the title.
Plex usually doesn’t show the actual file name in the user interface (unless it’s actually not able to match that movie.

Changes getting lost / reset

If your changes get lose this can be related to a bad combination of automatic/periodic scans, your media drive(s) not being available (e.g. too slow to spin up) and your server configured to empty its trash after every scan. In such a case, Plex will purge the library records of all movies it cannot find. If the media is available during the next scan, Plex will re-add the items from scratch (incl. a new “date added”).

If that’s happening occasionally you might want to disable Settings > [Server Name] > Library > Automatically empty trash after scans). This way Plex will still recognize the file is “missing” but it’ll keep the library record (with all your edits/changes/watch history…) until you manually delete it.

General recommendation

Unless you depend on the content rating, resolution and disc number(?) for critical reasons, I suggest you don’t use that as it can throw Plex off when it comes to matching your media. In particular the “CD1” part can be tricky as Plex is using that kind of suffix to identify that a file is only a part of a movie (e.g. “300 - CD1” and “300 - CD2” should be recognized as the movie 300 distributed across 2 files in which case Plex will attempt to play them in sequence).
This way… even if things get mixed up, Plex should still be able to better recognize and match your files.

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Hi,
Thanks for the reply.

I have turned off the automatically empty trash after scans. Thank you for that.

How do I stop the use of embedded metadata? But just so you know, for me it does show filename even when it has correctly matched, it’s weird! Hopefully if I can stop that by turning this embedded thing off, that will fix that.

as for CD1 and resolution, it is there for practical reasons up until it is ready to be dropped into the server folder, and then would be a hassle to delete. The reason is that every single movie I have is in 2 parts, I make the UK black cards for each movie… (they are the CD1, the movie is actually CD2) as I like to re-create the cinema going experience. and I have to match the resolution with each or else Plex doesn’t play the 2 parts, so having that info in the filename, easily seen for me as I make these black cards helps a lot, especially when I’m about to do 50 of these.

Also, the content rating is needed, so I know what black card to make. (If you’re American, a black card is the equivalent to that green screen, I think you guys see, that tells you the content rating for the movie you are about to watch.)

Oops, just seen you’re in Germany, I have no idea what the German version looks like. Sorry.

BBFC Black Card PG 2020 - Present
BBFC Black Card PG 2020 - Present977×512 40.4 KB

And yes, I do make the correct black card for the year of the movie. This is the current PG black card in the UK. They have had numerous style changes since the 1930’s. So if the movie was released in 1980, I would use the version of the black card that would have been used in 1980.

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Im my personal opinion: you should avoid multi-part videos as much as possible. And don’t create more of them.
Reason is: they can create issues during playback. Particularly if the two parts are created with different parameters (codec, resolution, bitrate etc.pp.)
Chances are that on Android-based clients, you will only see your black card.

It doesn’t exist. :wink:

As for ignoring the embedded meta tags:
If your movie library in Plex is still using the old agents, go to

  • Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB

In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under

  • Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
  • Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie (Legacy)
  • Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase

Afterwards, Refresh Metadata of the affected items.

If your movie library already uses the new “Plex Movie” agent, do this instead:
Edit your movie library
go to the ‘Advanced’ tab
clear the check mark out of “Prefer local metadata”

Afterwards, Refresh Metadata of the affected items.

Little tip: you may want to change your naming scheme to
Movie Name (year) [PG 1080p]-CD1.mp4
Stuff between the first pair of square brackets is “hidden” from the Plex scanner, so the chances are lower that anything of it may skew the matching algorithm.

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Thanks for the reply.
I’ll definitely use the new naming structure you propose.
It is using the Plex movie agent, so I’ll do what you say and clear the check mark from prefer local metadata.

Thanks all for the help, greatly appreciated!!!

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