Ever since I moved to Windows Server 2012, Plex no longer combines multiple versions of a movie into one tile. It instead shows them side by side. This is not a huge issue, but it was a nice feature I enjoyed when I was on Windows 7. Can anyone suggest how to fix this?
Are the files in a folder of the same name?
/Movies
/Batman Begins (2005)
Batman Begins (2005) - 720p.mp4
Batman Begins (2005) - 1080p.mp4
Or in the main movie folder?
/Movies
Batman Begins (2005) - 720p.mp4
Batman Begins (2005) - 1080p.mp4
Either way is suppose to work (I think), but I have found better luck if they are in their own folder (the 1st example)
I’ll try that and get back to you. Currently they are combined into a folder with both versions within.
Are the files in a folder of the same name?
/Movies /Batman Begins (2005) Batman Begins (2005) - 720p.mp4 Batman Begins (2005) - 1080p.mp4Or in the main movie folder?
/Movies Batman Begins (2005) - 720p.mp4 Batman Begins (2005) - 1080p.mp4Either way is suppose to work (I think), but I have found better luck if they are in their own folder (the 1st example)
i just start with plex and everything is going pretty good but i have a problem. i have one movie (so far) i am trying to have different resolution versions as in the above example. i think i saw it working when i first set it up but i changed the file names a few times while experimenting and now no naming scheme seems to work.
currently by folder looks like this:
/Movies
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises - 720p
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises - 1080p
does anybody have any ideas how i can fix this?
If you have been changing things around a lot then you might need to either delete the library and let it do a fresh scan or move the individual movies out of the folder - scan / delete trash & then move it back in & scan it again.
Sometimes plex get's stuck on a file and you have to help it forget and figure it out again.
i just start with plex and everything is going pretty good but i have a problem. i have one movie (so far) i am trying to have different resolution versions as in the above example. i think i saw it working when i first set it up but i changed the file names a few times while experimenting and now no naming scheme seems to work.
currently by folder looks like this:
/Movies
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises - 720p
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises - 1080p
does anybody have any ideas how i can fix this?
If that's precisely how the files are names, you're missing a year from both the folder and the file names. I'm overly particular about it and include the year in both my file names inside the per-film folders and the per-film folders themselves - perhaps that's contributing to the issue?
If it were me trying to fix that, this is what my structure would look like:
/Movies
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises (2012)
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises (2012) - 720p
/Batman -Dark Knight Rises (2012) - 1080p
Actually, more pedantically this is how I would label that specific title:
/Movies
/The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
/The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - 720p
/The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - 1080p
I would then edit the meta data for that film, and the others in that series, through the media manager and give them a manual sort order so that despite not having "Batman" in the title, it gets shown right after the previous two titles.
So imagining you have all three of the Nolan Batman movies, I'd have them all named like this:
/Movies
/Batman Begins (2005)
/Batman Begins (2005) - 720p
/Batman Begins (2005) - 1080p
/The Dark Knight (2008)
/The Dark Knight (2008) - 720p
/The Dark Knight (2008) - 1080p
/The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
/The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - 720p
/The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - 1080p
Then editing the details for each of the three (https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201272763-Edit-Details) I'd modify the Sort Title on each, something like Batman Nolan 2005, Batman Nolan 2008, Batman Nolan 2012.
That should give it the best chance of success and a clean library I think - however in my experience not all Plex clients offer a resolution choice, though I'm not sure of all available which do and don't, I guess it's based on the resolution of the client hardware and max stream quality, and then PMS picks the most appropriate.
to clarify, does Plex need the movie year for correct operation or is that a personal preference? i did notice the year was in the example in knowledge base but did not see it the necessity of including the production year. if so, i have thousand of files names to update :(
It is not just in the sample but is also specifically mentioned in the guide.
Stand-Alone Video Files
Movie media files can be contained in one or more folders. The structure isn't important unless you have custom media (e.g. posters) for a particular movie. To correctly name a movie file, name it as follows:
Movie_Name (release year).ext
There are movies with the same. Adding the year to the name will help Plex find the right match.
to clarify, does Plex need the movie year for correct operation or is that a personal preference? i did notice the year was in the example in knowledge base but did not see it the necessity of including the production year. if so, i have thousand of files names to update :(
As astrofisher says, it's specifically mentioned (at least used in the examples) in the guide on naming films: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200381023-Naming-Movie-files & https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200381043-Multi-Version-Movies
It's worth having a read through https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/categories/200028098-Media-Preparation though I have to admit it doesn't explicitly mention why the release year is important - essentially to cover where media has the same title (how would we differentiate, for example, between the Oscar (amongst other) nominated Sleuth (released in 1972) and the not so nominated Sleuth (a remake, released in 2007) but isn't the same movie. That's just remakes, there's also completely different films with the same title (there's at least 2 different "The Avengers" movies that I can think of off the top of my head, to pick something recent).
I know Plex has roots in XBMC, and to be honest I used XBMC well before Plex existed, so using years in the folder/file names is just a well ingrained habit for me.
Having the release year as part of the description is pretty standard formatting for any 'database' site for film/tv, and just having them there makes the matching process simpler and more reliable.
most of my movies have scanned just fine without a year in the title. yes, there are some movies where the titles are re-used exactly in different years but a very high percentage are not affected this way. just seems to me it would be better to offer a manual match when this rather unusual situation shows up. but anyway...
i consider this when troubleshooting problems like my Batman's. i have deleted my libraries, completely removed Plex Server, and rebuilt the libraries mostly because i wanted to relocate the database. however, curiously there is only one batman in the library now. maybe because of the titling issue? i will get back after i add years
I use the naming guideline now, but I didn't when I first started with Plex. There are probably still a few movies in my library that don't have the release year. Yep, I just found one. :D
Also note that you should not add anything after the year. Plex will use this info when trying to match and can get confused by that extra info. If you need something after the year use [ ] around it. Plex will ignore this and not use it to try and match the name.
i found my other batman's. they were under dark knight and i wasn't looking there as i always wanted my folders on disc sequenced by series also. i'll probably just start using the year in the title. i've been using MyMovies to download metadata and it always let's you choose. a little bit different approach and the year in the title was mostly not necessary because i never used their agent to find movies. it just scanned the disc before i ripped it and downloaded choices i picked from.
Also note that you should not add anything after the year. Plex will use this info when trying to match and can get confused by that extra info. If you need something after the year use [ ] around it. Plex will ignore this and not use it to try and match the name.
however, now i'm almost confused about MovieFan saying not to put anything after the year. i'm guessing that is nothing but the version info? is there also a convention about the version info being at the end and after "space-space"? like the examples? and the rest of the file name must match the folder name exactly? but anyway...
i still haven't got the version merging yet. but i think i will just create another folder if i have must to cut short the chase.
thanks for the help, really appreciate it.
i'm liking Plex for streaming my movies to different devices and and the polished interface and just signed up for lifetime :)
When plex tries to match a movie, it uses all the words in the title so naming a file along the lines of "Batman - The Dark Knight Rises - 2012 - 1080p - bluray rip.mkv" will use all of those words as part of the title search. Using TheMovieDB, "Batman - The Dark Knight Rises - 2012 - 1080p - bluray rip" returns 0 results. Even a shorter title like "The Dark Knight Rises - 2012" does not return a valid result. If you look in the logs for the agent you will see the terms it is using for the search, which will be everything in the filename. By placing extra info like the resolution in brackets, the agent will ignore these and not use them in the search. The year also needs to be in ( ) for best matching. So the proper format is:
Movie Title (year) [optional stuff can be anything you want and as much as you want].ext
So for "The Dark Knight Rises" the proper naming should be "The Dark Knight Rises (2012) [1080p].mkv" and "The Dark Knight Rises (2012) [720p].mkv". This is the best way to not confuse the scanner. Having the long mixed up titles sometimes does get the correct match, but that is mostly due to luck, which will not last as many have found out. Best to follow the proper naming scheme now.
When plex tries to match a movie, it uses all the words in the title so naming a file along the lines of "Batman - The Dark Knight Rises - 2012 - 1080p - bluray rip.mkv" will use all of those words as part of the title search. Using TheMovieDB, "Batman - The Dark Knight Rises - 2012 - 1080p - bluray rip" returns 0 results. Even a shorter title like "The Dark Knight Rises - 2012" does not return a valid result. If you look in the logs for the agent you will see the terms it is using for the search, which will be everything in the filename. By placing extra info like the resolution in brackets, the agent will ignore these and not use them in the search. The year also needs to be in ( ) for best matching. So the proper format is:
Movie Title (year) [optional stuff can be anything you want and as much as you want].ext
So for "The Dark Knight Rises" the proper naming should be "The Dark Knight Rises (2012) [1080p].mkv" and "The Dark Knight Rises (2012) [720p].mkv". This is the best way to not confuse the scanner. Having the long mixed up titles sometimes does get the correct match, but that is mostly due to luck, which will not last as many have found out. Best to follow the proper naming scheme now.
Is that new, or undocumented? Perhaps the guides need updating if that's the case. I've already admitted I'm a bit ■■■■ about naming the media :D and I rigorously use a folder-per-film structure, so may be less vulnerable to 'odd' media matches, but I've never had media matching issues because of what trails the "(release year)" portion of a film (or the "S[0-9][0-9]E[0-9][0-9]" part of a tv episode) file name, I don't know the mechanics of the matching process, but I would always imagined that logically it would detect the (release year) part of the string, if present, and assume everything before it was the title and search first with those two criteria.
I've just re-read the naming docs, I'm sure they used to say something like (and I'll paraphrase) "if you're not using a folder-per-film structure, format your film file names title (year).ext [eg: Movies\Batman Begins (2005).avi], if you are using folder-per-film structure it will attempt to match based on the name the folder rather than the name of the file, so name the folder title (year) and then the movie whatever you want [eg: Movies\Batman Begins (2005)\batman.avi".
Perhaps that was some time ago though. I long ago wrote little scripts to create folders and move them based on file names whenever I'm adding anything to the library en masse, so the files inside the folders have always matched anyway, so again, I've probably been overly careful with the file naming saving me from potential mismatche. This is the first I'm hearing of having to put 'other' stuff inside square brackets at the end of the file name. Whilst I don't have multiple versions for much media, plenty of the media (for my own benefit) carries a suffix, like "SD", "bluray", "dvd", "hdtv", "1080p bluray final directors", "dvd unrated" etc (and most of those are missing the "[space][hyphen][space]" separator because I've only started doing that in the past 6 months or so) and the only times I've had matching errors are due to my errors with titles or years.
It's a curious tangent to the OP question though, I suppose - sorry for the minor hijack :)
ok, i think i got versions working, thanks
Hi @RTzMxp Just started having the same issue and wondered how you resolved?
I have a windows and a QNAP server with the same settings pointing to the same folders and the windows Plex instance is working great, however the qnap one is placing them side by side now.
Thanks
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