Hi All
Using the naming standard for multiple version like:
Wonder Woman (2017) - 720p
Wonder Woman (2017) - 1080p
Wonder Woman (2017) - 4K
Plex keeps seeing them as duplicates?
Before if I was naming them correctly it would shows as one single movie?
What am I doing wrong?
If they are in the same folder, it should see them as a single video. e.g.
/movies/Movie Title (year)/Movie Title (year) - quality A.ext
/movies/Movie Title (year)/Movie Title (year) - quality B.ext
Whereas if they are completely separated by quality it will see it as a duplicate. e.g.
/movies/Movie Title (year) - quality B/Movie Title (year) - quality A.ext
/movies/Movie Title (year) - quality B/Movie Title (year) - quality B.ext
For optional information in the filename you should surround them in brackets.
Wonder Woman (2017) [720p]
Wonder Woman (2017) [1080p]
Wonder Woman (2017) [4K]
I have the movies in the same folder! still shows up under duplicates?
Also the Plex standard does not state anything about brackets se here:
LINK
Hmmā¦ I used to have it set up the way you have above when i had 1080/4k before splitting the librariesā¦ and now that i think about it it did show a [2] on the poster, but when i went to the movie and selected āVersionā it allowed me to choose. If you are looking to not have a [2] there i dont think it will do thatā¦ because there ARE 2 files. Do you get a different result if you āOptimizeā a movie where plex does the separation of versions?
I think Plex creates a subfolder with a mv4 file when using āOptimizeā I havenāt tried this.
Because I prefer to have all my files in mkv containers.
Come to think about it the icon with 2 files indicates that the movie is in 2 different version and I can select the one I want thats okay!
But if I go to the movie library and select Duplicates it will show all the movies I have wich contains different versions!
I think this is an ERROR in Plex, because it should ignore them if the naming is correct, and only list duplicates between foldersā¦
I prefer MKV as well.
Duplicates is an ambiguous term unfortunately. I guess the logic could be rewritten to say if files are not in the same folder but that would break all libraries where people do not subfolder their media. This might be a situation where its āwhat appeases the massesā. Doesnt hurt to post something in the requests section tho! If my above answer answered your question, please mark it as such. Thanks!
@casperse said:
I have the movies in the same folder! still shows up under duplicates?
Also the Plex standard does not state anything about brackets se here:
The scanner will normally ignore stuff after the year. Using the brackets is just an explicit way to make sure the scanner ignores stuff.
Can you explain exactly what you mean by duplicate? Do you mean duplicate as in multiple copies of the movie being shown next to each other? If so, please provide me the xml from 2 of these duplicates.
Duplicate as in when you click duplicates as a sort option it will show you all movies that there is >=2 versions of
@casperse said:
Before if I was naming them correctly it would shows as one single movie?
@dirtycajunrice said:
Duplicate as in when you click duplicates as a sort option it will show you all movies that there is >=2 versions of
Those are the same thing, hence my confusion. If the op does not see them grouped into 1 entry, then they shouldnāt show up under the āduplicateā filter.
I see your confusion. I am assuming that as he continued the conversation after I specified the [2]. I donāt believe he is seeing 2 totally separate identical posters
@dirtycajunrice said:
I see your confusion. I am assuming that as he continued the conversation after I specified the [2]. I donāt believe he is seeing 2 totally separate identical posters
Then it is working as expected and I donāt see what the problem is.
@casperse said:
Plex keeps seeing them as duplicates?
If you have more than one version of a movie, the number of versions appears as a number on the movie poster.
This is the regular way in Plex.
Unless you āsplitā the movie.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201018248-merge-or-split-items/
I āthinkā his grievance is disambiguating a āduplicateā movie (with a different file name more than just the quality) vs a āduplicateā version (same file name except the quality).
An idea:
Here is what can lead to separate posters:
The older version was already for a while in the library.
then the default metadata agent for the library was changed (āPlex Movieā vs. āTheMovieDatabaseā)
When the second version was added, it got matched to the other metadata agent. Plex then doesnāt know it is the same movie.
You can confirm this suspicion by looking at the Plex XML info of the two duplicates/posters.
If they have different content in the guid= property, it probably happened like I described.
@dirtycajunrice said:
I āthinkā his grievance is disambiguating a āduplicateā movie (with a different file name more than just the quality) vs a āduplicateā version (same file name except the quality).
Exactly - Having multiple version of the same movie in different qualities - SHOULD NOT BE LISTED AS A DUPLICATE!
When I have movies that are duplicates they are doubles in different folders but for some reason are the same movie - like IMDB and MOVIE DB doesnāt always have the same release year so this is a perfect tool to clean up duplicates.
imagine having 600 movies with different qualities versions (Each movie in the same folder) and then having 5 duplicates in different folders, how do you disquenties them from the 600 others, when they all are listed as āDuplicatesā ARGHH! following the naming rules they should not be listed as a duplicates
@casperse Looks like while i understand your issue, it is a āFeature requestā at best as what its doing is what it is designed to do per @āMovieFan.Plexā. Atleast you know now!
If you are comfortable at any scripting language you could write something pretty easily to parse this out on the backend 
Good luck!
@casperse said:
ARGHH! following the naming rules they should not be listed as a duplicates
The filename has nothing to do with the files being duplicates. The filename is only used to help in matching the file to the movie from IMDB/TMDB. If multiple files are matched to the same movie in the same library, they become a duplicate. If you donāt want duplicates, but want to see multiple different entries, you can split these after they are combined.
Iām not clear why you would want this. Are you just looking for a way so you can pick the one version you want to play You can do that with duplicates. Most Plex clients have the option to āPlay Versionā which allows you to choose.
He knows they are duplicates. He wants to use Duplicates as a way to find incorrectly matched movies, and version to play another version. To do that without sorting through lots of information he wants the duplicate number that shows on the corner of the poster to only show if its incorrectly matched but not show if there are multiple versions of correctly matched media. The only way that could be done is with the filename. As plex only uses the filename for IMDB/TMDB parsing, its not currently an option.
@dirtycajunrice said:
he wants the duplicate number that shows on the corner of the poster to only show if its incorrectly matched but not show if there are multiple versions of correctly matched media
Ok. But how would PMS know something is incorrectly matched? The filename must have had something that allowed them to be matched to the same movie. If the matching is wrong we can look at this, but there still isnāt a way to identify a mismatch.
