I am finally upgrading my UnRAID storage server with bigger drives. I’ve ripped plenty of HD movies in the past and have started to rip Blu-Ray to add to my collection. I normally always use mp4 to conserve space. I was trying to see how a mkv rip of the same movie would work out at the full size with all the features(subtitles, etc). Previously my naming convention worked to allow plex to choose the appropriate format (ie: Movie (2010).mp4 and Movie (2010) [4K].mp4). They always showed as duplicates (which I want), but now trying to add the same movie in HD or 4K as a mkv, they show up as a separate title. Am I missing something with the naming convention? Or do they have to be the same extension to show up as duplicates?
the extension is irrelevant.
as is whether they are mp4 or mkv, has no effect on the size of the file.
so you can have a Movie (year) [1080].mp4 and Movie (year) [4k uhd].mkv and they should both show up as duplicates if in the same library.
there is one reason why the same movie might show up as different, because you have changed the library agent.
so if you have a movie that scanned with plexmovie, then later changed the agent to the moviedb, adding a new version of the movie would show up separately.
you can combine duplicate movies by going to the movie library, selecting both movies and using the 3 dot menu to combine them.
1 Like
Thank you, I didn’t realize changing agents would affect it, this is my first time adding something other than an mp4 to my library. Well, learn something new everyday. Plex is amazing and i’m still trying to fully utilize it, but I did change agents then added a couple of movies. Is there a way to refresh the library to automatically use the new agent? I tried refreshing the metadata to no avail, or do I have to manually combine the newly added and the agent will take over after?
you would have to ‘refresh all metadata’ from the main library context menu.
which of course would reload metadata for the entire library (which could take a while depending on number of movies).
I know you said you wanted ‘duplicates’, but IMO its better to keep 4k content in a separate library.
this way you can prevent remote users from even seeing 4k and causing unnecessary transcodes.
No, this will not change the agent on already matched items. It will just fetch the same old metadata from the same agent.
To really change the match you need to either:
- perform ‘Fix Match’
- ‘Plex Dance’ the item(s)
- delete the library and re-create it
- ‘Merge’ the two posters of the same movie. Which poster is ‘selected’ first, will determine under which agent the merged poster will end up.
Ok hmmm I thought refreshing at library would do it, and well I won’t go into how stupid the concept of the plex dance is.
and as warning, plex dance or deleting library will obviously cause all play history and any metadata/poster/background/collection customization to be lost.
Sorry for my ignorance, but what is Plex Dance? Merging the file works, but now that I have changed agents (permanently) do I need to do anything going forward?
If you happen to use the same agent as before, the playback history will be preserved. It doesn’t get deleted by the Plex Dance, nor by deleting the library.
1 Like
going forward you will either have to keep merging separated movies, or do one of the unfortunate things suggested above from Otto.
1 Like
Oh I suppose one other thing you could do, is put your movie agent back to the original.
Then new movies will have the same agent as the old ones (other than any movies you already changed to the new agent).
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
