New to Plex but so far it’s going well, adding a movie genre at a time to manage data quality.
On my system the files have names which allow them to be sorted in release order if they’re part of a franchise, and the Title tag always has the real movie title. On the whole Plex seems to manage to get the right movie name, and if I want to tweak the order I edit the Sort field and lock it.
I’ve had a few titles that Plex uses the filename (with the sort prefix) as the title, so I’ve edited the title and locked it, which seems to do the trick.
Except for 2 titles in one library… Whenever I update that library with new content and a scan is triggered, these 2 movies revert back to the file name in plex, no matter how many times I correct the title and lock it, the next scan it goes back to the file name. Possibly even more oddly there are 2 other files that do this, but not on every scan.
Anybody come across something like this and know how to fix it? I don’t want to rename the file as that puts it out of sequence in the file system, which is less desirable that an odd name in Plex.
It’s only a minor annoyance, but it would be nice to have Plex reliably keep locked values.
You can not use any arbitrary file name convention with Plex.
Doing so will get you into exact the situation you are describing.
The larger your collection gets, the worse it will be.
And indeed I didn’t use an arbitrary naming convention, I followed the “Movie name (year)” principle, albeit that some of my movie names might have a number in them to keep them in order that wasn’t in the original title, e.g. National Treasure 1 - and for all but 2 files in that library it seems to have no problem whatsover.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about Plex not getting the Movie name right on first scan (though again mostly it does), the problem is after the scan, if I tweak any info and lock it, then I’d expect it to stay as tweaked and locked. Again, for most it does, just for 2 files it doesn’t. These 2 seemed to want to revert back to their filename every time I updated other files in the library - it makes no sense. I would understand it if all the other files that weren’t truly using their movie name reverted to a pre-locked value, but that’s not the case.
@steamhead said:
And indeed I didn’t use an arbitrary naming convention, I followed the “Movie name (year)” principle, albeit that some of my movie names might have a number in them to keep them in order that wasn’t in the original title, e.g. National Treasure 1 - and for all but 2 files in that library it seems to have no problem whatsover.
National Treasure (2004).xxx - Sort Title: National Treasure 2004
National Treasure Book of Secrets (2007).xxx - Sort Title: National Treasure 2007
Instant, fully populated matches, sit side-by-side in the library in correct order, do NOT come unlocked - not to say there aren’t issues with locking, but it’s up to the user to take every precaution to prevent odd behavior (because Plex obviously can’t get a handle on the Lock Bug).
The FIRST step to be employed by the user is the proper file name and structure as laid out in detail in the handbook(s): https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/categories/200028098-Media-Preparation
If you fail to follow those guidelines TO THE LETTER and experience odd behavior - that’s on you. Own it.
Another bone of contention is the use of MP4/M4V files:
Particularly those with bogus and embedded Title Fields. Plex will read this info and prefer it over a perfect file name/structure, but you can combat that situation by moving Local Media Assets to the bottom of every agent list you can find. All tabs in TV Show and Movies here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200241558-Agents
Just drag LMA to the bottom of the list and drop it. If you do have embedded metadata this will cure the issue, if you don’t it won’t matter. LMA will do what it has to from the bottom.
Once items have been named and structured properly and matched properly it is rare an unlocking will occur. In fact there is no need to worry about locking in most cases. If properly named, structured, matched and locked items come unglued - that’s apparently one of those things users simply have to deal with. **** happens when working with Plex.
Just for fun, because I know Plex is supposed to ignore anything inside “square” brackets, I tried the following file names and folder names for the National Treasure movie collection:
Movies
… National Treasure [1] (2004)
… … National Treasure [1] (2004).mkv
… National Treasure [2] Book of Secrets (2007)
… … National Treasure [2] Book of Secrets (2007).mkv
Worked instantly, to my surprise. This was on a test server and library, with very few video files,. It’s a known fact that as you add more items to a library with non-standard file names, that eventually it will fail. I suspect that using the square brackets in the middle of a movie title will likely fall apart at some time, too.
You still might have to edit the sorting order with in Plex itself, depending on the movie title. I don’t usually browse my movie collection by file names and or folders, so I stick the the proper naming convention. I guess if the sequence on the actual file system is important, this work-around might work (until it doesn’t)
Most if us have adapted a solution similar to what @JuiceWSA proposed… because it always works! Non compliant file names are a headache waiting to happen.
EDIT: to be clear, I’m not recommending you name files this unusual way, only suggesting it might work in your circumstance.
The filenames aren’t causing any problems whatsover, everything is matching perfectly (almost), presumably because I am using MP4 files and all my Title fields aren’t bogus, the data quality in there is spot on, as I’ve moved from Twonky server to this, which used the title fields for display and the file names for sequencing. In my case the local media assets are what I want Plex to use for titles, which you’ve now confirmed for me means I can keep my sortable filenames if my Title tags are , so that’s great thanks.
I’ve tracked the problem for the two files down to an issue with the Plex Agent. These 2 files hadn’t matched, which I didn’t notice before as they also had emebedded movie posters (which is fine). When I tried a manual match, despite the search options containing the perfect Movie name and year, the Plex agent didn’t find anything. When I manually selected the Movie Database it found it straight away and everything was perfect after that.
So I’ve switched the config now to use Plex Agent then Movie database and see if that fixes it.
