I have some TV Shows as well as Movies were I have two versions of the very same Episode / Movie. Currently the “Play Version” feature only shows the Resolution and Bitrate.
Plex already plays the “best quality” of a multiple version media entry and that fine. I would like to see a change here that adds some more functionality to Plex.
As an example lets use the following files:
Battlestar Galactica.S02E10.mkv
Battlestar Galactica.S02E10.Extended.mkv
and
Alien (1979).mkv
Alien (1979).Director’s Cut.mkv
Plex should start using the yet unused Optional_Info (see Naming ‘Series’ & ‘Season’ Based TV Shows) and use that Info in the “Play Version” dialog instead. This could not only be used for eg. Extended but also for 3D versions, etc. If no Optional_Info is given Plex should use “Standard” or “Normal”.
This could be a quick improvement.
However, that change would make it impossible to chose what Quality you want to play. If you have eg. Alien (1979).mkv in Original Quality but Alien (1979).Director’s Cut.mkv in Original and 720p Quality you only could select the Original Quality versions of both editions. Maybe we should ignore this fact and advise users to use the well known “Quality Selector” which is available once the Media started playing but maybe the next addition is more appreciated:
The Play Version selector shows “Optional_Info (1080p, 12 Mbps)”. In the last example you would get a list of the following entries:
Standard (1080p, 12 Mbps)
Director’s Cut (1080p, 10 Mbps)
Director’s Cut (740p, 4 Mbps)
Personally I don’t have different qualities stored (Server is fast enough to transcode multiple 1080p streams) for the same media. I have different versions (Normal / Extended / 3D / Storyboard) but I cannot chose these yet. I would be happy with any of the above suggestions but I know (most?) other users actually have different qualities stored and want to chose from them before the media starts playing back.
What do you think?
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Comments as always are highly appreciated! Thanks
