I have just about all my digital entertainment stored on my Plex server.
But over the years I have purchased movies and TV series from Prime Video.
I own a license to the video, but I can’t download a non-DRM copy.
That leaves me (and my decaying brain) with a dilemma. How can I make it easy to remember what is here and what is there?
What would be nice? If I could add bookmarks that either refer me to “there”, or better yet, actually take me "there:. (Not dissimilar to how a browser has bookmarks that take me to the content I am looking for…)
I’d be happy to just have a single database (Plex) that knows of all my videos, but instead of a Play button, displayed “On Prime Video”.
I wonder if I could make a .mkv that simply showed (and spoke)) “View on Prime Video.”.
If I renamed that placeholder .mkv appropriately, would Plex show the poster for my remote movie, provide all the background stuff, and display the Play button? And if I clicked the Play button, would it show my placeholder .mkv?
Or does the Plex database look into the .mkv file for information only the real video would contain?
I think I will try this.
But if anyone can provide more insight, it would be appreciated.
Plex has no way to look into your user accounts on other streaming services.
Which means linking them to Plex is not possible.
All you can do is to “fake” these items:
I recommend creating a separate library, from your regular movie library
Create (or if available download) a list of your “bought” movies in the regular Plex naming format for movies – i.e. Official Full Movie Title (year)
create a folder on your hard drive for the fakes.
It should not be a subfolder of your regular movie folder.
create a movie library in Plex for the fakes and name it “Movies on Prime” or similar. Clear the checkboxes “Prefer local metadata”, “Enable video preview thumbnails”, and “Enable credits detection” in its properties.
Point it to the new folder.
copy the first movie title into a text file. (this is important, it ensures that each of the fake movie files has different content)
I recommend using a plain text editor like notepad.exe.
save the text file and change its filename to be identical to its content.
So you end up with a file name like Official Full Movie Title (year).txt
Now change the file name extension from .txt to .mkv
Put it into the new folder from step 3 above
Interesting. Otto’s steps will get you a library of items that look like the movies you want, but they won’t work if played in Plex.
However, I don’t see any reason why you can’t make a short video that is 5 seconds long that displays “WATCH THIS ON PRIME VIDEO” (with audio), name it the exact title of the movie, and place that into Plex though. The only thing Plex looks at to identify videos is the title. If the “movie” is 5 seconds long and is a blank screen, Plex won’t care. If you then integrate these files within your movie folder, then these files will appear with all posters/metadata within all your other vids in Plex.
It won’t automatically link you to prime, and Plex cannot direct you to Prime with a button. But at least if you feel like watching “Tremors” and you own it on Prime, you will have an obvious hint to tell you to head over to Prime when you attempt to watch it.
If you do this, I’d highly recommend you make a sub-folder within your movies folder (call it “PRIME PLACEHOLDERS”?) and place all these fake files into this. You won’t want to be managing your other digital media in your folder and think you had the real movie when it’s one of these fakes.
I like the idea of having a short video telling my wife to go to Prime Video to watch the movie because then she won’t be asking me how to watch the movie.
And I like having all available movies (regardless of if they are here or there) in a single database, because I won’t have to check multiple sites to find the movie when my wife asks me why she can’t find the movie.
Life is simpler when my wife doesn’t have to ask me to do stuff. lol
Not 100% accurate.
It computes a “bogohash” of video files as well, to remember moved files. Which is what made the infamous Plex dance necessary in the first place.
If you use the same placeholder video file for all the fake items, things will turn complicated if a mismatch occurs and you’re trying to untangle it. It’s why I wrote what I wrote in step 5 above.
IMHO the name of the fake library should be descriptive enough to send the user to the Prime app.
I’m sure you know that, but no user “owns” titles they paid for on such streaming services.
If the service goes kaput, you won’t have access to these titles anymore. And you are not entitled to obtain a copy elsewhere and assume that it’s lawful to do so.
That’s why I would generally avoid using the word “owning” in this context. It just propagates a false concept.
Is the BOGOHash a checksum on the files bytes, or a hash of the files name or path?
Each “fake” movie would be named as uniquely as a real movie (which are all fake anyway. lol)
I will call the movie placeholder “a surrogate”.
If I create a unique surrogate for each movie I “own” in Prime Video, perhaps “The English Patient” was purchased on Prime Video", then I would be safe placing them in a single “Our Movies” library?
(But better segregated to a unique directory on my SSD…)
I did say I “didn’t see any reason” not to do it. I wasn’t aware of the use of a hash to identify a file from another. Hmm, while that may cause issues if a mis-match appears, this shouldn’t happen if the files are named properly in the first place.
But then, there is no predicting Plex sometimes: I’ve had a video matched on Plex before, and after a library-wide metadata refresh Plex unmatched it for some reason…
In my mind, I am picturing someone who has no desire to search out the Prime-specific library to see what is on Prime. Instead, they simply want to browse their movie list in their single movie library. Since they don’t actually have the file, there must be a placeholder for this movie to appear among all others in their library. Since they aren’t in a specific “NO FILES HERE WORK, BUT IF YOU FIND A MOVIE HERE WATCH ON PRIME” library, it should work at least for a few seconds, thus a working placeholder.
Well, if the OP is going to make placeholders, I don’t see why they couldn’t do a smidge more work in maiking the placeholder, and customize each “WATCH THIS ON PRIME” video to include the video’s title, and perhaps even its poster, if you want to go crazy.
Yeah, I’m well aware of that. It’s mostly why I have a Plex server myself. But it’s a common way to refer to the “possession” of media on online sources, and the best phrase I can think of.
Besides, it feels like “Ownership” to me now implies “as long as the media service exists, and does not revoke the content for any of a number of valid (to the service’s) reasons.” It sucks, but that is the world we are in.
