Plex marks movies as unwatched every time the video file is upgraded

General Discussions
1

Every time one of my movie files gets replaced with a higher quality file plex marks the movie as unwatched. I’m sure I’ve probably just misconfigured something but not sure what?

2

The devil is in the details…

Please outline your upgrade procedure

3

When Radarr imports the file it sends a notification to plex and plex scans the library.

4

Well, not a Radarr user, so no idea about how it does it, so here’s what I do manually…

I have

  • Top of Library
    • MyMovieDir
      • MyMovie.720p.mkv

I then add a better version, and have:

  • Top of Library
    • MyMovieDir
      • MyMovie.720p.mkv
      • MyMovie.1080p.mkv

I scan the library within Plex, and after that, I make sure both medias are detected (Look at the movie in the webclient, and select Get Info

  • Delete MyMovie.720p.mkv and rescan Library
  • Empty Trash
5

If the metadata are reset every time the file is replaced by a new version, this points to the possibility that this file is not “matched”.
To mitigate this, instruct your manager software to name and store your media in a format which produces better chances of successful matching
e.g. name the MyMovieDir as Official Title of Movie (year) - {imdb-ttxxxxxx}
where ttxxxxxx is the ID of the movie on IMDb.

Another possibility is, that the old file is deleted before the download/copy process of the new file is finished.
Disable the periodic and automatic library scans within Plex and only let your downloader trigger the Plex library update when it’s done.

6

I’m still testing but it looks like this has fixed it. There are some files that get a name change though. originally Radarr was naming <title> <release year>.<video quality>.<video format>.<audio info>.<extension>
This was great for me to see the info for the video easily but a constant challenge for naming the extras so I changed it to just <title> <release year>.<extension> that way the file name never changes. Less headache. Many of the videos have already been replaced/renamed by Radarr but since there are quite a few I’m working on manually renaming the rest. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of years. :laughing:

Thanks all for the help with this.

7

Not sure what you mean by Extras.
Local extras have their own file name rules which don’t follow the file name of the main video file. https://support.plex.tv/articles/local-files-for-trailers-and-extras/

The only thing which must follow the file name of the main file are external subtitles.
And there is software to achieve that. Try Filebot.

Btw. you could do this:
<title> (<release year>) - [<video quality>.<video format>.<audio info>] {imdb-ttxxxxx}.<extension>
This is still a perfectly valid file name for a movie in Plex.

8

Thanks. I used XBMC for many years. Didn’t realize Plex used different naming. XBMC was.<movie title>-trailer .

9

Within Radarr I use:
{Movie Title} ({Release Year}) - {Quality Full} which produces this :
(The Movie Title (2010) - Bluray-1080p Proper)

When movies are upgraded from 1080p to 4K, they do not change back to unwatched.

Within Radarr you can bulk Rename them using your rules.

10

At the risk of being completely off topic, how would I do this.

11

Nevermind. Found it. Thanks

12

missed this…but glad you found it…nice time saver that.

13

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