Plex Match now uses folder name instead of filename

General Discussions
1

Morning all, I just wanted to see if this is an intentional change, and if there is a way to prevent it in in some way. At some point, and I am not 100% sure when exactly, but the plex matching system stopped using the filename to search, and is instead using the folder name.

This probably isn’t an issue for 99% of people, but as my two bedroom TVs don’t play HDR and 4k content correctly on Plex, I use a local playing option for those two TVs. And as such, my folders are named in a way to allow them to order correctly (Movie title, the).

An example, this is the filepath to a movie on my server:
/share/Media/Movies/Other/Fox Hunter, The [2020]/The Fox Hunter [2020] [WEBDL-1080p] [h264 EAC3].mkv

As you can see, the container folder has the name as “Fox Hunter, The [2020]” while the folder is named “The Fox Hunter [2020]”. I have had it this way for probably around 5+ years now, and until recently it has worked fine.

The change may not have been at a Plex level, but perhaps from theMovieDB or something, but when I do look at the manual math options, I see Plex is trying to search for “Fox Hunter, The” as the title of the movie.

Hopefully that makes sense, and I appreciate any help :slight_smile:

Kirt

2

I thought that was exactly how Plex has been designed to work for a long time. It is one of the reasons I do not put my movies in individual folders.

The primary source of a movie name is the folder name not the file name. But, since I do not have any of my movies in that format, I cannot say for sure that is 100% true.

I understand that it is sometimes necessary to violate Plex’s naming rules for your own needs but you do so at your own risk. As far as naming goes is is best not to fight the great Plex-i-saurus. BTW: Just because some improper naming scheme worked in the past does not mean it will work in the future and it is not uncommon for something in the background processes to suddenly break matching if the naming is not exactly what Plex expects.

I If your TVs do not work and play well with Plex and you want to use Plex I would suggest that you give Roku Ultras or Fire 4K devices a try. I very much prefer the Ultra but, after some recent updates, the Fire devices seem to work fine as well.

3

One thing that’s going to give you a lot of grief is the square brackets [ ]
Plex ignores anything in those brackets, including the movie year in your titles.
So if there are more then one movie title in different years Plex wont match it.

4

Yeah, honestly I am not saying Plex has done anything wrong here, was just more of an inquiry if it was a mistake or perhaps something they are chaining in the background.

Think is, my TV Shows are named the same way, and they work fine, I assume this is because the show folders are “Season 01” etc, so it would ignore folder names… so that’s fair enough.

As for my TV, it’s actually an ongoing issue with Plex and Sony, both refuse to admit fault essentially… the plex app will not display 4K HDR files correctly, it will have green bars etc, and you have to manually set quality transcoding, which washes out the colours. Plex in past posts have said its an issue with Sony, however I am able to use Kodi or even the default movie app on the TV to use it (This is the method I use).

My living room works fine, but the app is a bit laggy (TVs fault, its a bit older), so I use a Nvidia Shield, and it functions flawlessly :slight_smile:

5

Is that 100% correct? I only ask as when I go into match, it picks up everything in those brackets and populates the correct fields no worries, its only the title that is getting picked up from the folder it seems?

6

Yes. That is 100% correct. Anything inside square brackets is ignored.
The correct naming for movies is MovieName (year) [anything here is ignored].ext If fields inside brackets are being used then in is actually a bug in Plex.

for TV shows it is a little more complex:

TV Shows <- The TV library points here

_______ShowName (year)

____________Season 01

__________________ShowName (year) - s01e01 - Optional Name.ext

__________________ShowName (year) - s01e02 - Optional Name.ext

__________________and so on for the shows in season 01

____________Season 02 <- just like Season 01

____________Season 03 <- and so on for each season

____________Season 00 <- or “Specials”

__________________ShowName (year) - s00e01 - Optional name

__________________ShowName (year) - s00e02 - Optional name

__________________and so on for each special

Note 1: the eXX part of the specials must match EXACTLY what is found in TheTVDB

Note 2: The (year) may be omitted for shows that do not have more than one occurrence throughout the years.

There are many other structures and naming systems that work but this is the one I use and it just works.

For a mass rename I use FileBot with this format string {n.replaceTrailingBrackets()} - {s00e00.lower()} - {t}

As I said earlier just because some poor naming works or did work or even works on some shows/movies and not on others does not mean that it will work in the future or event that where it does work it will not suddenly fail to work.

FileBot is a wonderful tool for renaming TV and movies. There is even a “Plex” format preset that will get everything straightened out. FileBot is no longer free but it is more than well worth the small charge it now imposes.

7

Thanks, as far as I can tell I did use round brackets in the past for the year, and square for all other, I guess at some point when changing my file scripts I may have changed that for some reason.

If there is no option for Plex to look at the file for the name, as this is how it was once handled, that’s fine, I will live with the added step, it is not that common of an issue on my end, and unfortunately, due the the vast amounts of scripts I run externally (handbrake, autoclean, etc), the change is bigger then updating the filenames for me I am afraid.

Thanks for the help, appreciate it.

8

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