Plex Movie Extras add as Extras AND as a version of the movie

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When adding a movie with Local Extras at least 1 in 10 times I have to fight with Plex to show the Extras properly. I have a variety of issues but this is the most common one. The movie is added & the Special Features show up but ALSO show as a different version of the movie.

  • So this is a problem I run into a lot.
  • I have this problem on both my Windows 10 server & Asustor NAS Server, & in the past have had the same problem on a ZyXEL NAS & Ubuntu Setup.
  • This happens whether using either the Folders or using the -tags as outlined in Plexā€™s Guide to Movie Extras
  • Usually I eventually get it to work after many dances, acrobatics & complex differential equations but the process to get it to work does not appear to be consistent

My most recent 2 examples, from today & last weekend:

  1. I added the movie Friendsgiving with a single ā€œExtrasā€ file in Movies\Friendsgiving (2020)\Shorts\Blooper Reel.mp4
  • Plex shows Friendsgiving as having 2 versions but also shows the Blooper Reel in the movieā€™s Extras section
  • When playing the movie unless I select Play Version it plays the Blooper Reel
  • Renaming the file to Movies\Friendsgiving (2020)\Blooper Reel-short.mp4 gives the same result
  • Renaming the file to Movies\Friendsgiving (2020)\Blooper Reel -short.mp4 does not show as either an Extra nor as an alternative version
  • Leaving it for 2 days, restarting the server, all did nothing
  • Adding it, removing it, changing the naming, adding it, removing it, about 5 or 6 times eventually resulted in it being recognized correctly, with the same naming as I originally had
  1. I added the move The New Mutants with 2 versions, 1 with burned subtitles, 1 without & 8 Deleted Scenes in the folder Movies\The New Mutants (2020)\Deleted Scenes
  • Plex Shows 10 Play Version entries as well as showing the Deleted Scenes in the Extras
  • Iā€™m still trying to get it to be accepted correctly
  • Iā€™ll post an image as a comment
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Hereā€™s what Iā€™m dealing with:
This is ā‰ˆ30 hours after it was added

New Mutants
New Mutants894Ɨ559 164 KB

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That sounds infuriating, but interesting as well. Iā€™m curious, what agent does the library to which these are being added use? And have you checked the filesā€™ tags for data which might be confusing Plex, particularly the titles? It might be worthwhile just to remove any existing tags and dance the files again to see if it helps (followed by a metadata refresh, maybe).

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Huh.

Ditto to @philipswā€™s questions.

I spoofed up some files to match your The New Mutants (2020) example, and it worked as expected, in test libraries with old and new scanners/agents.

Iā€™ve never seen the ā€œExtras appearing as a versionā€ issue that you describe.

Do you put all movies in their own directories?

Do you have any layers of directories and subdirectories, in your Library? Or is Movies where your Library points?

Do you have any duplicated directories in your Library? (Grasping for straws ā€¦)

Are these files still ā€œactiveā€ in any other software, download/share/extract/rip/convert/encode?

Are these files on a local disk? Network share? Any magic caching tricks or rclone involvement? Do you have file Scan my library automatically enabled?

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Using the standard Plex Movie Agent (the new one not the ā€œLegacyā€ one) but this is a Scanner issue not a Metadata issue. Also using the Plex Movie default Scanner as well.

Yeah, that was something I thought might be a problem awhile ago so now I remove all Metadata on everything except the movie itself. Iā€™ve tried it with removing the Metadata from the movie too, it didnā€™t make a difference.

As I said, I get these issues about 1 in 10 times. Sometimes it works fine, other times it doesnā€™t

Yes, all movies have folders with the Title (YEAR) format

I have a couple grouped subfolders, like The Gods Must Be Crazy but those donā€™t have special features.

Duplicate directories? Iā€™m not sure what you mean, but I keep things pretty clean. On my NAS I do have different folders in the Movie library, for different house members, but I maintain all the files, so they are each clean. I do it that way so if someone moves out I can just delete their folder instead of having to sort through & remember which movies were theirs. But the main one, my Windows server, only has P:\Movies that it points to

Nope, I donā€™t add them until they are all completed. I let it do a slow encoding, it takes about 12 hours to encode a Blu-ray movie, so I come back to it the next day. I have tried adding the movie, then adding the Extras after the movie is already in the library, but doing that results in a 50:50 whether it will will even acknowledge the extras at all.

These are all local disc. The only exception is my DVR library which records on my Windows server but saves the files on the DVR share on the NAS. But the NAS Server has local NAS files, the Windows server has local files on a P:\ drive.

I have, on the Windows server, a RAMdisk used for transcoding & my Plex directory sits on my C: drive, but mklinked to every userā€™s directory to C:\Plex. But I have the same issue on the NAS which doesnā€™t have any of that.

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Just an update, my New Mutants is now working correctly. It was my 3rd try with just moving the directory out, rescanning, restarting the server, moving the directory back in. I literally didnā€™t do anything else, not even a single full dance. But now it is correct. But the issue is that this problem happens too often. I ripped 2 movies between those 2 without issue, but itā€™s a huge frustration

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Thatā€™s really weird. Especially that it has happened on such different systems.

By ā€œduplicate directoriesā€, I meant in Plex, when editing your Library, if you happened to have P:\Movies (or anything) listed there twice.

Did you migrate your database? I wonder if thereā€™s something odd in there.

Is this the only version of the anomaly that you see - Extras triggering the cascade?

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Gotcha, nope, nothing listed twice.

I did migrate my database to the Windows server, from the ZyXEL server, but the Asustor is unrelated to that. I have a number of customized things so starting from scratch is like redoing 1,000 hours of customization work so thatā€™s not an option

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I just added, removed, emptied, cleaned, 8 times. It came up right every time. I was going to do 10 times but I got bored.

  • I see both Versions, without Extras being mixed in
  • I see the Extras as extras, and not as anything else

Share logs? Iā€™m not good at reading them but I think you need a log-reading wizard.

Or Doctor House, M.D.

Or an exorcist.

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Once I get it to add correctly it usually stays that way, like when I rename an extra & have to remove & re-add the movie it always stays correct. Itā€™s getting it to that point thatā€™s the problem. I feel like Iā€™m taking the cartridge out & blowing on it to get an old NES game to play. The problem Iā€™ve always had is that when Iā€™m trying to recreate it to show someone I canā€™t get it to do it. I only thought to take screencaps this time because I had just had it happen & thought I should have a week before. But it canā€™t be just me. Iā€™ve had it on multiple different machines, using different OSes, & even created under different Plex accounts. There HAVE to be other people who are having the same issue

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I noticed that you also have several versions of the main movie in there.
Does the issue also occur if you reduce the number of versions to strictly one?

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There are 2 versions of this movie, but usually there is only 1. Iā€™ve had this issue in both situations. When thereā€™s only a single version Iā€™ll jump through the -tag hoop trying to get it to work, usually it doesnā€™t & Iā€™ve stopped trying it because I donā€™t prefer that organization method, but Friendsgiving, the other one I had an issue with just before New Mutants, only had a single version of the movie & a single Extra

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Someone I was talking with just noticed that he has all his folders with lowercase names while I always capitalize mine. Do other people not capitalize the folder names?

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Use the same capitalization as you can see in the metadata websites. Even though it doesnā€™t do much difference, in some cases it might just be the one thing between wrong or no match and correct match.

Besides, the mix of capitals and lower case was invented for a reason. It speeds up reading with organic computing hardware i.e. a brain.

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I actually created my Sample folder by copying directly from This page

But someone who says they have never had this issue & was comparing mine to his said that that was the only real difference he saw

I know, itā€™s been engrained into me, it takes conscious effort to not do it

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