Plex Server creating duplicate files in library from one Movie

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

I am having trouble with the media server loading duplicate files in the library from One movie. For instance:

File Name on Hard drive is: Absolute Power (1997)
Media server is loading 2 movies in library, one is called
Absolute Power (1997) and the other is ABS16f1. Get info says the source file is the same for both. It is doing this for many random movies in my library.

2

Do you have some recursive folders assigned to your library?

3

No just the one Media folder with all the movies.

4

Screenshot 2022-06-18 114251
Screenshot 2022-06-18 1142511159×347 309 KB

they all appear like this

5

That’s not duplicate movies but collections. Notice the different subtitles / labels → one lists the year, the other one the # of items (e.g. 1 movie), e.g. 12 Years a Slave / 2013 vs. 12_YEARS_A_SLAVE / 1 movie

It appears your files contain embedded metadata… Plex is interpreting the album tag as collection if Prefer local metadata is enabled for that library. Disabling that option should prevent such accidental collections from being created in the future.
To fix the already created collections, you probably need to manually delete them. To avoid accidentally deleting the main movies, best do that from the Collections tab.

6

I will probably just redo the library, I have over 1k in the collections tab I would have to delete one at a time. Thanks for your help!

7

Multi-selection is your friend :wink:

  1. hover over the first item and click into the circle in its top-left corner
  2. scroll towards the end of the list (you probably need to scroll slowly so Plex can “keep up” loading the content … you should be good if Plex gets to load the posters)
  3. when arriving at the end of the selection, hold Shift/⇧
  4. click on the circle in the top-left corner of the final poster
  5. select Delete in the multi-selection action bar at the top of the browser window
8

Thanks, that fixed my problem!

9

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