I have a file named A_Christmas_Story-1983.mp4. Plex identifies it as “A Christmas Story Christmas,” a sequel to the original, made in 2022. I’m using the same filename format I use for all movies. I use the title, then a dash, then the year it was released. I use underscores instead of spaces or special characters. (This method makes it easy to handle titles when I’m working from the command line.)
I went in and changed the title to “A Christmas Story” and it changed it to “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story,” which is also in my collection (it’s the pilot movie for the series “The Waltons”). This movie was released in 1971 (well, actually aired in 1971). But somehow, when I changed the info, it changed the date to 1970 and it’s locked - I can’t change it in the web control panel. I finally got the name changed to “A Christmas Story,” but I can’t set the year to 1983. It still insists on using the poster image from “A Christmas Story Christmas” and provides info and details (like cast and so on) for the sequel movie.
What do I have to do to get Plex to read this title and recognize the title is what the file says it is and that it was made in 1983?
And why was Plex unable to read this title and release year and not just match it properly?
I recommend following the naming guide as FordGuy linked in order to make movie additions an automatic process.
HOWEVER! If you do wish you keep your naming scheme, you can do Triple dot menu ... > Fix Match... on an item that was mis-identified by Plex due to your naming scheme. You enter the name of the movie in the search box and it should pick up. Worst case scenario, you can use the imdb id imdb-tt0085334 as a search term instead and it should find the movie immediately.
Once matched, a movie should not revert the match in the future, but keep in mind that if you ever have to rebuild the server/database, that you will need to do this process again in order to get the movie matched correctly.
FYI: you can include the imdb/tmdb/tvdb of any movie or show in the name, and Plex will automatically use that in the future. For example, your filename would be: A_christmas_story-1984 {imdb-tt0085334}.mp4
I believe the space will be necessary here, but you can try it with a dash after the date instead, but I doubt it’ll work. if it does though, that’d be great.
Okay, got it to work, On reading this thread, and also thinking about the issue where I kept changing the year, then saving it, but it not changing (which, to me, indicates a bug), I unlocked the date (as always), but, instead of saving, just fetched new metadata and it all took. (The idea of not using local metadata made me think of that.)
The problem with the Plex guidelines is I deal with multiple programs that use the same files and I had to come up with a naming convention that worked for all of them. I tested this out with all the programs and made sure it worked. I also ran into issues because some programs (including Plex) are finicky about things like directory setup. (For example, for a number of programs, I can just organize all my files by directories and that does enough for classifying them. Plex forces me to do that through collections, which has an advantage or two and several disadvantages.) I already have to create folders and use my own scripts to make symlinks of the original files into 2-3 different directory structures. (The one I use for Plex also works for a few other programs.)
What’s odd is that I should have problems with this movie when I don’t have this issue with other files using the same naming convention.
It’s not just spaces I try to avoid - any character that may need escaping in the *nix command line is, honestly, a pain when it can’t be avoided.
