Experiencing a repeat issue with PMS renaming and joining files. This week it hit an all-time high–I discovered that Plex had joined 99 files into one. I split them apart, but refreshing metadata just updates the thumbnail. I still have 99 files with the wrong name.
I don’t understand why it’s doing this.
Some useful data. These are adult videos, so obviously the specific details are somewhat limited; I’m not posting that here. They don’t have complex auto-generated metadata. They’re from different sources, have different file sizes and times. Different resolutions, different years, different directories. Can someone explain why this might be happening? And maybe an easy way to undo it?
I’m including the Get Info on two different files, with the filenames edited to keep everything SFW.
F:\Media\Directory\Filename - [2160p4K].mp4
Media
Duration 33:32
Bitrate 25158 kbps
Width 3840
Height 2160
Aspect Ratio 1.78
Video Resolution 4K
Container MP4
Video Frame Rate 24p
Web Optimized Yes
Audio Profile lc
Has 64bit Offsets true
Video Profile high
Part
Duration 33:32
File Filename - [2160p4K].mp4
Size 5.89 GB
Audio Profile lc
Container MP4
Has 64bit Offsets true
Indexes sd
Web Optimized Yes
Video Profile high
Codec H264
Bitrate 24992 kbps
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Location left
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Coded Height 2160
Coded Width 3840
Color Primaries bt709
Color Range tv
Color Space bt709
Color Trc bt709
Frame Rate 23.97599983215332 fps
Height 2160
Level 5.2
Profile high
Ref Frames 4
Stream Identifier 1
Width 3840
Display Title 4K (H.264)
Extended Display Title 4K (H.264)
Codec AAC
Channels 2
Bitrate 166 kbps
Audio Channel Layout stereo
Profile lc
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Stream Identifier 2
Display Title Unknown (AAC Stereo)
Extended Display Title Unknown (AAC Stereo)
View XML
F:\Media\Totally Unrelated File - [1080p].mp4
Media
Duration 1:04:03
Bitrate 12185 kbps
Width 1920
Height 1080
Aspect Ratio 1.78
Video Resolution 1080p
Container MP4
Video Frame Rate NTSC
Web Optimized No
Audio Profile he-aac
Has 64bit Offsets true
Video Profile high
Part
Duration 1:04:03
File Totally Unrelated File - [1080p].mp4
Size 5.45 GB
Audio Profile he-aac
Container MP4
Has 64bit Offsets true
Indexes sd
Web Optimized No
Video Profile high
Codec H264
Bitrate 12049 kbps
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Location left
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Coded Height 1088
Coded Width 1920
Frame Rate 29.969999313354492 fps
Height 1080
Level 5.0
Profile high
Ref Frames 5
Stream Identifier 1
Width 1920
Display Title 1080p (H.264)
Extended Display Title 1080p (H.264)
Codec AAC
Channels 2
Bitrate 136 kbps
Audio Channel Layout stereo
Profile he-aac
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Stream Identifier 2
Display Title Unknown (HE-AAC Stereo)
Extended Display Title Unknown (HE-AAC Stereo)
View XML
I obscured the names because, you know, NSFW and all. But the way I name them is
“Name of main star - [Site of Origin] - [Resolution].mp4”
and the naming is very consistent. This mass-merge included both well-named files and files with un-sanitized names. It also included files from multiple folders, so breaking it down into folders doesn’t seem to be the play, either.
Other Videos. Plex Video Files Scanner, Agent Personal Media; should I be changing one of those? Ideally I don’t want plex to be trying to identify these files at all.
Then Plex is going to group them together because Plex thinks they are parts of the same Movie or TV Show.
But that’s what I’m saying. These are totally different file names. It could be as different as
Quick Brown Fox - [OnlyFans] - [1080p]
Lazy Dog - [Patreon] - [2160p4K]
I don’t see how those would get grouped. I also don’t understand why it would merge these files–merging is what it does when it thinks the files are identical, not part of the same show, right? because all the merged files are just treated as if they’re the same thing as the parent object, which is the only thing Plex then sees? I’m not sure if I’m expressing that correctly.
Make sure not to use square brackets around stuff which may help to distinguish files from each other.
Plex will ignore everything within the first set of square brackets – i.e. these two files will look identically to Plex:
Quick Brown Fox - [OnlyFans] - [1080p]
Quick Brown Fox - [Patreon] - [1080p]
Okay, good tip. I’ll look into doing a mass renaming to change brackets to parentheses. That isn’t the issue here, though, as this merging included multiple different resolutions, and files featuring different principal actors across different folders.
So I had, in the same merge
F:\Media\Directory 1\Quick Brown Fox - [Sitename] - [1080p]
F:\Media\Directory 1\Sub Directory 1\ Green Snake - [Sitename] - [720p]
F:\Media\Directory 2\Lazy Dog - [Sitename] - [2160p4K]
So even if it was merging all files that ended in 1080p, that isn’t what happened here clearly.
Are these all mp4/m4v files?
If they are, inspect the content of the Title meta tag in them.
If you have e.g. a video converter software which has spammed its own name inside that meta tag, Plex will consider all of those videos having the same title.
They all are .mp4 files, yeah. They don’t share any meta data that I can tell. To make sure I’m looking in the right spot, where is the Title meta tag? (it seems so obvious that I feel like I must be looking in the wrong spot).
Or for a bit more comfort when looking at several files at once, I recommend mp3tag
This one also allows you to set the “title” tag to (part[s]) of the file name and vice versa etc.pp.
I was having the same problem and have been manually splitting and editing the movie title in Plex to differentiate. But when I add a new version of an existing movie to the library, everything gets re-merged and I have to go through the split/rename again.
After seeing your suggesting, I changed the names of a few movies to use parentheses to differentiate versions, instead of using square brackets, per your suggestion. It doesn’t seem to make any difference.
After the change, only the first one gets automatically matched. I have to manually match the others, but when I do that all of them end up being merged and I have to manually split them as before (when I was using brackets to differentiate versions I still had to split/rename, but at least I didn’t have to manually match any of them).
Am I not following your suggestion correctly? I suppose doing the manual match, since I select the same source movie (in this case, “Alien”), is what causes them to be merged, but is there any naming trick to keep them separate when they are added to the library?
BTW, these are all MP4 files and the embedded metadata title is the same as the movie name (in any case, “Prefer local metadata” is turned off).
Plex has no support for different “cuts” or “versions” of the same movie title.
For Plex, all 3 of these files are the same movie. Therefore it will merge them under one poster.
You can intentionally “unmatch” 2 of them and they will remain so. But them you’ll have to supply the metadata yourself (or embed them into the mp4 file).
