Problem with library files

General Discussions
1

I have been using plex media server for quite some time.
I currently have 2 movies that seem to have joined in the meta data and only exist on one icon.
Using the edit - info on that icon I see both files. One movie was from 1967, the other from 2006. Both have the same movie title.
Casino Royale – original from 1967
Casino Royale – remake from 2006.

How can I get Plex to allow me to display these as 2 separate movies (They are) and be able to select them individually instead of only one icon and only one version available to play.

At one point they were displayed as 2 movies with 2 separate icons, then they merged into one icon even though the file names are different and the files are even in different directories.

2

Casino Royale (1967)

Casino Royale (2006)

You can also put the imdb or tmdb id number in the file inside curly brackets

Casino Royale (1967) {imdb-tt0061452}

Casino Royale (2006) {imdb-tt0381061}

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3

How do I make that change. The file name is obvious, but they are mkv files so not really able to be edited.
Plex does not allow me to even see the second file to change it in the edit window other than the edit - info - files where the names of both files display but cannot edit anything there.

4

No you edit the file name on your file system, not inside Plex

Plex Dance the files if the changes aren’t showing up inside Plex

5

So the file names would become
Casino Royale (1967),mkv
Casino Royale (2006).mkv
and plex would recognize them as different?
That is what puzzles me since the file names are already different.

6

If you don’t put the dates in parenthesis the scanner doesn’t know 2006 or 1967 is the date or part of the actual movie name

It just ends up picking the closest match, which in your case is the same movie creating a duplicate

The dates for all movies should have parenthesis, and especially movies with the same exact title
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/

Consider a movie that only consists of numbers like 42 (2013) or 2012 (2009)

All the scanner sees is 42 2013 or 2012 2009

7

It’s good practice to include the year (in parenthesis, after the title) for all movies. This will help ANY media matching program to retrieve the correct movie from online sources.

If you do not change the filenames (or you do and nothing changes in Plex), you can manually Split Apart two files that got combined by Plex like this:

  • Click the ... triple dot on the movie and pick Split Apart in the menu. This will break the two files out into two entries.
  • Use the ... menu again, and pick Get Info. This will tell you which movie points to which file is on your disk.
  • For the one that is now marked as the wrong version of casino royale, go to the ... menu one more time, and pick Fix Match..., choosing the correct Casino Royale.
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8

To add further.

For those television series which are reboots with the same name, the same rule applies.

“BattleStar Galactica (1978)” vs “BattleStar Glactica (2003)”
“The Flash (1996)” vs “The Flash (2014)”

1 Like
9

Da rules: https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/your-media/

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10

Thanks to everyone for the pointers.
Learning something new about plex is a good thing and I appreciate it.

:+1:

11

@computersavvy

If I may share my renaming rules ( I use an external tool which does the renaming and placing of finished files where Plex expects them )

The operators:
{n} = name
{y} = year
{s} = season
{t} = Television
{s00e00} = season+episode automatically generated by the tool

My Rules -

  • Movies: /nas/movies/{n} ({y})/{n} ({y})

  • Television: /nas/tv/{n}/Season {s}/{n} - {s00e00} - {t}

With these rules, I drop in the media, let the tool perform a lookup from TMDB, TVDB as appropriate and propose names (with directory structure).

When I give the OK, it renames and moves in one shot.

Curating this way has kept me out of trouble.

There are multiple tools out there. To name a few,

TheRenamer
Tiny Media Manager
FileBot

You might find this helpful in the future for new media or even to clean up what you currently have (if less than perfect)

12

I will have to look up and see if similar tools are available for use on linux. I do not use windows so those specific tools are not available, but I am sure something is available when I encounter problems in the future.

The problem I started this thread about is the only one that has given me issues to date.

Note also, that I extremely dislike special characters within a file name so I do not routinely use spaces, parentheses, braces, etc. I have to deal with them handled differently in linux than in windows.

13

I run Linux exclusively. I do two things with Windows: Wash & break them :rofl:

As far as dealing with the special characters, Bash shell completion will serve you well if you have it enabled.

Start to type, hit tab, let it find and print more/the remainder of the filename for you

14

Sure. That is a great tool for looking at things.

Some apps however are unable to handle names with special characters of the types I noted, so the user has to manage those individually. It is much easier to not deal with them at all.

I have a lot of years (29+) experience with linux so know most of the quirks.

It is nice to know I am not the only one using exclusively linux for daily things.

FileBot is commercial and non-free
Tiny Media Manager has extreme limitations on the free version
TheRenamer is a windows .exe installer

Those 3 are not what I would choose.
Will look more

15

Agreed, there are always special cases but this isn’t rocket science. In my 37 years of Unix/Linux, I’ve seen a lot of things and none of it applies here beyond alphanumeric (all languages), parens, braces, brackets, and dots.

I do recommend filebot. Imho, it’s worth spending the first month to confirm it will do the job. Once you do, buy the lifetime and be done.

I would like to suggest, If you have special characters in your file names beyond ( ) { } [ ] - . then I’m going to point out you’re not naming it per standard and should do something about that (per Plex naming standards which are also the standards)

Regarding FileBot, If you can’t construct the regex to do what you need – It’s time to ask just what your initial goal really was and if there’s a better way.

16

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