I have been adding arbitrary text to some movies that indicate: resolution, source and encoding, etc… I have been naming like this:
MovieName (MovieYear) [ArbitrayText].mp4
Example (my current naming):
Gone With The Wind (1939) [1080p BluRay x265].mp4
Gone With The Wind (1939) [480p DVD x264].mp4
Joker (2019) [1080p BluRay x265 UNRATED].mp4
Example 2. What I’ve read more recently which does not show the brackets…
Gone With The Wind (1939) - 1080p BluRay x265.mp4
Gone With The Wind (1939) - 480p DVD x264.mp4
Joker (2019) - 1080p BluRay x265 UNRATED.mp4
I’ve also seen: Example 3
Gone With The Wind (1939) - [1080p BluRay x265].mp4
Gone With The Wind (1939) - [480p DVD x264].mp4
Joker (2019) - [1080p BluRay x265 UNRATED].mp4
What’s the proper naming convention? I just want to conform before I change my library to Example 2. I now think that example 2 is the recommended naming convention.
Oh, will Plex in the future show the arbitrary text at some point in the future so that when you select to play a version you can see something beyond data rates?
I think I’m missing the difference between examples 1 and 3.
General rule/schema for naming movies: <movie name> (<release year>).ext
Technical stuff that’s not suppose to interfere with Plex should be put in (a single set of) square brackets.
The official documentation mentions <movie name> (<release year>) - <arbitrary text>.ext. By experience this works ok if you use simple text (e.g. “Director’s Cut”); sometimes technical information can be misinterpreted as release year and throw Plex off. The information in square brackets will be ignored by Plex.
There’s feature suggestions to do that but none of them seems to be on Plex radar for the moment.
Keep in mind the current interpretation of “versions” in Plex only considers different qualities/encodes of the same item – not different editions. Therefore the version selection is only considering the basic technical details like resolution and bitrate to distinguish your files.
The square brackets are not mentioned. Some users feel the need to keep that information in their file names… technically there’s no need except you depend on distinguishing those files in your file manager.
The extra dash in Example 3 won’t have an impact – so both example 1+3 should be fine.
The docs show the dash where all text after that dash is the arbitrary text. Without the dash how does plex know which text is abitrary? Just the ") " is enough?
