Recognize and filter 3D movies

Feature Suggestions
1

Could we please get the ability in plex to recognize 3D movies based on video stream and/or tags in naming convention have those titles tagged in the library as 3D version ?

I have several titles in my library where i have both 2D and 3D version of the same title.
All of my 3D versions are in folders tagged as 3D in the folder name as well as the file itself being tagged as 3D and which format in the filename itself.

The schema i employ on the folder side is:

For 2D
\server\share\title - (year)\title.(year).ext

For 3D over/under
\server\share\title 3D - (year)\title.(year).3D.H-TAB.ext

For 3D side by side
\server\share\title 3D - (year)\title.(year).3D.H-SBS.ext

Kodi etc automatically recognizes this as 3D, separates the title from any 2D version, adds 3D to the title listing and displays a poster showing it’s the 3D version of the title release.

Plex on the other hand flattens both 2D release and 3D release under the same title listing and makes it a guessing game as to what version you get.
And splitting the listings manually is a lost cause.
I have done this multiple times, going through the entire library to split, tag, rename, poster each individual 3D title. And invariably it lasts about a week or so, after which a plex server update is pushed and on next rescan the entire library is flattened again.

Can we not please give plex the power to manage this a bit more flexibly and recognize 3D titles as 3D and give us the option to either auto split (and tag/name/poster) or flatten title listings ?

Thank you

2

What I did was to create a seperate folder on my server and stick all the 3D stuff in there, then made a new library to reflect the 3D content.

I almost like what you propose, except I would have plex look at the last part only like this

\server\share\what_ever_its_called.3D.OU.ext
\server\share\what_ever_its_called.3D.SBS.ext

Plex simply looks for the parts in bold, and goes and does its stuff.
If there is no match for 3D.SBS or 3D.OU then its 2D.

Would that be workable ?

3

Right. That was kinda what i was trying to say.

Have plex evaluate the video stream and/or the filename for indicators that it’s a 3D file and treat it accordingly.

I really would prefer not having to set up a separate library for it.
It’s nice to have everything grouped together logically.
It would just be nicer to be able to see, at a glance, if a given movie was in 2D or 3D in the listing.

4

Well I think I am going to vote for this one, Its a good idea IMO.

5

Just spent reading a pile of archived (an therefore closed) topics on 3D movies in Plex. Finally, I found this open one that I could post to - although I was ready to create my own topic.

Collections won’t work. I use collections to organize movie series and I hide the members because I don’t want to scroll (for example) through 27 James Bond movies…

For me, anytime there are 3 or more movies, I make a collection so the overall number of library items to scroll through, are minimized. Because the members are hidden, they cannot be placed in another collection.

Everything proposed in all various threads that I have seen, are funky work-around’s that frankly, under some conditions, do not work - as above. Please if someone has an approach, I too need this function.

IMHO, Plex should auto-tag 3D formats - but how that tag should be used to organize a group of “3D movies” is a whole other discussion.

My 2 cents - and also trying to keep ONE feature suggestion relating to 3D - alive.

6

Super late to the party, but it would be great to have this as 3D movies are set to become a thing again with the Apple Vision Pro (called Spatial Video). The Quest 3 may also have a similar strategy.

It would be great to not only be able to have Plex recognize/filter them as being 3D, but also send the correct 3D flag to the TV/headset so we don’t have to manually set them as being side-by-side or top and bottom.

1 Like
7

I have 3D movies in my library, and they play alright on my TV through Plex. (I use my TV's built-in 3D settings) But it could be handled a lot better. Here's what I'd love to have happen:

 

Plex sees the 3D format tag in the filename (SBS, OU, etc) during the initial scan, and tags the file accordingly. (which would be nice, because you could filter by 3D as well) When the file plays, the menu gets doubled to match the SBS/OU format of the video, and the menu looks correct when the two halves are combined by the TV.

 

Additionally, Plex would only stream one side of the video (scaled to proper proportions) when playing on a device that doesn't support 3D. (Plex for Web, Plex for Android, etc) The Plex Apps could all have a new toggle in the settings to designate whether the device can support 3D or not. Also, 3D subtitle support would be greatly appreciated as well.

 

I understand that this may be a lot of work to implement, but 3D certainly isn't going away, and better 3D support would make me love this system much much more.

8

+1

Sure implementing all this can be a lot work; but at the very least, detecting SBS/OU and tagging content appropriately would be a great start.

9

I would ask for MVC support as well.  If you are going to do 3d you might as well not half ass, err... half resolution it.

An option to output as 2d only would be a good idea as well.  Don't need it now as all my MVC files play as 2d anyway.

10

I would ask for MVC support as well.

Interesting... I've never heard of MVC. Just looked it up, and it seems interesting. Where do you get the files? Can you download them, or do you make them yourself?

11

It is the format they are in on blu rays.  I just rip to mkv without and transcoding.

12

This is a great idea. I currently have a lot of movies in two versions, 3D and 2D. On the initial scan the server correctly groups them. The problem for me starts on the clients as it is very difficult to pick the right version, worse when both (3D and 2D) have the same resultion.


So I ended up ungrouping them and adding “3D” to the movie titels to make the distinction manually. A clear indication/tag for 3D movies would solve all of that.


Thumbs up!

13

+1

A way for the database to list separate 3D and 2D movies would be great - as above, I sometimes have both 2D and 3D versions of movies, even though I have tagged the 3D versions with [3D], Plex still puts both versions on deck.. strange!

14

Ffmpeg can handle the crop of a H-SBS movie ON the fly. The ideal scenario is plex reading H-SBS or H-TAB from filename, as it is a requisite for PLEX for Samsung to play that kind of file, then just $ ffmepg -i -hsplit or -vsplit along bitrate and quality enhancements to play in non 3D devices.


I think this can be done with little effort.

15

I just created a separate library section for 3D Movies and browse there when I'm specifically looking to watch something in 3D... works for me for now..  

Would be nice to have the tag displayed though since my Vizio won't auto detect 3D from the Roku 3 and I need to manually selection SBS or TB and currently I can't really tell in Plex till I start playing the movie.

16

I just created a separate library section for 3D Movies and browse there when I'm specifically looking to watch something in 3D... works for me for now..  

Would be nice to have the tag displayed though since my Vizio won't auto detect 3D from the Roku 3 and I need to manually selection SBS or TB and currently I can't really tell in Plex till I start playing the movie.

Hi Jbmia,

Are some of your movies duplicates, ie. a 2D version and a 3D version? Do both show 'on deck' when you start to play either? Also, marking one as watched, changes the other..?

17

Ha!  Yep... at least one anyway...  marking one as watched does mark the other... or, watching the 3d one for say 2 minutes will mark that one partially watched and  then when you flip over into the 2d section that one is marked as partially watch ed as well and set to restart at the position I left off at with the 3d version...    Hadn't thought of or noticed that previously.   From a database perspective, it appears Plex considers them a single "title" (palm to forehead, of course).    Personally, this isn't really an issue for me with the separate sections.

I could see if you had dups in the same section though...how would you decide which to play?   I woudl Plex choose which to play?  

I have that issue with Music files where I might have an mp3 and a flac version of the same song in the same section.... Any thoughts there?

18

I think the easiest way would be for Plex to recognise that the movie has 3D tags in the filename, as previously mentioned above and mark it as a 3D version, listing both either in the same section or, in my case a separate section all together. But at least ensure that the movies have two entries in the database, this would immediately stop the other problem.

As for how to 'mark' a 3D film.. I think something like the attached could work well.. 

Though looking at it - I'm not totally sure.. 

alq16h.jpg

19

I have someone taken intial steps to solve this issue. I have remixed an additional encoding of the left channel as its own video channel.

# SIDE BY SIDE
ffmpeg -y -i "movie.mp4" -i "movie.mp4" -map 0:0 -aspect 16:9 -c:v:1 libx264 -q 0 -vf stereo3d=sbs2l:ml -s 1920x1080 -map 1 -c:v:1 copy -c:a aac -strict -2 -ac 6 -ar 48k -ab 640k "..\3D\movie.mp4" -sn

# OVERUNDER
ffmpeg -y -i "movie.mp4" -i "movie.mp4" -map 0:0 -aspect 16:9 -c:v:1 libx264 -q 0 -vf stereo3d=ab2l:ml -s 1920x1080 -map 1 -c:v:1 copy -c:a aac -strict -2 -ac 6 -ar 48k -ab 640k "..\3D\movie.mp4" -sn

In the short term it would be pretty simple IMHO if Plex just provided support for selection of multiple video feeds. Currently most clients just play the first stream.

The video provides both representations of the stream. Stream #0:0 is the cropped/reencoded left channel and stream 0:2 the stereoscopic stream). If Plex could simply detect multiple video streams and provide a library entry for those additional streams, this would give us the capability to select from our current implementation which stream we want to see. I completely agree with the previous poster about allowing detection of tags within the video filename to show if its SBS or OU. Also, it would be nice if we could get an overlay on the image when browsing the library showing that the content was 3D when present... similar to the shortcut symbol placed on icons on windows machines, but maybe a black box with 3D written in it.

The real key is when streaming out to the client, plex should remux the video and only include the video stream that was selected. This could also be done on the client end where directplay is utilized by giving an option to select the video stream as we select the audio stream or subtitles.This could further be integrated by allowing you to create a library that has a checkbox upon creation saying it is either 3D for legacy implementations of the client (appliance/televisions) which only populates titles based upon whether they have a stream that has 3D content in it or not.

This concept extends beyond use within 3D as well. For example you could have multiple video streams for different views in a movie for example DVDs that have different viewing angles or non-theatrical cuts that are synced with the theatrical film.

Furthermore we're only preparing for features coming down the pike in FFMPEG. When the FFMPEG devs get stereoscopic detection complete then Plex could detect which stream is 3D.  If the device could advertise that it supported 3D video to the plex server, then the server could simply not show content that contains 3D material in the response.

I noticed someone spoke to the concept of using -vsplit and -hsplit during the encode, I am thinking that this might be a dangerous concept because to my knowledge I don't believe you can just remux half of the stream back into the container as the dimensions and math for reproduction would be off. So this is most likely going to incur the cost of having to reencode the video on the fly which may work for 1 or 2 viewings at a time with a moderately powered setup, but it would be hard to support much more and could lead to a poor viewing experience by those not understanding the implications.

I've always maintained the thought that your library should be in whatever format is best for viewing on most devices so muxing can be used instead of encoding.

20

also, it seems the extensions .mk3d is the 3D version of the .mkv file extension.