A few times I have (deliberately) wanted to record a movie even though it already exists in my library. There are many reasons for this: It might be another cut of the movie, it might be broadcast in another language than the version I have (dubbed to Swedish for children), or whatever. But I don’t want to replace the existing movie – I just want to save the additional version.
First: When I tried to do this, Plex behaved rather counterintuitively. I told Plex to record the movie and the red “will be recorded” icon was added. The movie also appeared in the recording priority list, so everything looked fine to me (I never checked the actual calendar). Then the movie was never recorded. I was certain that there was some problem causing Plex to fail to record the movie, but since the logs were long gone I couldn’t see what could have gone wrong. Suggestion: If you are going to refuse recording something, the user interface could say so immediately (for movies, where you already know the movie exists), either in a dialog or by not indicating that the movie will be recorded (crossed out “will record” icon?).
Second: I can’t find a good way of overriding the decision not to record the movie. Maybe I’m missing something here? The closest I’ve come is to move the existing movie to another folder that isn’t monitored by Plex. Then it becomes unavailable and Plex will happily record a new copy, after which I can move the old copy back. Telling Plex I want to replace low resolution versions isn’t a solution, because (1) I want to keep the old copy, (2) the new copy is never higher resolution anyway, and (3) even if I did want to replace something, I would first want to check that the recording was correct and complete.
When it comes to TV shows, the current version is fine, since I don’t want to manually keep track of which episodes should be recorded. But for movies, I do click every individual movie I want to record.
I agree. There should definitely be the option to override Plex DVR’s decision not to record something because it already exists in the library. I have a number of TV shows in my library transferred from VHS tapes which I want to update with a digital recording.
I record to a “DVR” folder and then move it to where i want once its done, it also allows me to clean things up and edit contents. I know its not best solution but this works for me. I wish plex had option to check one set of directories but record in another to solve this a little better but its a beta…
Totally agree. You can have multiple versions of files, so there is support for that. Maybe a warning that you already have it. Maybe it automatically doesn’t set it to record, but you can select the recording that will be skipped and override?
We record OTA broadcasts so this IS an issue for us. Weather may trash out one or another recording, but if you record it several times over several days or weeks then at least ONE copy is going to be good. It’s easy to tell which one to keep as it’s the largest filesize… so I MUST record shows repeatedly. Sometimes in the same single day for a good PBS cooking show, (they repeat them like 5x times for one day, next day is 5x times of a different episode).
So… there is ALREADY an option to overwrite a recording if the duplicate is of a higher RESOLUTION aka HD vs SD… but how about another option for if the duplicate is of a greater filesize as well, and then let duplicates happen but just be replaced? As it stands… and PLEX Staff will want to pay attention to this… what I have to do is steal/move ALL recordings away from any PLEX directories and move these into KODI directories and let them collect there and make manual choices at a later time. But at that rate then, I’m just going to just leave them in the KODI database… hence PLEX is being reduced to JUST a DVR patched up like this to allow me to avoid weather induced problems. As it stands now It kills off PLEX as a total system… forces me to take all the recordings away from Plex so it will continue to record every episode I’ve TOLD it to… But I want to watch them right away so KODI is getting the top billing! Plex simply becomes a DVR that has to be patched and cobbled to act as per my needs.
It was astonishing to discover that PlexDRV simply refuses to obey my commands to record duplicates of shows… and doesn’t warn or tell me even afterwards… … and seems the engineers MISSED that it’s the only way WE THE END USERS can overcome the OTA problem of bad weather dropouts. But then again we must be understanding of engineers that just go ahead and pay for cable and are NOT cord cutting, so never see these problems.
Just let the duplicates happen… and either keep the largest OR let the user decide which to delete… after all it was the user that decided to record the duplicates.
It is extremely annoying that if you (for example) have The Magnificent Seven (1960), you can’t even record The Magnificent Seven (2016) without removing the first movie. Especially given that this is completely silent. Plex Web first incorrectly indicates (with a red “will record” icon) that the movie will actually be recorded, and then a few seconds later, the indication disappears. This leads to missed recordings!
And the workaround means I have to temporarily remove a movie from my library for up to two weeks so that the recording can be made, and then I have to remember to move the movie back.
This happens more often than one might think, several times just this summer…
