I am embarking on a mission to add the video codec, audio format, etc. to all my movie names so I can filter easily and see what is what (alas, Plex only supports filter by resolution so far…perhaps richer filters by video, audio, etc. would be in order!).
I have this working and do rename the files. Often Plex happily just swaps one name for another and it keeps all the metadata, thumbs, etc. Often, however, it also thinks they are new and hence being added as recently added.
I don’t know why it sometimes does this and sometimes that.
What I really want here is the new filenames but the recently added dates, etc., to be the same. Not respecting this alters the order of course and makes new additions harder to find as I often view by date added.
The more superfluous information you add to a title, the lower its score becomes when matching occurs and can result in a no-match situation. If you ever had to rebuild your plex database, you might find a lot of media going missing.
If you’re going to do this at the folder level, even though it’s NOT recommended for the reason I just named,
Avatar (2009) [your extra info here in a single set of brackets] as part of the directory, you should be ok. It is strongly advised to keep the actual movie file name clean and per naming standard (only put the year in parenthesis) and without ‘extras’.
First put the last part in square brackets. Having it in parenthesis might confuse Plex.
That is use “Avatar (2009) [Extended Edition] [1080p HEVC AAC 5.1]”
Stop Plex and then copy the database to a save location. (This is so if things go screwy you have a known good copy and your movie dates have not changed.) Then restart Plex.
Also before you change the names turn off “empty trash”
After that you “should” be able to rename the files and not have them detected as new. But I don’t know for sure so just change a few and see what happens before you do a mass change.
Note: Without the trash being emptied you may end up each movie displayed twice.
Once Plex has detected the “new” movies and the “2s” have appeared in the movie poster you should then manually empty the trash.
Then look at your movies and see if the few you changed did what you wanted. If everything looks good then go for it.
If things go screwy Stop Plex, put the names back as they were, copy your saved database back into the Plex directory and restart Plex and you will be back as you were before starting the process.
Perfect…will give this a go on a couple titles. I thought about braces vs. parentheses but sided on what looked better…I chose poorly apparently! This might explain Plex’s random behavior.
Is the [ optional info ] an undocumented feature? Very useful if so!
It’s indeed undocumented, but to be clear, 99% of the matching occurs with Movie Name (Year) If another set of parenthesis is found, that’s when it goes nuts.
[ stuff ] is a holdover from old days and, from all indications, not going to be removed because matching is, as I said, 99% over by the time it finds them… [ ] just ignores the rest.
@kdackiw said:
I am embarking on a mission to add the video codec, audio format, etc. to all my movie names so I can filter easily and see what is what (alas, Plex only supports filter by resolution so far…perhaps richer filters by video, audio, etc. would be in order!).
An alternate route for you to consider: Plex2CSV will give you a list of items in your library with more technical data than you can fit in a file name.
Hmmm…I tried the " [ ] " trick and it is still hit and miss…Plex is seeing some as new, others not. This is despite my movie names being soundly formatted as “movie (year)”…
I can try Plex2CSV as well. I hope to see future support for deeper filters other than resolution…!
