Split Apart doesn't pull individually specified poster art or update individually specified title/sort title

[cecoates]

Is it still impossible to disable merging entirely?

tl;dr I never want items merged, I always want them “split apart”.

I like to give different editions different poster art.

I still consider the “release year” the same, however.

But even if the filenames are different, even if the metadata is different, with specifically different sort titles and different editions entered, Plex will merge them.

Even if you use “split apart”, it’s a huge pain trying to get it to select the correct poster art.

Since I’ve gone to the trouble of naming my files specifically, and their directories specifically, why does Plex then decide to override my logic?

Example, Battle Royale and Battle Royale: Special Edition.

Then in Plex:

And after using “split apart”:

I have my agents sorted to prioritize my locally created metadata. They’re in different folders. They have different titles, and different sort titles.

The year is the same, but theoretically two movies could come out with the same name in the same year (that isn’t the case here, but still.)

Once you’ve “split apart” an item, shouldn’t it be considered unique? And therefore scan that specific directory for poster art? Likewise, should it check for the title you’ve specified on that specific item (in this case one of them should read: Battle Royale: Special Edition).

Seems similar to:

Why can't Plex distinguish between movies that have the same name but are named correctly with the year in the filename?

For example if I have “Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1958).m4v” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).m4v”–each in a subfolder with the same name (without the .m4v of course). Typically both movies that follow this pattern will match as the earlier movie. If I try to “fix match” it doesn’t work. Specially I mean I choose fix match, choose the right movie, and then nothing actually changes. Even more frustratingly, every so often both movies will combine into one listing for the earlie…

Plex considers two similar movies from the same year as identical

Thanks a lot - “Split Apart” was the solution! There are two movies based on Jane Austens “Emma”, both released in 2016. One with Gwyneth Paltrow, one with Kate Beckinsdale. Although the file names were different Emma (2016) Jane Austens Emma (2016) they were stacked together. But again, “Splitting” did the Job and I was able to assign each file to ist proper Metadata!

Except in my case, the movies ARE the same, just different editions.

Since I go to the trouble of manually editing the metadata for each movie, and naming them/placing them in individual folders, having to manually edit each edition in Plex would be a lot of extra work.

[cecoates]

Another good example of why this behavior isn’t desirable are fan edits.

I’ve been sorting some fan edits/alternate cuts of the Star Wars films, and Plex just can’t handle it.

If it used my NFOs, directory structure, and file naming as law, there’d be no issue. But instead everything ends up a bit of a mess.

Each film has its own collection (fan edits, restorations, current cuts from Disney, etc.), its own NFOs, its own file names and folders, and its own poster art. But even after splitting them apart, Plex treats them as a unit. Notice how when one poster changes from a metadata refresh, ALL similarly named titles also change to the exact same poster. Which doesn’t really make sense.

IMO split apart should = Plex permanently treats them as independent items or give us the ability to get rid of that behavior entirely.

[Azr43l]

Same problem here. I had to install Windows 10 from scratch and rebuild Plex from the ground up. Plex is combining completely different movies into one entry and when I split them apart and fix the match to the correct movie, the cover art doesn’t update. I’ve tried the Plex dance, emptying the trash, cleaning bundles, re-fetching metadata and re-scanning the movies and nothing gets the cover art to update to the correct art. I don’t recall ever having this problem before, was something recently changed?

Edit: It looks like none of the metadata is updating, not just the movie poster. None of movie details like synopsis, actors, etc are there either. It’s also not just movies I split, it’s all movies where I need to fix the match Plex got wrong.

P.S. - I have moved the local media assets option to the bottom of all three options in the agents section.

[cecoates]

I never found a good solution to this.

I don’t like setting the dates for “Director’s Cut” versions to something modern (like March 17, 2003) because often times an extended cut is the director’s “intended” cut of the film.

However, to try and deal with the above “split apart” issues I’ve given up and started to do it anyway.

Plex is still really, really eager to mash titles together even if their dates are different.

So what I end up doing is:

1. Make sure the “theatrical” and extended/director’s/alternate cut of a movie have different dates.
2. Once Plex combines two titles, even if they’re different, use “Unmatch” on the merged title.
3. Next, use “split apart” to separate the titles.
4. “Fix match” on ONE of the titles.
5. Leave the other “orphaned” so to speak because any other attempts to try and match it will merge the two titles again.

Still leaves a lot of unnecessary extra work because you now have to correct the metadata of the additional matches manually, but that’s the most consistent way I’ve found to deal with Plex’s false matches/merges. Would definitely prefer to just disable that behavior entirely.