An observation that I made (and which cost me a few moments of my time) about something I did not expect and which is undocumented (or maybe can be considered a bug - no discussion need on this one)…
If the movie parts have different file name extensions, the stacking process does not work. Instead, those parts are shown as duplicates.
This is not foreseeable and not documented. The file extension of a file should not make a difference for that.
Maybe somebody from @elan s team could look into that.
Oh yes, and I could convert the parts. Thank you… this is not my point.
Oh, I already fixed all of these files, but this is very simple to put together.
Just put two different formatted files with different file extension to the same folder and name them like that:
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Apocalypse Now (1979) - cd1.mov
Apocalypse Now (1979) - cd2.mkv
You will get Apocalypse Now as a duplicate, not stacked together.
Change that file name extension of … cd2.mkv to … cd2.mov and PMS will stack those files on next refresh.
Content and movie is completely irrelevant to this behaviour. I just took two files, renamed them like this for another movie (images show Death Race 2050)… the behaviour and file info can be seen in the images.
I’ve chatted with Engineering. Their decision, which was discussed a fair amount, is: While technically not a bug, they’ve never seen it before as there is some expectation multiple parts of the same movie have something substantial in common. That said, while looking forward, without sufficient merit to justify making all the changes necessary to support such a disparity in media parts, there is no justification to change PMS for one special case.
That all having been said, their recommendation to me is to
a) help you either convert those files to the same file format
or
b) help you remux (concatenate) the two pieces into a single unified file so you have the best possible playback experience.
How does this sound? Shall we put those pieces together into one file and make the best out of what you have?
@ChuckPa
Thx for the effort… it’s really appreciated. Luckily (as you already noted), this is an exception (I had three such cases in my movie collection of 2500 or so movies). Two times, out of three, different sources for different partshave been the reason for this The third occasion was on a movie, that had a corrupt file that I repaired without making sure that the repaired part should get the same file name extension as the other part (as it was undocumented).
Thank you for your kind offer helping me to mux parts together. I already helped myself on that.
I send my observations to you only to help you to make that part of Plex functionality a little more “universal” OR expand the documentation on its limits.
In order to stack movies, you do not need file name extensions. You analyze video streams for playback and Information. Getting rid of situations in which PMS depends on them sounds like a good idea in my ears. I’m not crying out for a bug fix… maybe you want to make the product “working as expected even in unusual situations like the ones I observed” the next time you touch it. That is the way that I work as a software engineer.
You should mention it in the documentation about it until then.
Thank you for taking care. I can imagine concentrating on real bug fixes and next-generation features takes a lot of Attention in the engineering department. I bet everyone has a large collection of things he or she wants to see.
I am glad somebody listened… add it to the long list of “if we ever come around in a perfect world to cover it… it may happen or not” things to do.
Greetings to the engineers… if they ever getting bored, I would have a couple of more observations for “special cases” like the above. But I do not want to be a pain in somebody’s back.
They did not, nor will ever, categorically say ‘never going to happen’ but given the amount of attention & focus pointed to fixing the foundation as it stands now and the efforts underway for fundamental improvements / expansion for all , their work logically will be centered on central issues for some time.
