Still Having Issues Naming Multi-Part Movies

General Discussions
1

Seem to have issues with this a lot. I have the first Lord of the Rings movie on 2 discs. Previously I was able to create 2 .mkv files and run them through MKVToolNix to combine them into one file. I had to re-copy the movie so I followed the same procedure. This time I keep getting errors when merging stating that track parameters do not match. So I follow the instructions on Plex to name the files so my PMS will combine them. Here is what I’m doing:

  • created folder named The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
  • added file named The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) - pt1
  • added file named The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) - pt2

But when my PMS picks this up it creates one folder with a poster but I get the purple (2) indicating that there are 2 files. When I play the movie it starts off only playing part 2.

What am I doing wrong here?

Thanks!

2

If you’ve named the files, which it appears you have, as per https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200264966-Naming-Stacked-or-Multi-Part-Movies and they are otherwise the same bitrate, encoding, and codecs you’ve found something which needs to be debugged further.

Since you were getting errors in mkvtoolnix saying things don’t line up / match, that’s an indication we need to look at the video information itself for the files.

What are the paths shown for the videos when you get the media info? Are they indeed in the same directory as the naming convention states?

3

This should work. The naming is flawless.
Are you positive that there is nothing in the file names after the pt1 part? (apart from the file name extension, of course)

Please download yourself mediainfo (the standalone app)
(careful during the installation, it may come with a piggybacked “offer” for crapware, make sure to clear the right checkboxes).

Then export the mediainfo for both files into a text file
File - Export - Text - [x] Advanced mode
and post them both here

4

Here you go. I hope I did this right.

5

The reason why you can’t use MKVtoolnix to chain the files is because they are encoded differently. The first file has video dimensions of 716x360 pixels, while the second is 720x362 pixels.
The first also uses ~ double the video bitrate than the second. You must encode both parts absolutely identical to chain them successfully.

Why Plex is not ‘stacking’ the two parts is puzzling me, though. It should work.

6

Hmm, I’ll see what I did wrong. I successfully ran this through MKVtoolnix about 6 months ago. I lost my .mkv file of this movie and had to pull them from the DVD again. At least now I know what the issue is and how to fix it (hopefully). Thanks for the help!