I do not want Plex to merge my files IN NO EVENT. I do not use it at all, I do not need the merge, but Plex insists on incorrectly merge dozens of video files.
How can I disable this function?
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No option in Plex to stop this.
You best shot is to properly name the videos by following Plexâ naming conventions:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/media-preparation/
If your files are named correctly and you move âLocal media assetsâ below everything else in the agents for both movies and shows then you will almost never have merged shows. I do not see that problem at all.
Iâm a new user and Iâm holding off upgrading to the full plex pass membership if it cannot suit my needs. What are the steps necessary to submit this as a dev request?
In basic Googling I can see this is a constantly reoccurring need that arises that seems it should have been an option added years ago.
Itâs a constant issue because users name their files wrong. Even if you donât let them auto-merge theyâll still end up incorrectly matched, which is just a different problem that requires all of the same fixes. The devs are never going to implement that feature, because it would be a support nightmare.
Save yourself the headache, just name your files right the first time and be done with it.
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I appreciate the response, not trying to come across as a jerk to you but Iâll keep doing what Iâm doing and if they canât simply add a toggle that could be on by default to prevent automerge perhaps I shouldnât spend my money with them and find another solution that suits my needs. Perhaps there are more backend processes Iâm not aware of that would not have a good roi for them to maintain but it seems straight forward from the outside. Maybe a developer should provide the reasoning they donât want to implement it.
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I agree 100% i am a plex pass user and i am absolutely sick of this. I shouldnt have to go and RENAME EVERY SINGLE FILE I HAVE. That will take hours. Plex is supposed to make life easier for me and this is just becoming giant pain in my A__. The devs need to do something about this
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Properly? Did you seriously say PROPERLY? I decide what is proper for my file naming system, not you or Plex. If these are the âconventionsâ, then the convention needs to be dismantled. Automatically merging files without the userâs permission, and without a way to disable this dysfunctional function, is stupid in the highest degree!
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Could not possibly agree more.
Not necessarily true(unless you count a âno matchâ as incorrectly matched). But what you are saying is ten times worst because PLEX downloads useless information from the internet and stores it on your hard drive, makes edits to the database, etcâŠ
The only option I can see to âbreakâ the auto-merge feature is switch up the scanner agents. Not idea thoughâŠ
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use a filebot app, in will take you just a min or two to do a whole library
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Seriously guys⊠take it down a notch!
Whereâs all that coming from more than a month later?
If you donât care about Plex matching your content, youâre 100% free to ignore any naming convention. In that case youâre best off using e.g. the Plex Video Scanner scanner with the Personal Media agent and focus on embedded metadata.
If you want to get your media properly matched, youâll need to spend a minimum effort when adding a new movie â and speaking for movies, the naming convention is pretty flexible for everything you throw into the name after the actual movie name and its release year.
The latter is a minor effort compared to managing the metadata all by yourself.
Happy to help those whoâre looking for help.
As @zzzzMezzzz pointed out⊠one powerful tool for mass-renaming files is FileBot; on macOS you can achieve a lot using some integrated mass-renaming functions of Finder (alas not at the level of FileBot).
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Iâm going to have to agree with you on this one. Plex might be a pain in the ass when naming is concerned but humans are to. We may have better âinsightâ on what the movie is because we added the thing BUT that doesnât mean itâs not a lousy name to begin with. We have a responsibility to our-self to insure a easy add to the library. There is no level of programming to compensate for every messed up filename.
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Iâm so sick and tired of googling this issue every six months only to see over and over again the obstinate response of âsimply name your files properlyâ. NO! Turn of the god awful file merging! It really really really sucks!
If you donât care about Plex matching your content, youâre 100% free to ignore any naming convention. In that case youâre best off using e.g. the Plex Video Scanner scanner with the Personal Media agent and focus on embedded metadata.
For a particular library, I DONâT care about Plex matching my content. In fact there is literally nothing for it to match to. It really is âPersonal Mediaâ and I have done exactly âPlex Video Scannerâ scanner and âPersonal Mediaâ agent. And guess what? IT STILL MERGES RANDOM FILES TOGETHER!!!
HOW DO I STOP THIS!??!?
Take it down a notch? Take your merging BS down a notch.
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Really? Wow. I didnât know that PLEX will merge media from the library âOther Videosâ. That sucks.
Yeah, it really does.
Whatâs more, it also renames the titles, of some of them, randomly it seems. And I have named the files very specifically.
YYYY/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD/YYYYMMDD-HH:MM:SS-(location)-(index).mkv
It of course doesnât change the folder names, and I also browse the library by folder, but the name of the files within the folder for that day is very important because then it sorts chronologically. Itâs VERY annoying to have these names change⊠sometimes⊠differentlyâŠ
I want plex to serve these files, show a preview image, and the length. I donât want it to guess what they are, I donât want it to make the names âhelpfulâ, I DO NOT WANT THEM TO MERGE EVER!!!
In fact it occurs to me from writing the previous, it may be glomming onto the (index) number and flagging those as the same (the index field gets reset periodically)? Is there a simple way to prevent this? Do parentheses mean anything special? As I donât actually use parens but naked. Maybe if I wrapped those fields in parens it changes how plex is interpreting them? Fools it into thinking thatâs a year somehow? But then what does it do when the âyearâ (not year) values are the same for multiple files?
CAN I JUST TURN IT THE F*&% OFF??
actually, no, the software you use decides what is proper for automatic scanning.
If you donât want videos to be merged, donât name them in a way that will confuse the non-sentient piece of software that is designed to look for pattern matches. If you name two files to be similar, itâll think its the same file just either in a different place, alternate version, or a multipart file.
If you donât want to manually rename each individual file by hand, thatâs fine. Neither do I. Thatâs why i use FileBot ( https://www.filebot.net/) and Advanced Renamer ( http://www.advancedrenamer.com/ ) to do it for me.
FileBot automatically renames the files PROPERLY, puts them in a PROPER folder structure, and you can even EDIT THEM BEFORE HITTING OKAY if it finds a false match!
Have you even looked at the file naming conventions? ( https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/media-preparation/ )
What your file looks like to the you is:
20180304-15:12:41-pandas-4.mkv
What the file looks like to the plex file scanner:
show 20180304 - season 15:12:41 - episode pandas - part 4.mkv
no bloody wonder its getting merged left and right.
if you want a proper naming structure for like vacation videos, do something like this:
2018_03 \
04 \
1 - when pandas attack.mkv
2 - when pandas are nice.mkv
3 - feeding pandas snacks.mkv
4 - eating panda snacks (dont do it!).mkv
5 - regretting eating panda snacks.mkv
this should format it as:
Show '2018_03' season '04' episode '1' title 'when pandas attack'
if you have more than 9 files in the day, just add another leading 0 so its 01 or 02, etc⊠if you have more than 99, add another leading zero so its 001 or 002âŠ
this is not rocket science
A less prone to possible breakage, would be " 2018_03 - s04e1 - when pandas attack.mkv"
âactually, no, the software you use decides what is proper for automatic scanning.â
Actually, no. The software is supposed to work FOR ME, not for its own data mining and self-serving developers who steal every possible byte of information and either use it for their own gain or sell it outright to the highest bidder. This is not PROPER: itâs theft. Were the software actually written for the people who BUY IT (imagine that!), it would give the BUYER the choice to opt out of all this criminal behavior.
âIf you donât want videos to be merged, donât name them in a way that will confuse the non-sentient piece of softwareâ
This software was written by semi-sentient developers who choose weather or not to make it function in a way which most users would want. Yes, a lot of people want all this BS metadata to either simplify having to edit their media or to gather as much information about the media as possible. I say, again, itâs STUPID IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE! Not only is 100% of the data INACCURATE, it forces semi-sentient beings such as myself to have to WORK AGAINST this stupidity. As I said in another post, I have spent half my time, it seems, when trying to UNSCREW (here I must speak in infantile language because the f-bomb police flagged my post as âoffensiveâ. Kids, what are you gonna do?) what these so-called sentient developers have SCREWED! Do I mean that 100% of the data is inaccurate? No, but 100% of the data for any given piece of media will have at least some highly inaccurate element, such as name, release date, artist, author, composer, etc. What idiot in their right mind would want this, I will never be able to say as long as I live.
âHave you even looked at the file naming conventions?â
This question contains too many fallacies to list here, but Iâll address the worst ones. Would the devs have written software that allowed the end user to opt out of these insanity-laden âconventionsâ, I would not have to concern myself with them. I want NO PART in anyone elseâs metadata. I have painstakingly organized my media in such a way that file name and folder name ALONE should suffice for all the information I need. The simplest, most ludicrously user unfriendly software in the world written for the Windows platform SHOULD be able to recognize FILE NAMES and consider it sufficient data to sort and organize this information into an EASILY ACCESSIBLE, EASILY MANAGED structure, would you not agree??? Why in THE HELL is the user FORCED, I say again, FORCED!!!, to conform to the stupidity of so many others? ?? Convention? âSCREWâ CONVENTION!!!
I have a serious problem with authority, quite obviously. It is anathema to me. There is good reason, however, for this disdain and intolerance. Every day we see new inventions of products and new software that is supposed to be SMART. It is almost never smart to the degree of user control, which, of course, is what this is all about. The fight for control over my life, and yours, now that I think about it.
---- Liestenn plex@discoursemail.com wrote:
