I have a lot of films with 2D, 3D & 4K versions of the same film and it is a total pain in “the proverbial” that every time I add a new version of a film I then have to go back in and manually split them apart. I do not actually have any instances where I want them merged, so why can’t we just have an option to NOT automatically merge files?
I agree totally, Have 2D & 3D versions of the same movie. What kills me is that when you watch one or the other, BOTH show up in the in-progress shows on every client. I suspect it’s because they match the same movie title. I bet when you watch one of yours, you see 3 instances of in-progress movies.
Need something better!
@solomonj said:
I agree totally, Have 2D & 3D versions of the same movie. What kills me is that when you watch one or the other, BOTH show up in the in-progress shows on every client. I suspect it’s because they match the same movie title. I bet when you watch one of yours, you see 3 instances of in-progress movies.Need something better!
Make sure to vote by Liking my comment, thanks 
Still no sign of this I see :’(
sigh could be solved if someone worked out MVC encoding for 2D/3D (where you only need one file for both, without ending up with huge filesizes), and Plex supported selecting which was preferred the same way you switch audio tracks… but I’m dreaming! 
I too would like this as an option. I sort my movies in strange ways, and have different versions of the same movie listed as the original because I want the original art and synopsis to show up, but not pull the file from the other version. Expamples:
Rifftrax works easier as a folder than as a show. I want them sorted alphabetically but if I put them under TV shows it sorts them by the order in which they do them. Meaning Twilight is next to STar Wars 3, not Twilight 2.
3d movies as SBS, vs. 3d movies as HSBS.
HD versions and SD versions for easier streaming to mobile.
I’m not asking for the feature to be removed. Just made optional.
My server is not merging different versions of the same movie. This behaviour has changed in a recent update. I’ve noticed as I’ve manually created HDR and tonemapped copies of the same movies, and they’ve shown up as separate instances of the same movie.
I see this is an older thread, but 1 action you can do, add a separate movie folder, name it “Alt movies”, then in plex have movies and alt movie tab each attached to its own folder, thats what i had done originally, but then i quit have multiples of the same movie, chose which i liked best and deleted the rest.
I assume no one knows that you can vote for this thread. I didn’t know until a moderator told me in my duplicate request.
I’ve googled this issue a few times in the past couple of years. Plex needs to make it way more obvious that you should vote for feature requests.
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I deleted my request, and will instead vote for this and add my text here :
I’d like to see a toggle for disabling and enabling the automatic merging of library items, perhaps listed under or near the “Settings > Library > Empty trash automatically” setting.
I’m one of the seemingly few people that maintain 4K and 1080p items in the same library, as I like it to be as clean as possible. I however use a Tautulli script to apply an excluded sharing label to the 4K items, so external users don’t see them. If the newly added item merges with the existing 1080p file, both copies get the new label.
Just wondering if Editions is actually addressing what you’ve been asking for.
Plex will still merge what it considers different quality versions of the same video – however you now have the option to keep different editions of the same movie apart from each other by default.
how hard is this to add and why is plex so reluctant to allow us to turn it off.. the merge funtion actually serves no purpose but to hide the fact that you are wasting space if you have duplicates.. or… destroy all your custom work and tweaks when it gets it wrong. which for me is 100% of the time it just gets it wrong.
