Converting to Lower Quality - File Naming issues

[kirkb 0]

Not sure if this is MacOs or in general. I configured one of my libraries to convert all media to 1.5mbps in order to have a lower quality version of each movie available for remote streaming. Most of the media converted without issue and show as a single item in the client. However, around 5% are showing duplicate. After further analysis, I noticed the ones that are showing a duplicate (eg, two thumbnails vs one) in the client have more non standard file names:

Examples:

Muppets.Haunted.Mansion.2021.WEB-KOGi_720p_hevc.mkv
Muppets.Haunted.Mansion.2021.WEB-KOGi_720p_hevc - mobile.mp4

Ivy + Bean (2022).mkv
Ivy + Bean Doomed to Dance (2022).mkv

Front what I can gather any punctuation or symbols are throwing off the code that matches up different versions of the same movie. Going through and renaming each item resolves the issue in most cases but is too tedious for a large library.

 

 

[kirkb 0]

In the case of Ivy + Bean ... renaming to Ivy and Bean did not resolve the issue. I've rerun all relavent schedule tasks and can see that the file paths and names have updated in the meta data but the files are still showing as two separate movies in the client; even after closing and reopening the client. 

[Luke 37095]

Hi, yes this is an area with the convert feature that needs to be improved.

In order to be joined together they both have to follow our multi version naming guidelines, but often the original won't be.

The workaround for now is to put them in their own folder. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[kirkb 0]

34 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, yes this is an area with the convert feature that needs to be improved.

In order to be joined together they both have to follow our multi version naming guidelines, but often the original won't be.

The workaround for now is to put them in their own folder. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

So simply utilizing a different folder or drive will resolve the issue without having to rename anything? Or are you saying a different folder with a separate library?

Thanks again Luke. Btw, I posted the attachments on my macOS hardware transcoding issue when you have some time.

Enjoy,

Kirk

[kirkb 0]

So, I was mucking with this feature in attempt to reduce the load on the server as a result of hardware transcoding not working. Since it appears I may have resolved the hardware transcoding issue, I’ve abandoned creating lower quality versions for remote viewing. That said, this feature made a small mess of one of my libraries. I had about 4 or 5 movies that it literally created about 5-10 copies … eg, movie -mobile -mobile - mobile.mp4 and so on. The UI would show multiple thumbnails for about 10% of the movies vs. showing one with the drop-down to select a specific version. 
 

This really needs to be disabled until it can function better. Some folks have thousands of movies / shows in their libraries. This could create quite the mess if unleashed on a sizable library. Mine only had a couple hundred movies and was relatively quick to cleanup via terminal. 
 

I prefer to keep files in h265 format. It saves space generally. Now that transcoding seems to be working, I’ll stick with letting the server transcode when remotely viewing. This allows me to maximize my meeker ~20tb of storage

[Luke 37095]

Thanks for the feedback. Yes this is on our to do list for review.