Force a movie to be treated as a version rather than a separate title?

[Fweep 4]

I have a folder:
2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968)

In that folder I have these files:
2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968) - 2015 Soderbergh recut.mp4
2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968) - theatrical cut.mp4

I want these to show up in Emby as one movie with two versions to pick from. The Soderbergh recut instead shows up as its own movie named "2001: A Space Odyssey - Criterion Commentary". That's incorrect. It's really just an unofficial edit and has nothing to do with Criterion. The edit is probably not going to be in metadata databases.

What's the best way to handle this? Thanks for any advice and let me know if more info is needed.

 

Edited December 25, 2023 by Fweep
added "probably"

[GrimReaper 3309]

That should really not be happening, especially if your folder structure is:

33 minutes ago, Fweep said:

I have a folder:
2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968)

In that folder I have these files:
2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968) - 2015 Soderbergh recut.mp4
2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968) - theatrical cut.mp4

as that is proper filefolder structure/naming for multi-versioning. Guess all those years - 2001, 1968, 2015 - in the filename are somewhat throwing parser off. 

Anyway, you can Identify (three-dot menu) that 2015 Criterion version as correct movie and see if the they get merged - if not, you can merge them manually on multi-select (hover over top-left corner of the poster image, mark both items, select Group versions from three-dot menu top-right of the screen). 

Or try renaming that version to:

2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968) - Soderbergh recut 2015.mp4

or

2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968) - Soderbergh recut.mp4

Scan media library, see whether they'll get merged automatically. 

Edited December 25, 2023 by GrimReaper

[Fweep 4]

(To clarify, the recut is not a Criterion title. It's an unofficial edit that Steven Soderbergh briefly posted on his blog in 2015. Emby is misidentifying it.)

I tried all the options so I could report on what worked and what didn't.

• ··· > Identify > enter IMDb ID tt0062622 > search/pick; ··· > refresh metadata and/or Scan Library Files
• rename to put 2015 at end of the file name; ··· > refresh metadata and/or Scan Library Files

Either of the above options resulted in the correct metadata chosen, but it still comes up as a separate movie in the library.

• remove 2015 from file name entirely; ··· > refresh metadata and/or Scan Library Files

That worked! Thanks!

• select both > Group versions

That works too! Thanks!

OK, so the problem does seem to be that the parser gets rather confused by a year being in the version name. Moving the year to the end of the filename helps prevent the movie from being wrongly identified, but doesn't prevent the items from being separate in the library. Best workarounds are to manually group the versions or just completely remove the year from the file name.