Possible Bug In Movie Versions

[kbeck 64]

I think I've run across a bug in movie versions. Had a couple that created duplicate entries and I never could get to to show as a single movie with multiple versions. Have looked for a week and finally noticed those with problems all had  punctuation in the folder names. Abbott & Costello, Dr. Phibes, etc. Once I renamed to get rid of the characters they merged ok. Removing from the filenames wouldn't fix the problem as long as the characters remained in the folder names. Hope this helps someone.

[Luke 42078]

Hi there, how are your files named and organized?

[kbeck 64]

T:\Movies\1950s\Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy (1955)\Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy (1955).avi
T:\Movies\1960s\A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)\A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965).mp4

Movies folder\Decade\movie name folder\movie name file

All the Abbott And Costello films were named as Abbott & Costello and none would merge the versions. I tried changing the filename to shorter "Meet The Mummy (1955)" and still would not merge. Changed the folder & to And and rescanned and they had merged. Aldo changed a Dr. Phibes to Dr Phibes folder and it also merged versions. Have not looked at other symbols.

 

PS - Just had another with a comma in the folder name.....removed it and versions showed. Had no comma in the filename.

Edited April 8, 2025 by kbeck
Add additional example

[Luke 42078]

When you rename files or folders, the next library scan will remove the old content from the database and then import the new files fresh, as if you never had them before. I don't think this is character related and has more to do with just giving those files a fresh start.

Have you ever merged and split manually in the UI? Or used the community plugin to automatically group versions across different folders?

[kbeck 64]

4 minutes ago, Luke said:

When you rename files or folders, the next library scan will remove the old content from the database and then import the new files fresh, as if you never had them before. I don't think this is character related and has more to do with just giving those files a fresh start.

Have you ever merged and split manually in the UI? Or used the community plugin to automatically group versions across different folders?

I tried renaming and moving, rescanning, restarting the server all do nothing. After a week of trying it was only when I removed the "&" and "," from the folder names did they merge. I will test some more but pretty sure on this.

I didn't know you could manually merge or split. Didn't know about the community plugin. Will look at that also. Another problem I'm having is the metadata being rewritten as brand new when adding a version (I think when the new version is alphabetically at the top). Am having to redo 235 movies metadata after they were overwritten. Each had 5-10 Tags that are gone.

[Luke 42078]

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Will look at that also.

You don't need it. I was just asking because content will not automatically merge once you start merging and splitting manually, and the plugin does the equivalent of this.

[Luke 42078]

Quote

Another problem I'm having is the metadata being rewritten as brand new when adding a version (I think when the new version is alphabetically at the top). Am having to redo 235 movies metadata after they were overwritten. Each had 5-10 Tags that are gone.

Actually the metadata is still there, it's just that each version has it's own.

 

[kbeck 64]

On 4/8/2025 at 11:39 PM, Luke said:

Actually the metadata is still there, it's just that each version has it's own.

 

I'm seeing that also. Edit Metadata, Save it and then have to Edit it "again" but I noticed it's for a different filename.

[Luke 42078]

Right that is just how multi-version works. They each have their own separate metadata, and which one you see depends on which one you're looking at. It's something that needs review for future updates. Thanks.