My guess is you are talking about movies that were done in multiple versions, in the 60's-70's and then much later, or first in a foreign version then an americanized. Examples are:
- The Italian Job
- Point Break
- The Thomas Crown Affair
- Nikita / La Femme Nikita
Your "The Thomas Crown Affair" would have a second copy "The Thomas Crown Affair (1)".
What you probably want is to keep them in different folders, with different covers / descriptions and tags.
You could do this:
- select the older one (you may have to play it to detect the right one)
- rename it "The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)"
- right click it and "Get Movies and TV Info" to populate the tags / cover image
- select the newer one
- rename it "The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)"
- right click it and "Get Movies and TV Info" to populate the tags / cover image
- select the two films
- Press F6 or right click on one of them then Library Tools / Rename, Move & Copy Files (often referred here as RMCF)
- Within the RMCF window that pops up, select "Rename (moves files if directory changes)
- Check the Directories box (no change to the folders if unchecked), and Browse to the base path for your movies
- In the Directories Rule box, enter how the subfolder should be built. For movies, [Name] is typical. For music, 2 levels, like [Artist]\[Album] would be typical
- Check the Filename box (no change to the filename if unchecked)
- In the Filename Rule box, enter how the filename should be built. For movies, [Name] is typical. For music, [Track #] - [Name] may be typical.
- You have a preview of the folder/filename changes on the right.
- Click OK to proceed with the file/directories renaming
You will end up with separate folders, names, descriptions and cover images.
RMCF is extremely powerful.
The corolary is that you can do a lot of damage quickly !
Two rules of thumb:
- practice on a small number of files at a time, until you are confortable with the command you want to do
- Ctrl-Z is Undo, do it immediately if not satisfied with the result of your RMCF.
RMCF can be used to clean up your media collection structure at the folder and filename level.
The "Update database to point to new location" option of RMCF is wonderful when you externally copy your media files to a bigger disk or different server / NAS, keeping all tags intact, including "last played". This is much better than deleting and re-importing the files.
"Copy" and "Copy and update database" aspects of RMCF have their own uses. Read on them.
Cheers.