The TVDB agent problems. Should we add the Year into our file and folder naming?

Long post, but the question is, has Plex changed the way the TVDB gathers info, and in the future, should we be adding the year to all of our TV season folders? Reasons for the question follow below…

Seems to be a LOT of people having troubles matching TV shows recently. I know some of the problem is file naming, some of the problem is the TVDB vanishes occasionally.

Besides the matching problems, fetching other metadata, like posters, season posters, etc. seems to be a new hiccup.
And if you dare use a third party agent for anything, chances are you will have to downgrade the server to version 1.27 in order for them to work.

Recently, I discovered I could not add “The Flash” TV series from 1990. It matches to “The Flash (2014)” and adds incorrectly, duplicate versions to the 2014 series, season 1. Ironically, it’s the exact opposite problem I have seen reported 100 times here, and “correct” naming would always fix it up. Mine are named correctly, just mis-matching the opposite way. Is that because there is no year in the 1990 series title?

While I don’t have the DVR beta, I have read several posts in that forum where the naming structure for TV episodes created by Plex, if not always, USUALLY adds the year for all TV episodes. Some DVR users have decided to rename all of their TV folders in their library to include the year to line up with the way the DVR has named them, others just live with the inconsistent naming structure.

I have suspected for some time that part of the code for scraping the TVDB from the DVR release has found it’s way into the standard plex server. A comment from @elan:

We have an issue internally discussing how to address this change (whether to revert, or to improve to make it better in more case where either air date or S/E is missing).

Wouldn’t life be simpler if every single file had both air date and S/E in it??

seems to say that air date is equally important as Season/episode, and probably essential in the DVR recording schedule. But for most of us, season and episode probably rank higher, the air date is relatively unimportant.

If my suspicions are true, and it’s currently DVR logic giving us grief everywhere else, wouldn’t it make more sense to make the DVR release fall in line with Plex naming standards, rather than make Plex change to fall in line with the DVR?

I have had issues in the past with tv show names. I pretty much fix all of them by giving them a year. No matter what TVDB says. I always include the year now.
The folder gets the year and the individual episodes get the year…
Because of the added year, I only have(had, now solved) two issues with tv names.
1st, The Celts
2nd, Simon and Simon
I ended up naming them “The Celts 2000 (2001)” and “Simon and Simon (1982)” -Yes… The series came out in 1981… Go figure…

@leelynds said:
If my suspicions are true, and it’s currently DVR logic giving us grief everywhere else, wouldn’t it make more sense to make the DVR release fall in line with Plex naming standards, rather than make Plex change to fall in line with the DVR?

In the standard Verse this would make sense and be practical.
In the Plexiverse - look for a complete re-write of the guidelines when they figure out it will be harder to fix the issue than to re-write the guidelines. We will be informed of the new ‘Feature’ shortly.

If they’re chasing their tails in the DVR wing trying to get a successful docking with EPGs they would have done well to have had more experience on the team than a few guys that have watched TV once. Those EPGs are composed by untrained Chimps, if they have correct info in them it’s by mistake, Chimps don’t read TVDB and will completely ignore bananas for a little cocaine - much like the Network Executives they work for.

Although it may be a somewhat convoluted response, I think that the answer to my question was more or less answered here:

Moving forward, we should probably include the year when naming TV shows, similar to the method we should use for movies. While change can be a good thing, we will have to see how this is going to affect current Plexers and their old “tried and True” methods. :-B

@leelynds said:
Moving forward, we should probably include the year when naming TV shows, similar to the method we should use for movies. While change can be a good thing, we will have to see how this is going to affect current Plexers and their old “tried and True” methods. :-B

What about FileBot? Is FileBot going to get an upgrade? Will adding the year to every single TV Show even work?

Ohhh we’ve not yet begun to discover what lurks in the depths of this mile-deep, roiling, turd infested cesspool. We’re only looking at the surface.

Right now having the year in the file and folder name doesn’t even bump up the score… still leads to mismatches even though it would clearly be the exact match.

Photo example:

@Raymoz101 said:
Right now having the year in the file and folder name doesn’t even bump up the score… still leads to mismatches even though it would clearly be the exact match.

Photo example:

http://i.imgur.com/gGpoymb.jpg

Without proof showing your EXACT naming and structuring you’re offering little more than anecdotal evidence - totally useless in the research currently underway here:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/254362/tv-series-name-matching-research

@Raymoz101 said:
Right now having the year in the file and folder name doesn’t even bump up the score… still leads to mismatches even though it would clearly be the exact match.

Photo example:

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Do you include the (YEAR) in the filename or just the root folder for the show?
I just added:
//Television/Drama/Taboo (2017)/Season 01/Taboo (2017) S01E01.avi

It scanned first go without my assistance:

Is it possible that we’re not picking up that adding YEAR to the naming conventions is a fix because it’s not being added to each level? ie: out of pure obsessive habit I’ve been making sure that the episode file names are prefixed with the root show folder name before SnnEnn.

Do you include the (YEAR) in the filename or just the root folder for the show?
I just added:
//Television/Drama/Taboo (2017)/Season 01/Taboo (2017) S01E01.avi

It may depend on OS and version of PMS. For example, currently I have the folder set as “The Flash (1990)” and the episodes are named without the year, “The Flash - S01E01.mp4” I agree, a good practice would be to name similarly, and I will probably correct that on my server, but the series folder would appear to be the primary source in the matching process.

In this case I would also be interested in finding out the structure for the library pointer:

Television/ <---- wrong
Television/Drama/ <---- right

You can’t have a Television Folder be the TV Show library with Nested folders within. It may work for a while then suddenly fail.

You can have Nested folders inside a Television Root folder be separate TV Show Libraries. This has always been ‘what just works’ and how the documentation is written.

We haven’t started re-writing the documentation yet, but may soon. For now let’s stick to the documented methods for structure and add ‘customized’ bits for naming where necessary.

@jungwirth said:
Is it possible that we’re not picking up that adding YEAR to the naming conventions is a fix because it’s not being added to each level? ie: out of pure obsessive habit I’ve been making sure that the episode file names are prefixed with the root show folder name before SnnEnn.

That would be the documented method and seems to work, but we are having to add, in @leelynds case; The Flash (1990), where no year was required before.

@JuiceWSA said:
In this case I would also be interested in finding out the structure for the library pointer:

Television/ <---- wrong
Television/Drama/ <---- right

Very true. In the example @JuiceWSA provided, PMS will try to match a tv series called “Drama”.
PMS will try to match all folders within the “ROOT” folder.

It’s ironic when you see how other programs act when the year is thrown in there from Plex DVR. Migrating from Media Center Master and Windows Media Center DVR to Media Center Master and Plex DVR has been a bumpy road.