Can You Mix TV Series and TV Movies in the Same Library?

For example…

I have the TV Movie “Partly Cloudy” which I want to appear in the same library as “Shaun the Sheep”, which is made up of 3 or 4 series.

They’re in the same folder on the hard drive but Plex seems to have ignored the Partly Cloudy film.

You will find some “tv movies” to be listed as extras or specials of a tv show.
In that case – that’s not going to fit.

“Partly Cloudy” is however listed as a (short) movie in – so you can easily match it with a library of animated shorts :wink:

Plex does not support mixing of media kinds/types in a single library.

Negative - Warning Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!

You can NOT mix Movies and TV Shows in the same Library Type.
Movies go in a Movies Type Library
Shows go in a Shows Type Library
they MUST have their own Library Folders off the root.

Once you do that - can create identically named Collections - and have Shows and Movies - Jump The Gap - as it were:

TV Movies are quickly becoming TV Shows at TMDB.
Depending how badly you want it - you can play The Personal Media Card (Fix Match/Search Options/Agent/Personal Media) at which point Plex will stop making your life miserable and you can hand edit whatever it is to be whatever you want. It still has to be in the proper library type when you’re done ‘re-inventing’ it.

Hmm, well that is strange as I have Stick Man under it’s own folder (IE - Stick Man/Stick Man.mp4) but also have Shaun the Sheep, which has 5 series (all nested properly), yet Plex picks them both up.

More strange is that it seems to ignore some folders (IE - Polar Trappers/Polar Trappers.avi) BUT if I add a new library with “other video”, it seems to pick them up fine.

Tried deleting / doing the dance but it still won’t pick up these certain media files.

We’re telling ya - it’s a freakin’ miracle.

TV Shows MUST go in a TV Show Library.
Movies MUST go in a Movie Library.

You can continue - and your life will soon be miserable.
It ain’t gonna work.

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Actually you can put TV shows and made for TV movies in the same folder. All you need to do is structure the TV movie as if it is simply a TV series with one season and one episode in that season. I have several TV movies structured exactly that way.

Some times you will not get metadata but it is easy enough to edit the metadata and insert what you want to be shown.

A little creativity and you can pretty much do anything you want.

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But…

What about those TV shows that are 30 mins long (take “The Snowman” for example). Is that a Movie or TV Series?
TheTVDB lists it as a TV Series…

It also doesn’t explain why I can seemingly mix TV Series and Movies together.
For example - I have the following in the same library:

D:\Kids\Stick Man\Stick Man.mp4
D:\Kids\Alphablocks\Series 01\Episode 1.mp4
D:\Kids\Alphablocks\Series 01\Episode 2.mp4

D:\Kids\Alphablocks\Series 02\Episode 1.mp4

Both are picked up by Plex in the same library. Stick Man isn’t structured in a “Series”, while Alphablocks is.

Yet also in that folder is this:
D:\Kids\The Snowman\The Snowman.mp4

which is not picked up in the library. Unless I choose the filter “Folders”, where Plex can see it but it’s not displayed with everything else under the default sorting method of “TV Shows”

Why is that?

For those who run that thin line, good luck. You will need it as it may work for sometime or it may not. Then there’s that strange spanner that can rain in to spoil all Plex splendor and screw up all good intents.
From Grease to the Nutty Professor, I do profess oxygen may be required going forward. Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, comes to mind. Love it or not, time will tell. “Life’s greatest tragedy is not to be loved.”

I just want to know why it seems to work for some media files, but not others… :pensive:

Thought people would understand why I’m confused on what to name something… IE, TV Programme or Movie.

It all has to do with the Scanner (Before the Metadata Agent) The Scanner looks at the Media & does a brief ping to determine what type of Files are in this folder. If it’s the Series Scanner then it looks at the structure, if it sees a “Season” folder or a “S01E01” in the files it immediately recognizes it as a Series & moves on to the next folder. If it doesn’t it does some more in-depth searching, possibly scanning keywords against a TVDB & TMDB list, I don’t know the particulars, but I know the Custom Scanner Agents Like BABS can get past some of those things because of the scanning method differences. It’s essentially looking at the files & saying “Is this a TV Show?”. If you have episodes in a series folder without any numbering more often than not the Series Scanner will ignore them.

For me, I have a Library of Shorts with no files longer than 10 minutes
This causes problems because some of the items are listed as series, like the Big Hero 6 & Forky Asks A Question which each consist of 10, 1-5 minute episodes. But I also have things like Caught In A Ham from the Spiderverse, Studio Ghibli Shorts, Scrat Shorts, Magie Simpson's The Longest Daycare & others. These are all obviously not part of a series. So I have to add “Caught In A Ham S01E01” for it to be seen by the Series Scanner Agent Then I have to unmatch it, then Manually Re-Name & Tag it.

TL/DR: If you want it to be recognized by the Series Scanner Put it in a folder with the name you want & include “S01E01” in the file name. Series Scanner will always include anything named that way

Correction: I Said BABS, but it’s actually Absolute Series Scanner that I’m using in my Shorts mixed library

I think this is it, I’ll find the thread & edit this post with a link
GitHub: Absolute-Series-Scanner

Information

Such a silly reality.

It is almost 2021 - Plex needs to “make it work”. It can be as smart as it is decided to be.

Users can “Make It Work”, it’s actually not that hard, it just requires you to tag things by a method compatible with the Scanner you are using. Series Scanner & Movie Scanner can’t operate together. It’s silly that people want them to. I get wanting to mix things together, I do it all the time, it just requires you to give it a season & episode number Season 100 or Season 2 Episode 100 [S02E101] & manually tag it.

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