Can't seem to get .plexmatch files to work

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Server Version#: 1.25.9.5673
Player Version#: 1.42.1.2926-415b0e14

I appreciate this version of the server a) was only released today and b) is still in beta, but now that support has been added for .plexmatch files I thought I would have a go at adding The Simpsons: Trace Ulman Shorts to my TV library.

In order to correctly identify the show and retain the filenames as they are, I followed the following guide to add a top level file containing the IMDB ID hint and one in each season directory containing episode hints:

Match Hinting for TV Series | Plex Support

I’m sure I have probably done something wrong, but in summary, Plex doesn’t appear to be picking up the information that I am expecting as can be seen below:

,plexmatch failure
,plexmatch failure657Ă—761 170 KB

And under each season in Plex each of the episodes are simply shown as: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, etc…

Plex has identified the show, year and seasons correctly but I think it has obtained those from my directory structure which is under:

/mnt/Media/TV/The Simpsons Tracy Ulman Shorts (1987)

With the following hierachy:

.plexmatch
Season 01/
    .plexmatch
    The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 01 - Good Night.wmv
    The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 02 - Watching Television.wmv
    etc...
Season 02/
    .plexmatch
    The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 08 - Football.wmv
    The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 09 - Making Faces.wmv
    etc....
Season 03/
    .plexmatch
    The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 30 - Shut Up Simpsons.wmv
    The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 31 - Shoplifting.wmv
    etc...

The top level .plexmatch file simply contains the IMDB hint (including the optional prefix) as follows:

imdbid: tt12294152

And the others under the season directories following the format of my Season 01 .plexmatch file shown below :

ep: 01: The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 01 - Good Night.wmv
ep: 02: The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 02 - Watching Television.wmv
ep: 03: The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 03 - Bart Jumps.wmv
ep: 04: The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 04 - Babysitting Maggie.wmv
ep: 05: The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 05 - The Pacifier.wmv
ep: 06: The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 06 - Burp Contest.wmv
ep: 07: The Simpsons - Tracy Ulman Shorts 07 - Eating Dinner.wmv

Has anyone else played around with this feature and has it working, and if possibly, can you please assist me identifying what I have done wrong?

Many thanks

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Your issue isn’t so much about the plexmatch feature as about how this metadata is ingested in Plex. These shorts are listed as specials for the main “The Simpsons” series. Try using this for your top-level .plexmatch:

tvdbid: 71663
season: 0

The rest of what you have there should work fine. You shouldn’t actually need the per-episode entries here (since they’re just handing us the same episode number we can parse from the filename).

1 Like
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Many thanks for the response - it is much appreciated.

Ah okay - so even though I included the IMDB identifier, Plex prefers to pick up the metadata from TVDB?

Anyway, I have flattened my directory structure: I have the one .plexmatch file and 48 media files in a Season 00 directory, and then I performed a rescan on my TV library.

Initially, Plex added all the files with generic The Simpsons artwork for Season 00, but no episode information.

However, upon refreshing metadata, Plex has now picked up the correct data - although some of the episode titles are a little different to a) what my filenames are, and b) compared to IMDB (which seems to match the titles in my filenames). For example:

TVDV: S00E13 - Bart and Homer’s Dinner vs IMDB: S02E06 - Bart and Dad Eat Dinner.

Ironically, From the brief compare I performed, Wikipedia also has the same titles as IMDB.

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I wonder if the fact that she spells her name “Tracey Ullman” makes any difference?

1 Like
5

Oh - so much for my eye for detail. I normally spot those sort of things :wink:

The original filenames have it wrong - and I simply copied those when I created the directory structure.

The filenames I have also don’t match the episode sequence either, even though 1 to 7 appears to be correct, which is why I also created the lower level .plexmatch files - I’m sure where I originally obtained them from!

6

Hello.

I also try to find out how to Match a Series over an ID.
Tried all possible ways but didn’t found out how this file will work.

How should i name such a File? “Plex.plexmatch” or just create a file “plexmatch”?
Because it is not possible to create a File which will start with a point like “.plexmatch”.

Need to Match a Series “Kitchen Impossible” into “The Movie DB” because Plex TV Series Agent will just match it to TVDB, where some Seasons are completely wrong Ordered.

For example, how do i match a Folder into this Series?:

Series\CoolShowSecondSeason\Season 1

  • S1 E01 - qeq
  • S1 E02 - qwewe
  • S1 E03 - qwee

Files in Folder “CoolShowSecondSeason” and also inside Folder “Season 1” are “CoolShowSecondSeason.plexmatch” and “plexmatch” (so much idendical Files because i don’t can find a way that PLEX will take one of them).

Inside this Files acuatlly:

# This directory contains the second season of Cool Show
Title: Cool Show

# The series' first season originally aired in 2018
Year: 2014
Season: 1

# We could also add a tvdbid: hint if we knew the ID for
# Cool Show, but we'd still need to provide the season
# hint as well.

tmdbid: 63038

Where is the problem to tell PLEX using this MovieDB Series Match?

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The file has to be called .plexmatch starting with a full stop (dot/point/period).

Which operating system are you using? I know I have had trouble in the past with File Explorer in Windows not allowing this - but I just tried it again and can create the file:

Plexmatch Example

If you are using Windows File Explorer I would recommend turning the View -> Hide extensions for known file types option off if you haven’t already - alternatively open a Command Prompt and type:

echo.> .plexmatch
notepad .plexmatch
1 Like
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Really Thank you for this hint with CMD.
Yes i used Windows File Explorer.

Now its working fine with just put in " tmdbid: 63038"
Only thing is, if you wanna get matched the Episode Names, you will have to Manually Update Metadata from this Series, like you already mentioned.
Otherwise you just wanna seeunmatched Episodes (tried with different Series)
No matter if i put a Season hint in it, like its wroten in the Support Article.

Maybe a Feature Bug?

Also if i try to match a automatically matched TVDB Series into a TMDB Series, it won’t work over the .plexmatch File. This change still must be done over the Series Settings.

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