Server Version#:1.19.1.2701
Player Version#:Plex for Android
All of my data (TV shows and Movies) is stored on my computer and played to my Sony Bravia TV which has the Plex App. I do not use any on-line or streaming services. This is only a home use system. I have all the files and metadata in the database/computer I use for JRIver Media Center.
problem:
I created a new Library under “TV Shows” for the purpose of separating my TV shows from my Documentaries/History collections.
The standard Plex TV Shows works as expected. All my TV series are listed and when a Season is opened, the episode Names appear.
The new library called “Documentaries-History”, also shows all the shows but when you open a season, the episode name does not show. There is just a date in that spot. Clickign on the episode’s info button shows the file path with the correct episode name.
The file structure (file naming) is the same for the TV Shows and the Documentaries, so why wont the episode names display?
It looks like the show didn’t match in the first place. You can see this in the library view and the edit dialog where the show is listed as “1916 the Irish Rebellion”
I see two suspicious information which could cause that kind of hiccup:
your folder structure skips the Season XX level – this should however not throw matching off entirely
you haven’t set a language for the library… I suspect Plex searches TheTVDB for shows named 1916 The Irish Rebellion with a language code TheTVDB.com cannot deal with (or has no metadata for).
My money is currently on #2. That being said… how did you even get to the point where you can select None as a language? That option isn’t even showing for me…
When I select “Personal Media Shows” for Agent, there is no Language selection (it shows None). I tried with “Personal Media Shows”, and with “The TVDB” as the agent. No difference. I am currently setup with Agent as “The TVDB” - but I don’t know why it would matter. I don’t need/want any metadata from internet - I just want the episode name to display.
**The episode Name is in the file name. have this structure [Series name - SxxExx - Episode name]. That works fine for the “TV Shows” library.
This new library “Documentaries - History” is set up the same as TV Shows (same file naming structure, just a different parent folder), so why doesn’t Plex use the episode name that is in the file name?
The episode name is unfortunately not taken from the file name in Plex. It is downloaded from TheTVDB/TMDB for your regular tv shows.
If you disable the metadata download, by using ‘Personal Media Shows’, then Plex cannot fetch the episode name.
The only chance you have is to use the mp4/m4v file container for your videos, which allows you to put the episode’s title into the file itself, into the embedded meta tag ‘Title’.
There are still quite a few documentaries listed on TheTVDB. The challenge is to find them, because they frequently get retitled when aired on different networks.
You can find quite a lot listed under ‘BBC Docu’, ‘Cosmos’, ‘National Geographic’, and the like.
If you find them, you can use ‘Match’ to connect your files to these metadata sources manually, to have at least automatic metadata download for a few select shows.
Thanks. That explains why I can’t get Episode Name from the “file name”.
I should at least be able to get the metadata (episode names) for TV series like “Nature” or “NOVA”. Those series are available at TVDB.
Note that I have all that metadata already collected in my JRiver Media Center program (JRiver saves the data as a “sidecar” file) so I know it is available. The reason I’m using Plex and not JRiver now is because JRiver software requires a computer at each TV and with Plex I can just use the Sony TV’s built-in Plex app. So if I can get this to work, it is easier than using JRiver.
I can manually edit each series-episode and add the episode name for those series (like the 1916 Irish Rebellion) when there are just a couple of episodes. But it would be very difficult on a long running series like nature or NOVA where there are years of episodes.
I hope Plex will scrape the metadata for these series.
Thanks for the link to how to use the “match feature”. i was about to ask how to do that.
I confirmed that both TVDB and IMdB both have correct info for the series “NOVA”. I didn’t check all the other series, but I think it will be available since that metadata was originally collected from those sources when the JRiver program scraped the data.
I’ll look into the “match feature” now.
Any ideas as to why the data was not already found by Plex?
I have agent set to TVDB. I ran the refresh all metadata, but nothing changed (no episode name).
The “match feature” is working. Thanks!
I have now corrected the missing episode names for NOVA series and Nature series. Doing the remaining series now.
Because you have set the default metadata agent of this library to ‘Personal Media Shows’, which means “Plex, don’t go out on the internet and try to find metadata”.
