Doctor Who and Doctor Who (2005)

General Discussions
1

I have the entire classic series in a folder called Doctor Who and The 2005 series in a folder called Doctor Who (2005). Each episode is also correctly named. I once had this working correctly, but after a driver failure, I had to reload my plex server.

Now, all episodes appear as Doctor Who (2005), with some files of the classic series missing as they conflict with the 2005 series. I can find a way to split these into separate instances on the plex server. Anyone know how to do this. It would be great if you could rematch files based on folder name, but that doesn’t appear to be in plex’s functionality.

1 Like
2

you could try using the year for the classic series as well to differentiate and avoid Plex from confusing them:
TV Shows > Doctor Who (1963) > Season 01 > Doctor Who (1963) - S01E01.mkv referring to https://www.thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=76107&lid=7
TV Shows > Doctor Who (2005) > Season 01 > Doctor Who (2005) - S01E01.mkv referring to https://www.thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=78804&lid=7

3

Thanks, I will try that, although the classic series is huge and it will take a time to change all the filenames.

I have an update, I just changed the main folder of the classic series to Doctor Who (1963) and did a library update. It appears to have worked. Thanks

1 Like
4

you don’t have to do it all manually…
I know macOS Finder allows to rename multiple files by replacing a certain pattern… not sure about other OS’. If yours doesn’t allow that, you could go for e.g. FileBot which will batch-rename your files for you.

5

https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/254362/tv-series-name-matching-research
…in a ‘hail mary’ attempt to fix something in Plex DVR, Plex makes sweeping changes to the way Plex deals with TVDB. Plex decides it’s a ‘good idea’ to refer all calls for ‘Doctor Who’ (for instance) to the most recent version - of course, having no idea users were still trying to keep old Doctor Who episodes around… no idea… huh…

Since Plex changed the way Plex Accesses TVDB users can no longer simply use the name TVDB uses. Oh, no. Now we have ‘the new and improved’ TVDB interactions, wherein the user (you, me and everybody else that uses Plex) has to:

  1. go to TVDB and get the Year the original Doctor Who aired (that would be (1963), BTW) and inject that into the file name…
    or
  2. make Filebot get that (Year) and put it into the file name for every single TV Show Folder and TV Show Filename (yea, that’s about all Filebot can do with this ‘new and improved’ Plex change to the entire Plexiverse as we know it). It’s pretty easy, but still, the chances of your regular Plex User knowing this are about as good as the regular user knowing about moving the default location of Local Media Assets - if they want to use MP4 files - chances:
    Two (2):
  3. Slim
    and
  4. None.

But!..

Plex was nice enough, that after at least a year of this never-ending-pain-stick-application… Plex finally updates the instruction booklet:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/media-preparation/
Particularly:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220687-naming-series-season-based-tv-shows/
with a ‘Hot Tip’ section that reads:

Tip!: For identically-named remakes, include the year series folder name, e.g. “Battlestar Galactica (2003)” or “Dr. Who (2005)”.

There are two chances your standard, basic, everyday Plex user will even see those pages and they are:

  1. Slim
    and
  2. None
    (you probably saw that one coming)

What once was so easy (use the name TVDB uses)
has now been…
‘Improved’

Here’s the string to plug into Filebot to get those years injected in the right spot:
{ny} - {s00e00} - {t}
and if that’s not enough:

(always willing to help one of us hapless and victimized users)

If you’re allowing FileBot to create your complete structure - or doing it by hand:

A TV Show Library/
…Doctor Who (1963)/
…Season 01/
…Doctor Who (1963) - S01E01.xxx
or
…Doctor Who (1963) - S01E01 - Episode Name Optional.xxx <— that’s what my string does - as shown

More handy Filebot info at the two dedicated links permanently attached within my signature - subject to constant updating whenever Plex decides to ‘Improve’ something that was working just fine in order to fix something else they can’t get working…

Not too sure what they ‘Improved’ to break this - but we’ve been trying to find out since July 2017:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/279520/unable-to-delete-file-please-check-your-permissions