Doctor Who Classic 1963 naming

[ThePenguin]

I would be very grateful for your help please:-)
Can anyone tell me how to name multi part episodes for Classic Doctor Who so they appear as a complete story(one file). I have tried everything I can think of but nothing works. I can get them to appear as separate individual files but this does not look neat as a season will have many multi part episodes and many stories.
Thank you for your help.

[JuiceWSA]

https://forums.plex.tv/search?q=Doctor%20Who

Note:
After you use the search - find all ‘the answers’ - do that…
Then you’ll have to Fix Match anyway, 'cause Plex will fall flat on it’s face, unable to determine what year the show is - even after you tell it with a (YEAR) field.

In the end - the naming is determined by visiting TVDB and following the Media Preparation Section guidelines of Plex Support:
Particularly this area:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/your-media/naming-and-organizing-tv-shows/
… and continuing on from there

Note 2:
https://thetvdb.com/series/doctor-who

A TV Show Library/
.......Doctor Who (1963)/
........Season 01/
...........Doctor Who (1963) - S01E01 - An Unearthly Child (1).xxx
...........Doctor Who (1963) - S01E02 - The Cave of Skulls (2).xxx
...........and so on

Note 3:
https://thetvdb.com/series/doctor-who-2005

A TV Show Library/
.......Doctor Who (2005)/
........Season 01/
...........Doctor Who (2005) - S01E01 - Rose.xxx
...........Doctor Who (2005) - S01E02 - The End of the World.xxx
...........and so on

… and no, TVDB has already made up their mind - and there’s no changing it, or Plex. It is YOU who much conform, or change the agent to Personal Media and Hand edit.

Note 4:
You may try to abandon TVDB in favor of TMDB - but when you get there you find out it’s the same thing:

Doctor Who

FileBot can deal with those names in seconds - providing they haven’t been messed them up so bad not even FileBot knows what to do with them:

FileBot

Note 5:
You can join episodes together manually, in a slap-dash-hack <—the result being a slap-dash-hack:

[HowTo]: joining multi-part movies files with MKVtoolnix GUI

The purpose of this HowTo is to join videofiles, when a movie was ripped and split into two or more files. (This happens usually with very long movies [i.e. LOTR] or more often back in the day when we had Video CD or DIVX CDs) The ultimate goal is to have the movie back in one file, so there is no trouble in the various Plex clients which do not support multi-part files. The tool used is MKVtoolnixGUI it is freely available for all major PC operating systems. Therefore the container format …

You can even try to do a nicer job with something else (VideoReDo), but the end result is always the same - TVDB/TMDB or Hand Edit.

Note 6:
When you use TVDB, the way they want you to, the episodes come up in a row right where they’re supposed to in On Deck - so what difference does it make? <—said knowing full well I may be tar and feathered (again) for saying something dumb like that to a Dr. Who Fan (Tried, couldn’t get into it - I guess you had to be there - even the new ones make me wanna barf).

[BigWheel]

Yes he will need to do some custom work because he wants to do something custom. Either by combining the actual files like you mention above into a single file. or if he does not want to do that and just wants them treated as one file then they all need to be named the same except adding “part X” to the end.

Honestly i would combine them into a single actual file since long term it will just behave better for the actual streaming but if you want the first three episodes files to be as episode 1

Plex still grabs metadata from the online sources if not embeddded in files so you will have to deal with manually editing metadata as you see fit.

I just made these test files a minute ago and grabs the online data for episode 1 fine but it is all three episodes.

[ThePenguin]

Hey thank you both for your comments, much appreciated. I have tried what you suggested by naming each part of a storyline as part 1, part 2…
But when you add the next storyline and name the parts, Plex doesn’t like it and lists the next storyline as part 2 of the first storyline as (2).

[BigWheel]

@ThePenguin

Plex doesn’t like it and lists the next storyline as part 2 of the first storyline as (2

Has nothing to do with what Plex likes or doesn’t like, it’s a computer program and has no feelings about it. Season 1 Episode 2 from the online sources is part two of the first storyline so that is what it shows so if you name a file S01E02 that is the info it will grab for it. It can’t change the data from the online sources. If you don’t want to use online sources then you need to edit it all yourself or use embedded metadata which you also need to edit yourself

[JuiceWSA]

@BigWheel

so if you name a file S01E02 that is the info it will grab for it.

You could, however, name it S01E04 to gather (part of) the correct data… and so on.

In the end it’s more of a PITA than it is to just deal with TVDB’s way. From On Deck you just won’t notice it - they play one after the other.

I smell tar…

[ThePenguin]

Hi, l got it to work thanks to both your inputs. Much appreciated. This is what worked for me.

As you say the key is tvdb episode numbering.
The next thing is that the part number has to go at the end.
If it’s a multi partner, name the episode number the same, making sure the part number is at the end, and you increment the part number for each part.
Get the first episode number of the next storyline. Name all multipart episodes with the first episode number of the new storyline, only changing the part number at the end for each part of the complete story line.
I may have not explained it well so l enclose some photos.
This is my first go with Plex and Doctor Who naming, so l will still play around with it as l want to keep the titles in the filename just for completeness.
Once again thank you both for your help, you are stars!