Episodes being categorized incorrectly

General Discussions
1

So, I have been a Plex user since 2013 and have loved every bit of it! I have never had an issue that I wasn’t able to hash out with a little research, but this latest issue is puzzling me!

I use Plex in conjunction with Sickbeard and SABnzb. For the longest time, my episodes would download and be categorized into Plex with no problems. Rarely did I have any naming issues. It always did a great job of filing everything where it should be. However, over the last couple of months it has routinely places episodes under one show. For a while, nearly every episode that was downloaded would be categorized under Meat Eater. Which was very frustrating. Now that I added Lone Star Law to my library, episodes are starting to be incorrectly placed under that show. What is also strange is that some shows are added to my library just fine.

I discovered that I could do the “Plex Dance” and remove the files from my server HD, refresh my library, then add the files back and they would be categorized correctly. So, there is a work around…but it is a tedious task to have to do that all the time. Is there some setting or something that has recently changed that I am missing? It seems odd to me that I can remove the files from the server HD, refresh my library, and add the files back and everything be perfect, without ever having to fix any naming issues or other problems with the episode files themselves.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

2

Would you please show us what your current naming is and give a couple examples (actual file names as you have them) so we can take a look?

3

The way they are named varies at times, but one file that was categorized incorrectly was named Shark.Tank.S08E16.720p.HDTV.X264.

Again, I have never had naming issues in the past and haven’t changed anything in the way I am working with the files. It seems strange that it will categorize them wrong, but simply removing the file from the server HD, refreshing the library and putting the file back on the HD results in correct categorization. I am not changing any file names or altering the files at all, so why would it categorize the wrong initially, but correctly after doing “the dance”?

4

@Mffl84 said:
The way they are named varies at times, but one file that was categorized incorrectly was named Shark.Tank.S08E16.720p.HDTV.X264.

Again, I have never had naming issues in the past and haven’t changed anything in the way I am working with the files. It seems strange that it will categorize them wrong, but simply removing the file from the server HD, refreshing the library and putting the file back on the HD results in correct categorization. I am not changing any file names or altering the files at all, so why would it categorize the wrong initially, but correctly after doing “the dance”?

If you are violating the guidelines then your results are unpredictable. Just because it did work and just because it works from time to time does not mean that it will always work All it means is that Plex actually does a pretty good job matching badly named files from time to time and your naming is somehow right on the edge of what Plex can make a good guess about. But Plex is guessing and it is better to try to name things so that Plex knows.

Try this it WILL work:

TV Shows <— The library points here (Can be any name you want)
---------Shark Tank <— This folder holds the season folders
------------------Season 01 <— This folder holds all the episodes for season 01
-------------------------Shark Tank - s01e01.ext
-------------------------Shark Tank - s01e02.ext
-------------------------And so on for the rest of season 01
…
------------------Season 08 <— This folder holds all the episodes for season 08
-------------------------Shark Tank - s08e01.ext
…
-------------------------Shark Tank - s08e18.ext
-------------------------And so on for the rest of season 08

Note: You “may” need the date first aired in parenthesis as part of the root folder name. ie
SharkTank (Date)
I do not know for sure as I do not have that series. Most work fine without the date but the date is needed by some to help Plex tell similarly named series apart.

https://plexapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200220687-Naming-Series-Based-TV-Shows

You can do as you please but, if you want Plex to work correctly, you need to adhere to Plex’s naming and structure guidelines.

There are tools (FileBot [with the “plex” format string] for one) that make fixing problems with names and structure VERY easy.

To me it is MUCH easier to conform to Plex’s desires than it is to fight them and eventually fail.

5

Ok so, if my naming is the issue, why does it categorize the show correctly after removing the file from the server HD, refreshing the library, then adding the file back with the same bad naming structure?

That tells me it has nothing to do with the naming structure.

6

It’s a reflex. It is always the user who is blamed for not playing after the rules with names.

@Elijah_Baley : Plex DID recognize his episodes before, so the software had this feature (and does not just randomly guess) and it does so after Plex dancing.

Therefore, the behaviour of Plex not being able to handle it when adding things must have a different reason, maybe different mechanism within the “guessing method” that are used in different scenarios.
If this is true, then these should be made the same and not the user be blamed…

7

@rossinior said:
It’s a reflex. It is always the user who is blamed for not playing after the rules with names.

@Elijah_Baley : Plex DID recognize his episodes before, so the software had this feature (and does not just randomly guess) and it does so after Plex dancing.

Therefore, the behaviour of Plex not being able to handle it when adding things must have a different reason, maybe different mechanism within the “guessing method” that are used in different scenarios.
If this is true, then these should be made the same and not the user be blamed…

You can say that “the software had this feature” but that would be incorrect. It is like claiming that my non-working clock has this feature of being right twice a day. Simply put, if you don’t follow the rules, Plex cannot guarantee the results.

8

@Mffl84 said:
Ok so, if my naming is the issue, why does it categorize the show correctly after removing the file from the server HD, refreshing the library, then adding the file back with the same bad naming structure?

That tells me it has nothing to do with the naming structure.

There are a number of reasons why the behavior can change from an initial scan to a later one. If the naming is on the edge of acceptable where it is almost matched then the, what is surely complex, parsing algorithm could produce a hit on initial scan where it missed or mismatches on a rescan. The call or the entry point are quite probably different.

What I always fail to understand is the resistance to following the guidelines. They make decent sense and, most important, they almost always work.

The parsing and matching take place behind the scenes and, since it relies on pretty dynamic external databases and Plex sometime get blindsided by minor changes, it is good to make it as easy as possible and Plex is designed to handle a particular naming method. If the naming is different than what is expected a series of sub-functions must be called to try to correct the unexpected.

It just seems to me to make no sense to not follow the guides and make it as easy as possible for Plex to get a good match.

The “fault” does not matter what matters is proper operation and that can be more assured by following the guidelines. Also it is easier for Plex to get a good match if the file names are at least close to what is expected.

My suggestion is to use FieBot or something like it to fix the naming and structure and then quit wasting your time and go back to enjoying your media.

9

@Elijah_Baley :
Because you are not alone in the wild. Maybe there are multiple solutions out there that are used concurrently. Maybe a different software is doing some auto-naming, maybe it is just hard for people to rename hundreds or thousands of files and folders (even with tools). Maybe people want software to be flexible, not software wanting people to be flexible. Maybe they don’t like the rules because of different approaches to this. snip hundreds of other reasons snip

What makes me really sad: You are blatantly CLAIMING that it is the naming scheme. You are not trying to find out why things sometimes work and other times don’t. This is really not the way it should be. “Go and do it my way or leave me alone” is what you are really constantly telling people.

In my case, it is “Die Hard 4” (or whatever its English title really is) that gets a duplicate whenever I forget to change the file name of a random other movie with a complete other PATH containing a complete different title and year and that file name contains a 4 and looks similar to that used in Die Hard 4. It is not that I get an easy notice of that because it is just GONE (as in the scenario of the poor other guy). I have to search for duplicates to even notice my “failure to behave correctly”. If I just delete the “4” in the file name and Plex dance with it, then it is correctly identified.

Maybe if you invest some time and effort, you would find out that the software can be amended to get even better than it is.

Maybe you can LEARN something from them… HOW they are naming things and WHY they are naming them that way and get the software to take care of that instead of getting people to work the software’s way.

Tell my wife that she should use a tool to rename files… man, she would not even know what you are talking about and she would love at you for making such ridiculous, tech-fancy suggestions. She would just ask: “Why does your software not properly interprete this?” … My wife is not stupid, she simply does not want to invest any more time than necessary in this. And it is generally a good idea to think twice about what my wife is telling you and then just say “yes, madam” and do it… :wink: If you would obey my wife’s way of thinking, you would definitely have a better solution to this (probably a mechanism footprinting the movie itself and magically identifying them whatever they are named). Greetings from her… really, she is sitting next to me, having much fun.

BTW: “What I always fail to understand is the resistance to following the guidelines.”
… is something I do not ever want to hear from anyone who is selling software or helping others in doing so.

Cheers

10

Given the example name the OP has listed, it would appear to be a naming convention issue as has already been mentioned. https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200220687-Naming-Series-Season-Based-TV-Shows is the guidelines. (This was already linked to the OP, but here it is again, in any case.)

Anytime you don’t follow these guidelines it’s a crap shoot whether it works or not.

Those that are advising it’s something else, well… not sure what to say here. Follow the conventions, things work. Don’t and take a gamble anything is going to work for you at all. The fact it HAS worked for you for so long is just pure luck. Use the strange hashes you get with downloads and you are taking a risk that it is going to break sooner or later. In this case later. But it broke…

There are so many tools available to do this for you already, INCLUDING SickBeard, which can be set up to do the naming conventions automatically as part of the move process. It renames the file to the right name, moves it to the proper folders and Plex automatically detects the new media and correctly adds it. Simple, pain free and completely automatic. You can even use SickBeard/SickRage/Sonarr/FileBot to do this for you for everything that doesn’t already fit the suggested naming conventions. (This MIGHT reset your watched status, though. I haven’t done this in literally years, so I don’t remember…) Renaming for me is an automatic process, never seen and always done.

Plex’s naming conventions WORK. The only exceptions I have ever found in over 30K episodes has been things like Doctor Who (1963) and Doctor Who (2005) or shows like The Flash and The Flash (2014) In every case there have been problems it’s due to the series name being reused for another series years later. (Battle Star Galactica is another example.)

What I can’t figure out is the support document I linked to above has been on Plex’s support site for longer than I been here and people still fight it tooth and nail.

11

@rossinior You are not helping the OP. Please stop responding in this tread. Start your own thread and list your complaints there.

12

As a point of order here…

Putting punctuation in the middle of the actual series name is not recommended and definitely not part of the naming convention. Having a ‘clean’ name is always best and most predictable.

In this instance, the series name is “Shark Tank” Shark Tank - TheTVDB.com

It is perfectly valid to use Shark Tank.S01E01.optional title here.ext while Shark.Tank.S01E01.optional.title.here.ext is not.

The overuse of punctuation actually confuses the scanner. Yes, it will find the file. Yes it will initially add the file. If you’re lucky, it will eventually come up with a metadata score value > 50% likelihood and retrieve metadata. If it cannot achieve a score > 50%, the file will be dropped from the library listing as ‘unmatched’.

While not a Sabnzb user, I do use Sonarr and FileBot. The FileBot template in use is: /syno/tv/{n}/Season {s.pad(2)}/{n}.{s00e00}.{t}

{n} is the name as returned from thetvdb.com. {s.pad(2)} is the season number with leading 0 to pad to 2 digits. {s00e00} is the obvious season-episode spec. {t} is the title of the episode as published.

This would produce:

Shark Tank/
  Season 01/
   Shark Tank.S01E01.Pilot.ext

Additionally, Sonarr performs the naming lookup for you and creates output in this format. No additional effort is needed.

Sonarr settings look like this.

13

@ChuckPA
Thank you for trying to explain the punctuation “situation”. Let me cite you:

It is perfectly valid to use Shark Tank.S01E01.optional title here.ext while Shark.Tank.S01E01.optional.title.here.ext is not.

Short question: any insights on WHY?

The overuse of punctuation actually confuses the scanner.

Erm… it does not confuse it after Plex Dance in the original “problematic” scenario.
I am the programmer of presentation management Software, and we need to know and interprete about filenames a lot since we “guess” session and speaker names, talk ids and more stuff from it to spare customers from the need to identify their prsentation slots manually.
I bet Plex is doing a lot to recognize file names as well as folder names. And it is really appreciated.
But I don’t really see the need for not dropping punctuation characters from search phrases and search results altogether (or at least making them separate searches if no-punctuation-results do not produce results).

In this forum, you encounter the same “problems” with users over and over again. My reflex would be: h*ll, let’s find a way to go around this. Maybe it takes a week or month of intense testing to find it. But it takes a lot more effort to fight for these rules anytime some user did not get it right. Maybe you even find a movie/episode or a dozen which is not found because of some dot is missing. But you do not need to force anybody else to rename their files.

Yes, it will find the file. Yes it will initially add the file.
If you’re lucky, it will eventually come up with a metadata score value > 50% likelihood and retrieve metadata.
If it cannot achieve a score > 50%, the file will be dropped from the library listing as ‘unmatched’.

If it does not find something with a score of more than 50%, why not trying again by searching with punctuation removed by the search routine?
I don’t get it…

And why is it finding the SAME names after Plex Dancing… please re-read the original post. Voodoo?

And to the guy who suggested to stop posting to this thread. Thank you for your kind suggestion. Dito.
If the Software would be amended, the guy’s problem would be gone as well as thousands of other person’s problems as well. And only a couple of guys would need to do something, not thousands… let software do the work…

Or maybe you want to tell your customers why Software CANNOT take care of that problem. Do not defend the fact, that is isn’t currently taking care of it. :wink:

14

It is not that I just refuse to follow the naming guidelines. I had my system set up where it was completely automated and I didn’t have to touch it. It was wonderful, and it worked flawlessly for over 3 years. To say it was “luck” that the system categorized them correctly for over 3 years is nonsense, I’m sorry.

Since it is clearly my fault though, and it couldn’t possibly be something else, I’ll do some further digging and research and see if there are some ways to improve my system in order for it to work like it did before.

15

@Mffl84 said:
It is not that I just refuse to follow the naming guidelines. I had my system set up where it was completely automated and I didn’t have to touch it. It was wonderful, and it worked flawlessly for over 3 years. To say it was “luck” that the system categorized them correctly for over 3 years is nonsense, I’m sorry.

Since it is clearly my fault though, and it couldn’t possibly be something else, I’ll do some further digging and research and see if there are some ways to improve my system in order for it to work like it did before.

You are already using one of the best renaming tools made, to rename your episodes automatically with a Plex Friendly naming convention. (SickBeard you said, right?) And you have already been shown the correct edits for using this powerful tool to accomplish that naming convention within the app. (@ChuckPA already gave it to you a few posts up.) I use Sonarr now and the naming schema for it is this: {Series Title} - S{season:00}E{episode:00} - {Episode Title} [{Quality Full}] which gives a name like this: /Gold Rush/Season 7/Gold Rush - S07E18 - Miners vs. Beavers [WEBDL-1080p].mp4 every time, all the time. Leverage the app to make the correct naming for you and never mess with it again. And never worry about it again either.

One-Offs are going to happen. (Dark Shadows with 1.2K+ episodes is one that comes to mind right off. File names and such aren’t anywhere near episode names, and require you to listen to the first 2 minutes of EACH and EVERY episode and match that text against a WIKI to make sure you get it right.) But you can reduce the on-offs dramatically with consistent (and Plex Friendly) naming conventions with your search/download apps.

16

@rossinior said:
HOW they are naming things and WHY they are naming them that way and get the software to take care of that instead of getting people to work the software’s way.

This is really simple to understand. XBMC and Kodi both were designed by folks that downloaded 90% of their content and the naming scema (convention) comes from that environment. Most of the stuff downloaded is going to be something along the lines the OP has for his file names, and as such, those apps are designed from the get go to make them match correctly. (Or at least more often.)

Plex is more about content you have legal rights to. You own the DVD or BR, and ripped it yourself. (At least in theory.) Since the intent has been to keep things a bit more “legal” support for the more risqué` file names have been left out of what Plex is.

It comes down to keeping things “kosher” if you will. If your file names are blatantly a download schema, then it’s obvious you ripped it off. If the file names follow an organized naming convention then it’s not so obvious.

You aren’t happy about this, then fine… Make a Feature Request to have download names included as a “proper” naming convention. In 3 or 4 years, it MIGHT make it into the development queue IF it has enough support from the rest of community. (And I might even back it, if it’s in one of the top 10, by then… But we both know how you feel about that in any case, don’t we?)

And when it comes to Die Hard 4… How do you have your media named? Some cryptic download hash? Are you following a download convention with your naming? Or are you following a Plex Friendly naming convention? Should someone link you to the Plex Friendly convention for movies, or can you find this on your own now?

EDIT: As has been pointed out to me by another forum member the CORRECT name for Die Hard 4 is: Die Hard: Live Free or Die Hard so to name the file correctly you are going to need to do something like this: Die Hard Live Free or Die Hard (2007)[quality].ext to get it matched up right. If you aren’t naming something along these lines, then it’s going to be a failure, in any case. (And make sure you use proper naming conventions for your other “4” movies, too!)

17

@rossinior

Per:

“It is perfectly valid to use Shark Tank.S01E01.optional title here.ext while Shark.Tank.S01E01.optional.title.here.ext is not.”
Short question: any insights on WHY?

The parser, in order to deal with unicode, is a regex series and must be locale and language sensitive. Were the matter confined to ASCII, it would be a FSM and game-over. There would be no issue. Don’t forget, localized names (e.g. UK vs US as a trivial case) must also be handled.

I hope this answers the question.

18

Gentleman, thank you for being productive…

All my movie files that get ripped from old sources are not using Plex friendly file names. They are usng Plex friendly FOLDER names though.

There is an automated procedure that creates one or more files called "movie"xy.ext
If it is just one file, it gets renamed to “movie.ext” (literally, not the movie’s Name, but the string “movie”). If it is - for any reason - more than one file, it justs adds a number to the individual files.
This has been working for YEARS without Plex and is really my personal standard.

I do not have a long history using Plex. Plex is ADD-ON to me (a very well liked one).
I do have a scripting environment which is working fine for my needs.

And - Plex is WORKING like a charme for almost all movies. I rarely have Problems at all - with the exception of “movie4.ext” files (it is not the same with “movie3.ext” or below, only with numbers 4 or higher.

I can totally accept that your rules are your rules (yours, not mine). Please accept that these rules are not good or convenient for everyone. And as a software Provider, it should be one of your goals to have a look at it and see if there’s a way to make even more People happy. Last words from myself about that.

@ChuckPA I can understand that these naming routines can get quite complex. Mine (for presenation management purposes) is quite complex in itself. I also had a hard time to differentiate until I learned that I get the best results when using reduction on both ends. When dealing with localized family names and talk titles which I need to compare with a file name or folder name or both, I dramatically boost accuracy of search results in converting all terms to a reduced charset and use almost all non Alphabet (Special Alphabet characters (like é) no included, These just get replaced to their ASCII variants according to complex tables) as white space. I really was surprised how accurate these results become, if you double check then and count for language dependant special alphabet characters (just as an example, for German ä or Ä - Count “ä”, “Ä”, “ae” and “AE” or “Ae” or “a[non-e]” … (you get it). You definitely need to try and run a few thousand tests and have a look at the numbers, but These measures are working almost flawlessly and you totally get rid of white space problems also. When searching in talk titles, we even reduce a long list of white space surrounded grammatical articles on both sides. I bet you are doing something similar. My company is using that to auto-magically find presentation slots for files or folders thrown at our software. Of course, there was nobody telling us… oh, please do that. We just wanted the very best results we could possibly have in identifying speakers and their talks without the need of anybody to do something whenever possible (reducing costs). In your case, your clients are the ones that have those “costs” (ie. time).

Therefore, the “dot” problem really should not be one… but hey, who am I to say that :wink:

Greetings

Ah, and whoever asked if I can find the naming conventions by myself… did so a Long time ago. No need for your “help”, thank you.

19

@rossinior said:
Gentleman, thank you for being productive…

All my movie files that get ripped from old sources are not using Plex friendly file names. They are usng Plex friendly FOLDER names though.

There is an automated procedure that creates one or more files called "movie"xy.ext
If it is just one file, it gets renamed to “movie.ext” (literally, not the movie’s Name, but the string “movie”). If it is - for any reason - more than one file, it justs adds a number to the individual files.
This has been working for YEARS without Plex and is really my personal standard.

You just diagnosed your own problem, then. So it would seem that you can’t find the Naming Conventions for movies, or you wouldn’t be having this issue. Here it is: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200381023-Naming-Movie-files As soon as your naming convention falls in line with the Plex Team’s recommended conventions your issues with “4” movies will go away. Keep what you have now, you are likely to continue to have problems.

Your choice. Do it like you are and have to manually correct things, or do it as Plex recommends and everything works well the first time around.

20

@“MikeG6.5” How often do you want to tell me that again and again and again and again and again? Thank you, I don’t Need your comments on that.