I have multiple sources for TV Shows spread out across many different drives.
Many of the drives are completely used up and have no free space so I have moved stuff around.
For example, I have 7 seasons of "The Universe" spread out across 7 different drives.
In Plex you can NOT view all 7 seasons at the same time since it sees it as 7 different shows because of the source location. Yuck!
I should simply be able to click on the show "The Universe" and see all 7 seasons in that 1 location.
XMBC and most other media servers support this. So PLEX please add support as well.
After all it's just how the data is stored in the DATABASE. So basically just ignore the path and store by name of the TV Show.
Of course, the user should still be able to view by path as well.
The point is simply clicking on a TV Show should show you all the episodes for that show no matter where they are located.
That's what I expected the first time and I am sure most users do as well. You know?
Who cares were the files are stored. The end user (viewer) should not have to worry about that at all.
Hope I explained this enough. If not, someone please do a better job
Thanks,
Will
PS: Even nicer would be able to manually combine sources into 1. For example, I have Documentaries sources. Would be nice if I could combine them down to just 1 Documentaries source.
I have Movies in 2 different folders. When I made my movie library, I added both folders as sources, and they're now properly mixed together into one big library. Does it work differently with TV shows?
That would be a lot of work since each show would have to have its own source. Few hundred shows. Another server I'm working on has thousands.
But yes it works after some work. Just tested with Blue Bloods spread out across 3 sources.
First off it got the show all wrong. Thought it was Game of Thrones for some crazy reason even though I am using nfo files for everything.
So after manually fixing everything then yes it shows up as 1 source.
But that's a lot of manual work to get it working instead of just being smart and auto combining shows as I expect and how other media servers like XBMC function.
My main system (Ubuntu 14.04 Server) is now at 75 TB Hardware Raid 5. :)
Just my desktop computer alone has 8TB. Not counting any USB attached drives either.
So yes I get it.
Any how, files are spread out because I was using Boxee Box before and had spread out for performance reasons. Too big of a share and it would lag big time. That and scanning would take forever (hours).
Any how, I have everything organized like I want it already.
Was just hoping Plex was smart enough to not count duplicates and simply see a show as simply that as a show.
Simple fact is the user should not have to care about were files are stored to see all episodes of a show.
I cant be the only one who just drops files were ever I fell like it. :P ha!
1 good reason why shows are in different places is because I have a fast SSD Raid 0 used just for new shows. Once a few weeks go by or all watched they get moved to the Raid 5 Archive mentioned above.
Yes I could manually move everything around but that's a real pain in the ass and like I've mentioned other like mind software already supports this out of the box.
Cant imagine it wold be too difficult to fix. Simply search database for "duplicate" shows by name and combine them as 1 virtual source.
Hmm. I just did a test and it does what I think you want. I picked one of my kids web series shows because the files are small. I could have done it differently but wanted to test using actual files.
C:\TV Shows - Special
- Ever After High
-- Specials
--- 3 episodes.
F:\TV Shows - Season 1
- Ever After High
-- Season 01
--- 11 episode files
G:\TV Shows - Season 2
- Ever After High
-- Season 02
--- 17 episodes
I added all 3 folders to a TV Series library and it shows as 1 show with 3 seasons.
I then tested splitting up the episodes
F:\TV Shows - Even
- Ever After High
-- Season 01
--- even episode only
-- Season 02
--- even episodes
-- Specials
--- even episodes
G:\TV Shows - Odd
[you get the idea]
And again they all show up as 1 show with 3 seasons and every episode is included.
Right, that's if you go through and manually setup everything like you did.
Now imagine having to do that for hundreds of shows. Yuck!
Thus, it needs to be smart enough and do it automatically for the user.
Easy way to look at it....
User has a Clean database.. User adds a show, say Blue Bloods. The next year user adds Blue Bloods again but at a different location.
Plex is now smart enough to realize when the second blue bloods is added the show already exists in the database so it simply adds the second location to the first. Saves the user having to do it manually.
Ok. I just removed all my folder structure and just added the first 10 episodes of season 1 for 2 different shows in it.
C:\Folder 1\Ever After High -S01E01 ... S01E10
C:\Folder 1\Pokemon - S01E01 ... S01E10
New TV show library, pointed at C:\Folder 1
2 Show are populated and each has a Season 1 heading and the episodes show in each. New year and new folder. 1 Episode only for each show.
E:\Folder 2\Ever After High - S02E01
E:\Folder 2\Pokemon - S02E01
I just modify the library to add a link to the new folder, E:\Folder 2. PMS updates my shows to now have Season 2 with 1 episode each for each show.
So, I'm still not sure what you are looking for in terms of a feature. The only thing I had to do manually was point to E:\Folder 2. Yo have to at least do that part or Plex won't know where to look. Or are you saying Plex should automatically scan all drives and all folders for your files.
I think it would be helpful if war59312 would give full path examples, including the actual folder and files names, of some shows that are showing the issue described. As long as the shows are named correctly, Plex should be grouping shows from different drives just fine.
See 3 separate results for the same show. Hell even one of the posters is different and Season 5 is missing 1. Fixed both manually a second ago.
So what I'd like have happen is..
When I do the search for Blue Bloods it only shows 1 search result and when I click on that 1 search result it shows all the seasons and episodes for that 1 search result of Blue Bloods.
In other words, the results should be combined into 1 show.
You have your different drives specified as different libraries. Plex cannot combine different libraries. Just use i library and add the folder to the source list.
What MovieFan said: if you have one TV Shows section and you point it at each of the "TV Shows (HD)" folders, it should combine all applicable episodes into one show.
FYI, Plex doesn't pick up your .nfo or .tbn files, it just works from the folder/file names per TheTVDB and pulls metadata on its own.
How is the nfo file created. If it is XBMC style there is an XBMC agent you can use that will read the nfo file instead of scraping it from the internet. I don't use it so I can't provide details, but I know there is one.
What MovieFan said: if you have one TV Shows section and you point it at each of the "TV Shows (HD)" folders, it should combine all applicable episodes into one show.
But of course Blue Bloods is still listed 4 times instead of being combined. But at least bad data issue is solved. Since I use nfo files for everything.
So yea not seeing that behavior as described.
I created a new "library" and added all 4 "Folders" of Blue Bloods.
When I click on that new Library it shows all 4 separate Blue Bloods folders. So yea not seeing the combined behavior at all.
i have tvshows splitted between a time capsule and a usb disk, just added the 2 drives to the one and only tv show library , and everything shows up together like files were all in the same location. You're probably creating one library per disk location, and that's the wrong way to do what you're trying to achieve
Without xbmc agent Plex does NOT correctly identify the files. Keeps thinking they are game of thrones from some crazy reason.
Only happens with more than 1 path. Plex will correctly identify the files if 1 path.
And they are named correctly. See above posts.
It's simply not working like I'd expect. Should never see a show listed twice.Period. Really that simple. Should not matter how the user configures it.
As stated above, I created 1 library. Period. And added all 4 paths to it and when I browse that library it shows 4 Blue Bloods. It's NOT 1 library per disk.
Got bored, completed deleted Plex and config files and all. Reinstalled latest plex pass build and same problem. So then tried latest pub build last night and same problem. So not a config issue either.
