Good practice for renaming files

General Discussions
1

Hello,

I have a question regarding renaming of video file and subtitle.
Here is a concrete example:
Once I download a TV show it goes into the standard fodler structure (in my example Once Upon a Time (2011)/Season 6/)

  1. The video file is not renamed on purpose in order to have “Sub Zero” get the most appropriate subtitle file

  2. Once the subtitle is downloaded I have the following situation in my folder
    Once.Upon.a.Time.S06E12.HDTV.x264-SVA.mkv
    Once.Upon.a.Time.S06E12.HDTV.x264-SVA.eng.srt

  3. I have a script that renames the video and subtitle file (once srt is detected), which will give me the following in the renamed content
    Once Upon a Time (2011) - S06E12 - Murder Most Foul.eng.srt
    Once Upon a Time (2011) - S06E12 - Murder Most Foul.mkv

Now my problem is regarding the subtitle

  • at step 2, when I go into plex I have only 1 subtitle to choose for which is OK and video + subtitle plays without any problem
  • at step 3, when I go into plex I have 2 subtitles (with the same name “English - SRT External”) to choose from which is causes issues.
    Because if I select the wrong one, then the file won’t play and I will have an error message “There was a problem playing this item” (which, from what I saw in the logs is because it is looking for the old name of subtitle), of course, if I select the correct/other line it works.

For the video it works fine, I can play it after step 2 or 3 without subtitle no issue

My insights:

  • I realized that if I force a refresh on the tv show (or even the episode itself), then the “old” subtitle disappears and I am back with only one subtitle to choose from in the select --> which is great
  • I tried to activate " Run a partial scan when changes are detected" and/or “Update Library Periodically” but this didn’t change anything
  • My only way currently to fix this is to force the refresh manually or to stop to rename my files.

So my question is the following, are there any best practices to rename subtitles (or is this a bug from plex, which I doubt)?

Thank you!
David

2

One thing just fyi, I have my tv shows named for plex in my tv shows folder .
e.g. Once Upon a Time (2011) - 3x18 - Bleeding Through.mp4 is how mine look.
Filebot and subzero have no problem with that (plex) format

3

@spikemixture said:
One thing just fyi, I have my tv shows named for plex in my tv shows folder .
e.g. Once Upon a Time (2011) - 3x18 - Bleeding Through.mp4 is how mine look.
Filebot and subzero have no problem with that (plex) format

Hey,

So you mean that you do rename your files (tv show + subtitle) after subzero fetches the subtitle and you don’t have duplicates subtitles?

Thanks

4

It appears that your Plex Server is thinking that the renamed files are just off-line. Have you tried to manually empty the trash to see if the “old” “missing” subtitles go away?

Ideally, you should rename the files before placing them into your Plex media folders, before Plex sees them and scans them.

5

You could run them through the scripts I have in the link in my sig. This will pull the subtitles from the files if they are present or download them for you as well as convert them for you to the best Plex format. All settings are configurable.

I only mention this because it sounds like you are trying to re-invent scripts already available and tested.

Carlo

6

@thedavix said:

@spikemixture said:
One thing just fyi, I have my tv shows named for plex in my tv shows folder .
e.g. Once Upon a Time (2011) - 3x18 - Bleeding Through.mp4 is how mine look.
Filebot and subzero have no problem with that (plex) format

Hey,

So you mean that you do rename your files (tv show + subtitle) after subzero fetches the subtitle and you don’t have duplicates subtitles?

Thanks

No mine are renamed Before the subtitle search and it finds them

7

Thanks for your replies guys.

The trash deleted manually didn’t work unfortunately.

I’ll try to apply what you said renaming before placing the files (was doing this before but did always had good matches with the subs).

Thanks again!

8

Remember the subtitles u r downloading have to match the exact show version. (length)(bitrate)

There might be 100’s of versions of the latest show online immediately after it has been shown on TV.
Many with slightly different lengths.
Downloading subtitles seperately makes the chance of getting the one that matches your show difficult.

MKV remuxed by mcebuddy takes out the SRT file (if there is one) and obviously has no syncing issue!

I think!