Server Version#: 4.57.4
Player Version#: 1.31.1.2262-74fdc6b7
After trying to get PLEX to recognize and properly sort Star Trek TV shows WITHOUT mixing them up, leaving episodes out or not displaying at all, while following guides and trying to include a plethora of hints and suggestions from a variety of different sources, I FINALLY managed to get it working with none of the above mentioned derps happening.
Apparently, at least in my case, PLEX mostly does NOT like having to deal with multiple shows sharing the name of the show itself in the filename or folder. One show is totally fine, but as soon as I added a second one which included “Star Trek xxxxx” in the filename, PLEX erraneously started mixing them up. Episodes from TOS showed up in VOY, DS9, TNG or somewhere unpredictable or weren’t recognized at all.
So here’s what my folder/file structure looks like:
The main folder “Serien” hosts all my shows. Inside is a subfolder called “Star Trek” which hosts all Star Trek shows. This one wasn’t indexed automatically, so I had to manually add the folder for PLEX to recognize it properly
Serien\Star Trek
\Deep Space 9
\Season x (No leading zeros in any season folder for any show!)
\Deep Space 9 - SxxExx - Episode name.xxx
\Picard (2020)
\Season x
\Picard - SxxExx - Episode name.xxx
\Raumschiff Voyager
\Season x
\Voyager - SxxExx - Episode name.xxx
\Star Trek - The Next Generation
\Season x
\The Next Generation - SxxExx - Episode name.xxx
\Star Trek (1966)
\Season x
\Star Trek - SxxExx - Episode name.xxx
(To get the questionable pilot episode without Kirk indexed I named it S01E00)
With this folder/file structure indexing worked like a charm for me without any problems whatosever occuring.
Maybe this is helpful for some people who are in an ongoing struggle especially with Star Trek shows. If it was, please leave me a comment.
“\Serien” IS included, yet it didn’t recognize anything inside the subfolder “Star Trek”. Also, I tried adding the shows one by one without subfolder “Star Trek” to which PLEX reacted with what I described above: Wild mixing of things.
I tried that but erranous mixing happened that way. I’ve spent the past two days to find a solution which works for me. This one does perfectly, at least for me.
only add Serien as a source to your Plex tv show library
“Scan Library Files”
Inspect the properties of your tv show libraries.
On the “Advanced” tab, what appears as “Agent”?
If it is “Plex TV Series”, continue with step 4 below
If it is anything different, perform the Plex Dance from step 3) on.
re-add the series one series at a time into the main Serien folder.
“Scan Library Files”
Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all series have been added.
I’ve tried exactly that. Took them out of the folder while keeping the original naming intact. e.g.: “Star Trek - TOS, Star Trek - Voyager etc.”
I even did the “PLEX Dance” every time after I deleted or before I added something, to no avail. I always ended up with mixed shows.
Voyager was recognized as Picard, TOS was recognized as Voyager, DS9 was recognized as TOS and so on. It simply didn’t work when it had the initial “Star Trek” as beginning of a folder name. A single show was always recognized/indexed properly but as soon as I added a second show, things became weird.
What finally fixed it for me and works totally fine, was creating a subfolder called “Star Trek” and within that, subfolders with just the name of the show, without “Star Trek”. Now Plex properly indexes every single show without any errors or mixing.
I’ve tried “TOS”, “The Original Series”, just “Star Trek” and others. Every single one of them worked fine UNTIL I added another show. I even tried adding {tvdb-xxxx} tags but that didn’t work either. I followed the naming guide meticulously but all of my attempts were fruitless. Until I did what I stated in my initial post.
I’ve crawled through at least 20+ pages where people complained about the exact same thing happening to them, following proper naming conventions and whatnot. I’ve tried every possible solution people suggested but nothing (period!) worked for me. There were even people who shared the exact same folder/file structure, following the naming guide, consulting tvdb and it worked for one but not for the other.
Please don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate your feedback but this post was rather meant as a presentation of a working solution for people who might have the same problems. I’ve tried every step of your solution, like many others and it simply wouldn’t work for me, sadly.
The thing is, this is against the specification and will lead to issues for people who decide to follow it.
It is not the right way, even if it works at this time for you.
I am certain that it will cause issues for you as well down the line.
@Volts Tried it that way, didn’t work for me. I don’t know why it didn’t, even though it SHOULD work, since a lot of people reported that it does exactly what it should when doing it that way. Sadly, not on my end.
You cannot change the agent willy-nilly. After doing so, you must Refresh Metadata of the whole library, or your results will be inconsistent and confusing.
(If “Plex TV Series” is selected as Agent, the “Agents” section in your server settings is not relevant.)
You might wanna check if the episode order of TheMovieDB is actually the right one for you and your files.
If you are already on “Plex TV Series”, I recommend you to actually use the folder names which were supplied by @Volts above.
Make sure to DISable “Prefer local metadata”/“Bevorzuge lokale Metadaten” (on the same page as the “agent” setting)
Use 2-digit season numbers both in your file and the Season xx folder names.
“you must Refresh Metadata of the whole library, or your results will be inconsistent and confusing.”
Before and after I changed things, I’ve let PLEX reindex and refresh everything. The problem already occured before I changed anything within the Scanners section, because that’s how it should work properly, according to countless of people out there.
Changing the scanners was just an attempt to fix my problem.
I’ve used two digit season numbers from the start - didn’t work. I then downloaded Sonarr and let it rename my Star Trek shows, which resulted in single digits, but that didn’t help either. Interestingly it never touched a single filename but just renamed my season folders.
I didn’t try yet if changing the season numbers to two digits again would work again but I fear it could mess up everything again, since I’ve now populated my shows folder with all the content I have.
PS: I just checked and some of my other shows use two digit numbers.
I’ve just been brave and first changed a single, then another and finally all season folders to two digits again, nothing weird happened. So that’s a plus.
These Sonarr naming settings are simple and work well 99% of the time:
Replace Illegal Characters: Unchecked Standard Episode Format: {Series Title} - S{season:00}E{episode:00} - {Episode Title} Series Folder Format: {Series TitleYear} Season Folder Format: Season {season:00}
You can get into a weird state if some of the shows are named poorly and get merged together. Once that happens you can’t just rename directories to fix it. You have to Split Apart and Fix Match the problems, or do the Plex Dance and try again with corrected file & directory naming.
All my show filenames were named properly from the beginning, or so I’ve thought. I spend a lot of time sorting, naming and unifying all my data as soon as I download it (mild OCD ) .
Every single show on my drives looked like this:
Series Title\Season xx\Series Title - SxxExx - Episode title.xxx
Especially for Star Trek it looked like this: e.g.
Star Trek - Voyager\Season xx\Star Trek - Voyager - SxxExx - Episode Title.xxx
Star Trek - TOS\Season xx\Star Trek - SxxExx - Episode Title.xxx
Star Trek - The Next Generation\Season xx\Star Trek - The Next Generation - SxxExx - Episode Title.xxx
After the first problems I tried this:
Star Trek Voyager - SxxExx - Episode Title.xxx
Star Trek SxxExx - Episode Title.xxx
Star Trek The Next Generation - SxxExx - Episode Title.xxx
Still the same problems.
Then I tried moving all Star Trek shows out of the subfolder “Star Trek”, out of sight of PLEX, deleted it, reindexed, refreshed metadata, moved a single show back into the main Folder, reindexed and refreshed and voila, properly indexed.
Then I added a second show, and the same problems occured again. I’ve then tried a multitude of attempts to solve my problems but sadly to no avail.
Then I finally created the “Star Trek” subfolder again, moved the shows back in but left the "Star Trek - " prefix out of the files and folders and that’s what solved my problem.
PLEX properly indexed every other show I own but it initially completely failed for all the Star Trek shows. My guess is, that the problem has to do with the initial "Star Trek - " prefix of the show’s files and folders.
) .