I seem to be having a really difficult time getting Plex to organize the data for Batman The Animated Series. I have attached a file listing. My file order appears to be the DVD order. I realize that there is some difference between that and the air date, but my problem is a bit bigger. I can’t get it so that the tiles displayed beneath the thumbnails are the episodes that are played. At some point beyond Season 1, Plex appears to give up and just says episode number whatever.
I have Filebot. Presumably, both Filebot and Plex are using the TVDB for the extra data. I have looked on the TVDB website to try and make heads or tails of what data Plex may be obtaining. It does not appear to be the same that Filebot retrieves.
At this point, I don’t even care if the episodes are in the right order, provided the title displayed by Plex is the actual title of the episode. Any suggestions on a naming scheme or directory tree structure for this to maximize Plex’s success?
mp4 files can have embedded metadata which by default override Plex’s downloaded data.
mitigate this by
Go to Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB
In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase
Then change your Season folder names to use 2-digit numbers
You can tell that to Filebot, so they get created automatically that way.
(for instance, I use the following formatting string which creates the full folder structure {n} ({y})/{episode.special ? 'Specials' : 'Season '+s.pad(2)}/{n} ({y}) - {episode.special ? 's00e'+special.pad(2) : s00e00} - {t.replaceAll(/[´‘’ʻ]/, /‘/).replaceAll(/[!?.]+$/).replacePart(’, Part $1’)}{‘.’+lang}`)
Filebot can use both the ‘Aired’ (Plex’s default) and the ‘DVD’ ordering. You need to set this preference in Filebot so your files get renamed to the right ordering schema.
I recommend you to use the default ‘Aired’ schema unless it is particularly important for ‘story continuity’ reasons to use the DVD ordering. (For instance when the series was aired in the wrong order, like it famously happened for “Firefly”)
Verify that your files have the right name and/or episode number for their actual content.
Use a desktop video player like VLC to play some files and scrub until the episode title is shown in the picture.
After doing all the above, perform the Plex Dance with the whole series.
use advancedrenamer.com/ to do a batch rename, make sure they are in the same order as on TVDB, IE: Batman the animated series s01e01, when they are in the right numerical order i use therenamer.com/ to rename them according to TVDB IE: Batman- The Animated Series - S01E01 - The Cat & the Claw (Part 1)
Tried Renamer. As I suspected, many of the episodes are not found. That is actually part of my problem. I’m willing to make my collection “look” like TVDB gives the data, but the Batman TAS entry is confusing. 20 languages etc. I can’t tell which dataset is being pulled by PLEX.
I wonder if I should convert everything to MKV if that would get rid of anything embedded in the files. And then bring local data to the top of the agent list.
I compared your media list to thetvdb.com’s listing for Batman TAS, and they are different. Have you considered manually renaming the files so they match thetvdb? Move all of them outside of the scanned directories, do a library scan (which will remove them from the database), rename the first 4 or 5 from season one and put just that back, do another library scan, and see if they are found.
@kris44dad said:
I’m willing to make my collection “look” like TVDB gives the data, but the Batman TAS entry is confusing. 20 languages etc. I can’t tell which dataset is being pulled by PLEX.
Plex will try to fetch metadata in the language, which you have assigned to your library.
If you don’t know anymore, ‘edit’ the library to find out.
Only if this language is not available on TheTVDB, Plex will ‘fallback’ to english or the original language of the series.
I wonder if I should convert everything to MKV if that would get rid of anything embedded in the files. And then bring local data to the top of the agent list.
There is no need to have LMA in the top position, unless you want Plex to prefer your embedded metadata.
There is also no need to convert to MKV.
I didn’t know if that listing in TVDB with the incredibly HUGE first season was the correct listing. I guess I will try a 60 Episode first season and see what happens.
Thanks everyone for the help. I renumbered everything, and added the last 2 seasons under The New Batman Adventures. Plex found everything as was intended.
