Is there any way to have files I add to library use the naming convention for TV shows and have the episode name appear when I add a file?
I saw the notice in https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265256-naming-home-series-media/ that shows are currently only named Episode {#} when using the Personal Media Show Agent. I have quite a few video files that I’d like to add and have structured as TV shows in a library I created. These are not commercial videos that would appear on TheTVDB or anything. I have them all named correctly in “season” folders with a naming convention of {Show} - S{##}E{##} - {Title of Video} (ex: Teaching Lesson - S2007E01 - Introduction.mp4).
Is there a way to have Plex utilize the title of the “episode” for the name rather than just use Episode 1, Episode 2, etc?
There is - but the PITA factor is such that’s it’s EASIER to simply edit the item when it’s aboard.
In order to make it work - your files must be MP4 files and you must embed the metadata within them so they contain the info - and I’ll tell ya right now it’s easier to edit that in a few seconds when the item hits the library.
You have to use Personal Media - or Plex simply won’t stop searching for a match for ‘the unmatchable’ -and blowing your edits every time it does. <— if you think that ‘Lock’ button stops that - It doesn’t.
If the Series has a listing at TVDB/TMDB - name and structure your files so they’ll match with the online Agent and that data will, in fact, sometimes contain the ‘Episode Name’ and include it. Just hope the Episode Name isn’t ‘Episode 1’ - and if it is - hand edit. At least if it’s ‘Matched’ - the ‘Lock’ button will lock it.
If all your files are already named that way, you can use a tool which scrapes the episode title from the file name and writes it into the mp4 files as a ‘Title’ meta tag.
(works only with mp4/m4v files, unfortunately)
On Windows, I use mp3tag for this, but I’m sure something similar can be done on other platforms as well.
Sadly these won’t be in TVDB or TMDB. But thank you for the insights. I don’t want to but maybe editing meta data in the long run would be a good thing.
The feature is named “Convert: Filename → Tag”
and the format string %dummy% - %dummy% - %title% should work for filenames which look like your above example.
Tested this just now with a shared folder to my Linux box. Seems to be working. Takes a few minutes to covert the larger file sizes, but I think that’s a fair trade off.
If you want to do it “right”, you also need to re-“optimize for streaming” these files (usually most of them). Which requires reading and re-writing them in full.
Can also be done in mp3tag. (right-click on the file, then “Utils”)
