I have a small (but growing thanks to a new capture card) library of old Holiday specials (various Peanuts, Garfield, stuff like that) and Christmas episodes of cartoons (X-Men, Tiny Toons), stuff like that, mostly digitized from the tapes we had as kids. Owing to different methods of getting them over the years, some are .mkv. some are .avi. .wmv, .mp4, they run the whole gauntlet. I’m trying to get them all into Plex and running into issues with metadata and sorting. I put the title of the episode or special and the show if it has one associated with it, but it’s hit and miss, and some of them are not showing up at all. Are there file types that Plex doesn’t see?
Ideally I’d just like to have a Title “Holidays” and then seasons for like “Halloween”, “Thanksgiving” etc, and then the requisite shows in each season. I keep playing with filenames and I can’t get it to spit out what I want - is this something Plex can even do?
Hi Catmorgan I am in the same situation. Found an old box of movies and shows and doing the same. Yes Plex can do what you want. Here is what I recommend.
First Question you asked about what file types. Plex can read just about everything. But if you want the full list of supported files look here: Media Suport
If some of your movies aren’t showing up at all make sure to check that the folder you put them in is listed in your library. So Check your library by going to edit, add folders and make sure your file path to your movies and tv shows is there.
If you would like titles like Halloween, Holidays, etc… the easiest way to do this is to create a Collection. For example.
For more details on how to create a collection this support article is good: Collections
My last bit of advice is for old tv shows or tv specials for Christmas and Thanksgiving etc. Check the name of the thing on IMDB and on TheTVDB website first and then name the file based on how its named there on those websites. Search for the tv show on tvdb and then be sure to check select all seasons. Sometimes shows have Specials like thanksgiving shows etc. that are listed as Specials. You need to put those episodes in a Specials folder and name the file according to Plex naming, that way Plex knows what to do with the file. And then it will show up. For me this was a big headache with old Dr Seuss shows from the 70s that were being treated like the new Cat In The Hat tv show.
Also, make sure to have a separate folder for movies and TV shows. Do not put movie files together with TV shows. Plex doesn’t like it and it makes for some really weird stuff to happen.
Hope that helps. And once you get it all straightened out it will be a thing of beauty.
