The setup. Two ReadyNAS servers (both firmware v6.6.1) both running PMS 1.4.2.3400. Entries match thetvdb.com
Server 1 (correctly catalogs all episodes). Structure is:
TV Shows->Doctor Who->Season 01->Doctor Who - S01E01 - An Unearthly Child (1).mp4, and
TV Shows->Doctor Who (2005)->Season 01->Doctor Who (2005) - S01E01 - Rose.mp4
Server 2 (lumps all episodes into 2005). Structure is identical. In library PMS indicates Doctor Who 2005, 2005 Season 01 cover art, two copies of E01 and calls the entry “An Unearthly Child (1)”
I’ve tried all the Optimize, purge, etc. suggestions I could find in the forums so reaching out for other ideas. Should it matter, server 1 has been running Plex since the v0.9 days, server 2 since around v1.1
I take it your Classic Whos on Server 1 were done some time ago.
Buggy Plex behavior of late requires you put (1963) with the Show Name for all Classic (pre-2005) episodes. Oh yea… it’s gonna be a PITA. Try a couple and see how it goes.
You may (will likely) need to Plex Dance the entire Classic Show on Server 2.
I would suggest using FileBot and do all of them at once, but to be honest I’m not at all sure how you’d do that. The Plex System Bug is beyond FileBot’s ability to deal with it at the moment and that particular FileBot work around is beyond my ability to tell you how to do it.
Thanks for the quick response. I didn’t want to believe the answer.
That seems to have worked for the first episode of each series. The Plex Dance was required. I’ll try some more (it will take days to rename them all) and post if correct behavior stops.
@JuiceWSA said:
About the time you finish someone will be along to show us how to do that with FileBot in 10 seconds.
You mean this?
@JuiceWSA said:
Buggy Plex behavior of late requires you put (1963) with the Show Name for all Classic (pre-2005) episodes. Oh yea… it’s gonna be a PITA.
I’ve never heard of this, but a FileBot naming scheme with that condition in mind would look something like this:
{y < 2005 ? ny : n}/Season {s}/{y < 2005 ? ny : n} - {s00e00} - {t}
This will give you Name (Year) format for all shows from before 2005, but Name format for newer shows.
FileBot will be able to differentiate Doctor Who - S01E01 - An Unearthly Child and Doctor Who - S01E01 - Rose based on the episode title. Doctor Who vs Doctor Who (2005) should work out of the box, but you can always use Manual Matching and align files/episodes yourself.
Plex now requires this:
Doctor Who (1963) - S01E01.xxx
There’s been a whole big thing about it:
It looked like it was going somewhere then went hard aground in the middle of the bay. In the meantime users need to add (YEAR) to items that previous didn’t require any. No News, one way or the other. No Documentation. It’s total ‘by-the-seat-of-the-pants’ flying in deep fog.
Sad, but true.
I’ll play around with that info you provided, but I can tell you that’s not going to help ‘most regular’ users very much. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to use FileBot at all, must less customize it on the fly. If I can get it to work I’m pretty sure most everybody can so we’ll see what we see.
I see. Doctor Who (TheTVDB ID, original series) must be named Doctor Who (1963) but that’s a special case and doesn’t apply to other shows like Star Trek or Babylon 5.
@rednoah42 said:
I see. Doctor Who (TheTVDB ID, original series) must be named Doctor Who (1963) but that’s a special case and doesn’t apply to other shows like Star Trek or Babylon 5.
It only applies (in the current state) for shows that are ‘reboots/continuations’. Before this mysterious change shows had to be listed as they appear at TVDB. ‘Doctor Who’ was fine for the classic years, but the next Doctor Who had to be Doctor Who (2005) - exactly as it’s listed at TVDB. Now, with this mysterious, undocumented change ‘Doctor Who’ defaults to and is forced to the most recent remake. Classic Doctor Who now needs to be called Doctor Who (1963). All other versions must now have a (YEAR) field, EXCEPT the most recent version and that whole thing runs contrary to the listings at TVDB.
Users are confused and can’t get hardly anything to match. Volunteer Support is confused. FileBot is confused. Plex seems blissfully unaware there’s even a problem. They broke it doing something else - God only knows - and as it stands Plex’s left hand doesn’t know what Plex’s right hand is doing.
I wonder how much of that is even intentionally though… Does Plex have an additional private database for ‘reboots/continuations’ because based on TheTVDB data alone you wouldn’t even be able to tell which shows are from the same franchise (other than guessing based on the name).
It’s all a mystery to me. I know what used to work no longer works and it makes FileBot difficult to use for TVDB when Plex does their own thing.
Once upon a time you couldn’t go wrong telling a user to:
Go to TVDB, get the name, and use what they use, or
Use FileBot and it will do all the legwork for you.
Well… Scratch that idea. Time to invent yet another work-around for Plex Standard Procedure 'cause once again they’ve dropped a ‘Baby Ruth’ in the punchbowl.
