How to organise TV shows with multiple languages

General Discussions
1

Hi, I have “The Big Bang Theory” series in English and German. There is one single-language mp4 file for each of these languages. The mp4 files have tagged the language correctly in their audio track (but not in their video track), and the title tag in the file is the episode title (in the respective language). The file names follow the recommended scheme (series title - s01e01 - episode title - arbitrary text.mp4).

My problem is that the English and German versions are merged into one entry in the library, which then has two versions.

What I don’t like about that, is:

  • The merged entry shows only one of the two languages, i.e. the language field is text and not a drop down.
  • The “Play version” action shows just the video resolutions of the two files which is not really the best way for choosing a language…

In order to deal with this behavior, I have tried to find ways to keep the different languages separated in the library. It is sufficient for me to get the metadata only for the German version, so I have tried to rename the English version’s series title to something that is not found in TVDB.

However, one has to go a long way of changing the series title until Plex can be convinced that it is a different series. For example, it merges these two S01E01 episodes into one library entry:

|-- The Big Bang Theory
|   |-- Staffel 01
|   |   |-- The Big Bang Theory - s01e01 - Penny und die Physiker - HQ.mp4
|-- The Big Bang Theory (English)
|   |-- Season 01
|   |   |-- The Big Bang Theory (English) - s01e01 - Pilot - en.SD.mp4

It also merges these variations of the English series title:
The Big Bang Theory (en)
The Big Bang Theory [en]
The Big Bang Theory - English
The Big Bang Theory English

It keeps these series titles separate, because it does not find the English version:

|-- The Big Bang Theory
|   |-- Staffel 01
|   |   |-- The Big Bang Theory - s01e01 - Penny und die Physiker - HQ.mp4
|-- English - The Big Bang Theory
|   |-- Season 01
|   |   |-- English - The Big Bang Theory - s01e01 - Pilot - en.SD.mp4

What I don’t like about this approach is that the two language versions of the series are now in a quite different position in the list of series.

Fyi, I have read these articles, but they did not help me:

My question is basically, how can these single-language files be organized such that Plex understands the languages properly. If that is not possible, what is the next best recommendation.

By the way, I don’t see a “match” or “split” action on series. I do see that for movies, but not for series. The first article above recommends to use that on series. Did that go away, or am I supposed to have these actions on series?

2

It is there, but you must be at the highest level of the show. It doesn’t appear at the season or episode level.

Exactly as expected. If you organise it like above, you will get the opportunity to ‘Split’ the show, giving you two versions of the same show. You can then edit each of their titles to include the ‘language’ info.

1 Like
3

There’s a couple of different ways you can tackle this…

May I ask, do you prefer having two separate video files for each? Or would you like a single video file with two audio tracks?

If you would prefer the two video files option, what Otto said will work, you just need to go to the TV Shows library, find the show in the list (don’t go into the show), click on the 3 dots on the lower right of the poster for the show, and there’s a split apart in that menu. It should split them apart then you just change the names to their respective Languages… You could also just do the plex dance on one of them, but use a different metadata agent (ie Plex agent instead of TVDB) just before you move them into the TV Shows folder again… then scan, and it should scan in as a second copy of The Big Bang Theory…

The other thing you can do is leave it as is, and on each episode, go over to the “More” section and choose the one you wish to play, though this is cumbersome and problematic.

If you want to have 1 video file, but two languages (this is the most work, but saves a ton of space), as long as they’re both the same source (ie BluRay or DVD) and the same Framerate (ie 23.976, 25, or 29.97) you can just strip the german audio from each file and use MakeMKV to add the German Audio to the English video files, or vice versa…

4

As an anime fan myself I have the same problem only thing I have done is literally crate separate folders anime English anime Japanese and then put the associated files and each Master folder separate from the name tv show folders just for an example

01 anime English/ Witchblade/Witchblade (2006) (English) - S01E01 - The Beginning.mp4

02 anime Japanese/ Witchblade/Witchblade (2006) (Japanese) - S01E01 - The Beginning.mp4

and from there I load up each one independently that is the master folder the show and create a

collection aka anime English and anime Japanese

on top of it I do this for all my genres it’s a pain in the ass but at least within Plex you can easily find the genre style you want including stop being dubbed …

but unfortunately as well if you group it all together in one master Library it still does see it only as one show I am from there you can’t control it but at least with the collections mode you should be able to get the filetype you want due to the fact that it’s pointing directly to the specific file …

I just wish blacks would make it easy so we can ignore any number of top-level folders aka

z:/medai 001/tv show/ anime English/ show name/ show file

if I was able to tell it to ignore the first three top-level folders as above I would just have to point to one folder unfortunately four organizational steaks on my side outside of Plex I have it this way and within facts I have like a something like +10 libraries folders per drive and hundreds of folders for 1 Master Library

is there any place where we can actually recommend features like being ignored sub top-level directories I believe we have ignore sub-level directories but not top-level directories

5

is

z:/medai 001/tv show/

your tv show library?

perhaps you could organize like

z:/medai 001/ anime English/

then add the additional paths to you tv library, so then it will have 3 path

z:/medai 001/tv show/ 
z:/medai 001/anime English/
z:/medai 002/anime Japanese/

Also, if you actually adding an empty space, that is probably a bad idea.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/

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