Long story short, I have two series with special episodes. They’re both anime, but IDK that matters. As best I could, I researched how to handle these, and this is what I did. First, I used Filebot to retrieve the names from TVDB. I have each series in its own folder and the Specials are within another folder inside the series folder named Specials.
One of the series doesn’t display ANY specials. OK; I’m new to this and maybe they’ll simply auto-play? Nope. The other series shows only one of the two Specials-and it’s the second of the two. I’ve attached some pictures of the series that won’t display any Specials within Plex, if that helps.
Anything I’m missing? Thanks in advance for any help.
Your naming isn’t quite right. From your picture, you have the specials folder alongside individual episodes, but each season should be in a folder. For a series based TV show…
d:\media v shows\Bunny Drop
----d:\media v shows\Bunny Drop\Season 01
----d:\media v shows\Bunny Drop\Specials\
Also, the names aren’t quite right either. “Bunny Drop - s01e01 - The Bellflower Girl.mp4”, not “Bunny Drop - 1x01 - The Bellflower Girl.mp4”.
Thank you both. I’ve been kinda confused about the naming. So many times I’ve seen it mentioned to use Filebot as a panacea, but at the same time read to use the “sXXeXX” format. Now, I know. And I’m also glad to know each SEASON needs its own folder, even if the series uses the same name. That said, I have the entire Lovejoy series (73 ep/6 seasons) in one folder and that gets sorted fine.
@Core-Lokt said:
Thank you both. I’ve been kinda confused about the naming. So many times I’ve seen it mentioned to use Filebot as a panacea, but at the same time read to use the “sXXeXX” format. Now, I know. And I’m also glad to know each SEASON needs its own folder, even if the series uses the same name. That said, I have the entire Lovejoy series (73 ep/6 seasons) in one folder and that gets sorted fine.
Thank you again.
It is easy to configure FileBot to produce sXXeYY format. That is what most of us here do. I know FileBot comes preconfigured to use “SxEE” but that is generally overridden. There are some “Plex” set up configurations that you can import that will even produce the correct structure but I find that to be overkill. I simply use:
{n.replaceTrailingBrackets()} - {s00e00.lower()} - {t}
as my format string for TV shows. I have also used the more complex:
{n.replaceTrailingBrackets()} - {s00e00.lower()} - {t.replaceAll(/[!?.]+$/).replaceAll(/[`´‘’ʻ]/, “'”).lowerTrail().replacePart(‘, Part $1’)}
and it works as well but I do not find the additional complexities necessary 99.9% of the time.
@Core-Lokt said:
…That said, I have the entire Lovejoy series (73 ep/6 seasons) in one folder and that gets sorted fine.
Stand back, folks.
When that blows up you don’t want to be near it.
All named with FileBot in seconds.
Works today, tomorrow and the next day.
Non-Compliance breeds unexpected and unpredictable behavior and the foreboding feeling your chair is strapped to a time bomb - could go off at any moment.
Thanks for the picture of the properly-configured file tree. The funny thing is, I had everything in “sXXeXX” format before splitting some of the series that ripped as one file. In fact, I’d even read here in a search about the upper and lower-case letters being the difference for some in getting things right.
Basically and Correctly TV Shows have to be - in most cases - Named Exactly like they’re shown at TVDB. Case sensitive even.
The beauty of FileBot is it goes to the database and gets the name they use. Once FileBot is employed there is no quess work.
Plex introduced a ‘Version’ issue a while back and refuses to fix it for some reason. Previously TV Show Versions were named exactly as shown at TVDB. It was flowers and kittens. Plex tried to improve that wheel by making all calls for ‘Doctor Who’, for instance, default to the latest Version. Now, if you want to match Doctor Who - the classics - previously named, ‘Doctor Who’ oddly enough, that’s the name FileBot gets, but you have to add (1963).
I wanted to report back that I did all of the above and it worked. Oddly, the one series (Usagi Drop) that I had issues with the Specials only shows 10 regular season episodes available in the overview instead of 11, like it should be. However, if you click on the regular series itself, all 11 are in there. I thought it might be an issue with naming, but since nothing is missing, IDK where the issue lies.
I’m not too concerned, since all is accounted for other than the episode tally in Plex. I am very appreciative of the help from all. Thanks again.
I hammered on one of my TV Shows for 20 hours one day trying to figure out where an episode was sliding into The Twilight Zone - then realized one of them was watched.
You may be right. E03 is showing “On Deck”. Why, IDK. I’ve not watched any video as I’d been trying to get backgrounds for music and sorting out the Specials. Well, I did play a snippet of every Usagi Drop episode just to make sure there wasn’t a corrupted file despite all accounted for. But that was after seeing the discrepancy.
If you watch a bit over a min of a TV Show Plex puts it in On Deck. It will continue from that episode and go on from there, even if episodes before it are unwatched. If it’s in On Deck, it’s ‘dog-ear’ number is removed from the total number of unwatched episodes indicated in the ‘dog-ear’.
Combat this by heading to the Season level or Main Show level and mark watched, or unwatched in a blanket approach for all episodes in the Show, or Season. The On Deck offender should vanish at that point and all the ‘dog-ears’ should show either no numbers, or the full compliment.
