but if I associate this serie to the tvdb entry, of course it gets all messed up.
and by the way, just noticed that the tvdb is in fact also maitaining several episodes orders :
So it gets really complicated, and indeed, as noted at the beginning I didn’t find anyway to get plex use the episode names from the file names.
Why not having a way for plex to do that for certain shows ? (with a proper flag)
Also I was planning to organize a bunch of digitalized super 8 family movies as a “tv show” for people(the family) to browse them easily, as these will for sure not get into the TVDB, it means I must also totally forget about doing such a thing ?
There should be a way to structure “amateur shows” !
(basically a “use file names as episode names” at the show level)
If the DVD order is indeed populated on TheTVDB website, you can tell Plex to use the DVD order with this particular show.
“Edit” the show at its top level.
go to the “Advanced” tab
change “Episode ordering” to “TheTVDB (DVD)”.
Wait for the server activity indicator to settle down after this change.
Then “Refresh Metadata” for this show.
For a Movie Library, I know I can do my own data if the title doesn’t match any online DB (including art etc).
I haven’t tried to do the same with a TV Show I assumed it would work the same way as long as the folder\naming structure was correct. Long before there was metadata matching via internet sources, having that folder structure and file naming was specifically designed so the local software could display the local files as a TV Show broken out to seasons and with episode order correctly (XMBC, WDTV and older version of Plex). That’s where the standard for naming for local media came from that Plex uses and where the online sources adopted it. Does Plex not do that anymore for TV Shows?
If a show matches the wrong thing - can we not use “unmatch” and edit the details ourselves as long as the folder\file structure and naming are correct?
I may just make a fake show and try it myself at this point … this is the 2nd thread I’ve been on today where this topic has come up and I’m not sure myself.
@yves75 - personal videos like family movies are expected to go in an Other Videos library. No matching at all and you self manage it either via the embedded data, the filenames, editing the details in Plex or a combination of all three. I haven’t used that library type much though myself so can’t really provide much detail other than I know it did show some embedded info where it was available and other times it just showed the raw filename.
Edit - So I did the “fake show” and here’s what happened.
Ok!
And is there a way to move that up a bit in the priority list ?
@Insomnic_1
Yes I was planning to use a different library, but the thing is the tv show “format” would have been quite appropriate (one season per year, then episodes by “sequences” like “wedding of such and such”, “skiing in with the xyz”, “summer in britanny”, etc), but obviously this isn’t possible, only the “movie” library format could be used, but not very appropriate : too many small movies.
plus the “part1, part2” in movies isn’t really usable either, as it is meant to define a same movie broken up in several part.
Only using the “extras” can be a solution with a movie format library I guess, will look into that …
Which is fine - unless you’d like to ‘invent’ a TV Show type layout by inventing a Fake TV Show for family videos (or anything else that won’t match).
The 12 Days of Christmas\
....Season 01
.......The 12 Days of Christmas - S01E01 - Grams gets a Powered Scooter.mkv
.......The 12 Days of Christmas - S01E02 - Grams Runs Gramps down with Power Scooter.mkv
Unmatched shows work just fine - just like they did in the before time for us old folks when there wasn’t online data source matching - you just have to name them correctly so Plex knows how to sort them and you’ll have to provide the details\art yourself (either via Plex interface or the local file functions). So feel free to explore the possibilities!
Edit - I don’t know if the same would work in Other Videos library.
No they don’t unfortunately, at least for me, that is if I disassociate the show I created, and update the metadata of the show, I only get episode 1 episode 2 as title.
In your example, you got “great premier!” from the file name ? or from s01e00 or something ?
as @ottoKerner said, it is not possible to get episode titles from the file names.
For all the data I clicked “edit” and added the titles and descriptions and details myself through the Plex interface. That adds the data and then “locks” the fields in place so that a metadata refresh won’t try to rematch or override them. I think a lot of folks forget or don’t realize you can just edit those fields manually to whatever you want… even the mods\employees forget that’s an option.
Oh man… I just moved my “show” into an Other Library to see what it’d do… it created one video title called “Sample Show S01E01” with 11 versions representing the other video files (all named different and in 2 different folders).
Ah ok, thanks ! Indeed that is a solution, although it requires to update all that manually, when you already have done the job with the file names.
So indeed a workaround, but I still think it would be great to have a “pick episode titles from filenames” flag at the tv show top level.
Actually… it used to do just that but you had to name them specifically depending on the server you were using. So for XMBC and WDTV, I believe if you had it Show.Name.SXXEXX.The.Show.Title.avi you would get a title out of it. That’s why you see that format a lot. I didn’t test that but it’d be nice if Plex could do that but that aspect never really got any formalization… people put them in brackets or parentheses or not at all which makes it harder to parse out.
It’s still a good idea to have it in there (my test ones I didn’t bother).
With newer format of video files that info can be embedded like ID3tags do for MP3 files. So you could go through and update that embedded data on the video files and Plex does read that data automatically (definitely MP4 but not sure about MKV). Sometimes just editing it via the file explorer on your computer is enough for some files but other instances you’ll need software.
Luckily for you, the DVD Sort order option from TVDB worked as intended so that’s good.
Note: and I think I will still look into using the movie format with the “featurettes” or some type of extras for the super 8 family movies.
As they all have been glued together into big rolls, I will create one “movie” per big roll, and a “featurette” for any specific sequence into that big roll.
This is a standardized protocol for multimedia using a folder\file structure so it can use embedded data (particularly MP4s) but will fall back to local folder and file names for navigation and display. It’s essentially doing file navigation with some media centric functions thrown in depending on the client\server setup.
If there is embedded art, you’ll typically see it, but you can use “poster.jpg” or “titleofthing.jpg” to also get poster art (typically).
Plex can be a DLNA server and if you browse Plex libraries with DLNA it presents media in folder\file structures - but it’s been a bit so I may have that fuzzy. Windows machines have DLNA server functions built in and most home NAS devices have an option too. OS X you’ll need to download an app to act as server (if you don’t want to deal with Plex as DLNA).
Most set-top boxes can act as a DLNA client either natively or with an app … PS and Xbox do it natively in their video players, Roku does it through Roku Media Player app, Samsung media player app will do it, and AppleTV\AndroidTV have lots of apps that you can download to do it.
I used to use DLNA from a NAS to my various WDTV set top boxes back in the day (and hacked ReplayTV boxes, custom PCs or PS\XBox loads before that) and it was like browsing Netflix before Netflix was an online thing.
Edit - just saw in another thread that Plex doesn’t maintain their DLNA server functions anymore (except for bug fixes).
But being a bit lazy , I think I will just start with plex current capabilities and constraints, and do a few tries to see whether the movie library format (with using extras) or the TV show library format is more appropriate/easy to browse at the end, for this super 8 family content, and then stick to that.
Overall I still find that plex brings the best compromise, in customization/use of central databases over the systems I’ve tried (emby, infuse).
An area where I would see possible improvments is the multilingual aspects (especially when you are more or less fluent in several languages and prefer to see things in the original language if you understand it), but it is another subject, and a tricky one (even google does not do it right at all, typically for search and newssearch), and I found a good middle ground in plex (always use original titles, but movie pictures in the library language, french for me, although it has it drawbacks, but would require a kind of languages table per user to be improved, so I don’t complain ! )
I agree. Plex works pretty well - and leaps and bounds better than how I had to do this in the past - so working within its limitations is still vastly easier in most cases.
For language situations, you might check out some of the foreign language sections of Plex forums … they might have good info on managing multilingual libraries that the English centric areas miss.
I haven’t had to manage multilingual myself but two different ways come to mind that might help …
Plex remembers the audio\subtitle you pick on a title so if you prefer to watch a movie in French with no subtitles - pick that in the interface and it’ll always play in that language when it’s played (until you select a different language). A manual approach but at least it remembers your selection. When I add a movie with alternate tracks I pick it then so I don’t have to worry about it when I go to play it later (for other’s I may select foreign audio with English subs).
Create dedicated local users you can swap between with their own language preferences. A “French Language User” browsing an English library will use the French audio if available for a movie. You could also setup dedicated libraries to browse the different languages and pull that language metadata but managing multiple libraries can get cumbersome and it’ll still playback based on your user account language preferences anyways.
I haven’t played much with the foreign language stuff (and it’s off topic so a new post might be best) but someone might correct me if I’ve got that experience wrong.
Just some thoughts - I had a slow day today and these ideas were interesting.
?
, I think I will just start with plex current capabilities and constraints, and do a few tries to see whether the movie library format (with using extras) or the TV show library format is more appropriate/easy to browse at the end, for this super 8 family content, and then stick to that.
