Is it possible to import episode names from filenames for shows that are not in Plex's known media database?

General Discussions
1

I have a show that I ripped myself and it doesn’t seem to be part of the automatic matching that Plex does. It actually matches it incorrectly with another show from the 60s with a similar and messes up a lot of the metadata. I changed the show name to something slightly different than that, but now everything is listed “Episode 1” etc. Filenames are of the format: “022. Title of this Episode Here”. Is there a way for Plex to absorb that filename as the Episode name metadata-wise? I know the help section says that that portion of the filename is essentially ignored, but is there a way around that?

Separately, I am having some issues where filenames will have the format “030. Title of this Episode here: Week 11” and it puts the episode in the wrong season, because of the “11”. Any tips on doing this programattically? There are six hundred episodes in several seasons (each in their own folder), and it’s difficult to change the filenames of all of them.

Thanks in advance!

2

If your files are in the mp4/m4v format, you can embed the episode titles directly into them as embedded metadata.

This will never work in Plex.
You must absolutely follow the prescribed filenaming schema (and also the necessary folder structure) or you will always get mismatches etc.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220687-naming-series-season-based-tv-shows/

  1. Look up your show on TheTVDB
  2. Take the title as it is used on TheTVDB. If there is something in parentheses, take that too. If the title contains invalid characters (depends on your file system), like § : % *, simply leave them out.
  3. Check the naming and the folder structure of your show. Name the top folder of the show exactly after the title on TheTVDB. No abbreviations. No additional subfolders. No aliases. Add the (year) in parentheses of when episode 1 of season 1 of this show was aired.
  4. Name the episode files according to the above linked naming guide. Use the same title as for the top folder. Show's Title (year) - s01e01 - additional info.ext (‘- additional info’ can be left out)
  5. After you corrected the naming and folder structure, perform the Plex Dance with all files for this show.
3

Can you elaborate on that?

This is the show:
https://www.thetvdb.com/series/the-great-war-time-ghost

The show seems to be essentially not filled in at all.

Edit: Also the show on TVDB has the name "The Great War’ but the name of the url is “the-great-war-time-ghost”. There’s another show on there with the same name that Plex will match to improperly. How shall I name the top level folder?

4

There are no metadata at all on TheTVDB.
It only has the show’s title, but no title of the episodes or even how many episodes there are at all. So that may be an explanation why you won’t get any metadata for it.

5

Actually, there are 2 different shows by that title. One by the BBC and one from Youtube.
I assume you have the BBC version:
https://www.thetvdb.com/series/the-great-war

In order to make it clear to Plex, which version you have, you add the year of when episode 1 of season 1 was aired originally to the folder name.
So:

TV Shows/
   The Great War (1964)/
      Season 01/
         The Great War (1964) - s01e01.ext
         The Great War (1964) - s01e02.ext
         ...
6

Nope, mine is the recent one from youtube. I’m working to just add the metadata to the tags using one of those programs. Do you know which tags I should be editing?

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The only one really necessary would be ‘Title’ where you put the episode’s title in.
Everything else can be done with folder structure and file names.

1 Like
8

I just wanted to reply with some further information for anyone else that has this problem in the future.

Basically no combination of using tags or filenames made Plex label the episodes from the Season view as anything but “Episode 1”

I tried lots of combinations, using the plex dance each time:

S1E1. The Outbreak of WWI - How How Europe Spiraled Into the GREAT WAR - Week 1.mp4
S1E001. The Outbreak of WWI - How How Europe Spiraled Into the GREAT WAR - Week 1.mp4
S1E001 - The Outbreak of WWI - How How Europe Spiraled Into the GREAT WAR - Week 1.mp4

  1. The Outbreak of WWI - How How Europe Spiraled Into the GREAT WAR - Week 1.mp4

None of that worked. Plex would read the filenames and group them in the proper order and by season with most of those patterns, but it would not display the name, even with the “title” metadata field populated.

I noticed that the only time it would populate was when I incorrectly matched it with a different show, “The great War (1964)”. Then it would grab the title field and populate it. Unfortunately, along with that it would populate a bunch of episodic information related to the 1964 show, unrelated to this one from 2014.

I later was able to match the show not using TheTVDB, but one of the other matching services, and naming it “The Great War (2014)”. I’m positive after I associated it with that, it grabbed the title metadata field I used. I know it was using mine since it included a typo of mine.

Interestingly, I did this match right as I finished a plex dance, while it was attempting a match. Right now my Top level TV show folder is not named what it’s named on the internet, and the filenames of season 1 is different than the filenames of season 2-5. I was in the middle of trying out several different patterns to see what worked.

Summary:
It seems that just associating your show with any match online, even a nearly empty one, must be done in order for it to grab the title metadata.

9

The episode titles will not be read from the file name.
The only way to get them into Plex is

  • embedding them into the ‘Title’ meta tag (only possible with mp4 files)
  • matching the item to an existing series on TheTVDB or TheMovieDatabase
10

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