Library Scan not finding a lot of my files

Plex Media Server
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1

Hello!
I just started using plex for the first time and ran the Library Scan on a folder on my external HDD called “TV Shows” It finds many of the files but quite a few of them are not found by the scan. For one of the shows, It’s entire folder was not being detected. I realized that each individual episode was in its own subfolder. I tried to move each episode into the main folder and append the episode number to the file name. For some reason, this allowed the library scan to detect 4 of the 13 episodes(including one that i left in its subfolder without renaming due to having corresponding subtitle files. Even though I did not touch this episode at all, somehow it was now among the 4 episodes the scan could detect). The rest of the episodes remained undetectable by plex. They are still perfectly watchable from my external hard drive and all files have the same owners, permissions and naming conventions.
I have a similar but different issue with another one of the shows on my hard drive. That folder contains 175 files. Each one being an episode of the show and using the same file format(.mkv), permissions and naming convention. The plex scan finds 100 of these files, but not the remaining 75. I thought that maybe it was some sort of limit on the number of files you could have, however that brings me to my third issue.
The third issue is with a third tv show. That show has 173 files which are contained in many subfolders as well as 22 standalone files. All of them are .mkv files. The plex scanner is able to find 153 of them. In my plex library i see all but 2 of the subfolders. These folders that do show up contain all of their correct episodes. However, none of the 22 standalone files show up. Instead, an additional folder that does not exist on my external hard drive shows up, and it contains 3 of the 22 standalone files but with completely inaccurate file names.

Does anyone know what is going on here?

Thank you!

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  1. Only point the Plex library to the top folder, where all your tv shows are located in sub-folders. Never point to individual shows!
  2. Look up your show on TheTVDB
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Name the episode files according to the above linked naming guide.
    Use the same title as for the top folder. Show's Title - s01e01 - additional info.ext (’- additional info’ can be left out)
  6. After you corrected the naming and folder structure, perform the Plex Dance with all files for this show.
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Hi Otto, thank you for the reply! I have made sure that the naming and folder structure is correct on my drive. Unfortunately, naming the files exactly as they are on Thetvdb.com is not feasible because the episode titles there are in another language and use foreign characters. I would not be able to tell which episode I was watching. Additionally, it would require me to rename over 300 files one by one and they are already named in such a way that makes them easy to identify and navigate. That said, even if i were to rename all of the files exactly as they are on the website, how would this allow the scan to find the files that are currently missing, considering that the ones it does see are named using the exact same convention as the ones it doesn’t see? Thank you!

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The episode title is irrelevant. That is being fetched from TheTVDB anyway and not read from the file names.
There is e.g. Filebot to rename and re-organize whole tv shows at once.

I don’t understand. The whole point is to make Plex keeping track of that. It will remember which episode you watched already and which is next.

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Right but if i want to watch a specific episode or episodes not in order, how would I find the episode that i want to watch if the titles are in another language? Or what if i want to watch the episodes directly from my HDD or put them on a thumb drive but now the file names are in another language?
Additionally, would I not be able to use plex at all for things that are not on thetvdb.com?

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The right solution would be to add the episode titles in your language to TheTVDB. Then set the language of your tv show library to your native language.

Create a library of the type ‘Other Videos’ for items which are neither “tv shows”, nor real “Movies”.
Plex won’t try to match these items to any metadata source.

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