Naming convention - {tmdb-123456}

General Discussions Plex Features
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To help Plex identify my movies correctly, I’m planning on naming them as told in the link below:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/

The problem is that the new scanner is expecting TMDB IDs between curly brackets.

It must follow the form {[source]-[id]} .

I’m about to give up doing that because curly brackets is an inconvenient choice that can interfere with my scripts.

My question is, can I use [ ] instead or this document is updated and { } is really the requirement for that to work?

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It’s my understanding that Plex will ignore whatever is inside square brackets [ ]. So yes, it must be curlies.

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I agree with @beckfield, and I’ve given the same answer to others.

And I think it’s good practice to follow what the documentation says, which is the nice curly brackets. And that section of the document HAS been updated recently.

Except … square brackets work fine.

Garbage [tmdb-143204].mp4 instantly matches by the TMDB ID.

And if you’re going to cheat, it matches IMDB IDs without the label, so they can be shorter.

Nonsense [tt1213644].mp4 works too.

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But is it matching because of the tmdb id? Try putting an ID for a different movie in there and see what it does.

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Hahaha, sorry! I should have made it more clear that those were nonsense words. If you put an ID in the filename (OR parent directory) it seems to be way more important than any other part of the naming.

That’s a file full of 00000’s straight out of /dev/zero, and they’re not movies called “Garbage” or “Nonsense”.

My TMDB example:

My IMDB example:

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I just tried this with “Casablanca” and “Arsenic and Old Lace.” I put the tt code for Arsenic in the folder and filename of Casablanca. With curly brackets, Fix Match on Casablanca finds Arsenic as a match. In square brackets, it searches for several seconds and finds no match. So square brackets don’t appear to work.

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I firmly agree that you should use what’s documented. You can’t complain if you aren’t following the instructions. :slight_smile:

I picked the worst movie I could think of, yours are much classier.

I created these:

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) [tt0034583]/Arsenic and Old Lace.mp4
Casablanca (1942) [tt0036613]/Casablanca.mp4

They were both instantly matched - per the IMDB ID. Which makes for a very confusing screenshot.

image
image986×507 81.3 KB

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I wonder if Windows vs. Linux has anything to do with this. I’m on Linux. I also notice that you put the TT number in the folder name, but not the filename. The graphics on the Help page show it in both. I’ve often wondered if it really needs to be in both.

Sorry, @CostaHT, we kinda hijacked your thread, but hopefully it’s all related and informative. :slight_smile:

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FreeBSD/FreeNAS for testing.

I messed about with it some more. I get equal performance with square and curly brackets, and with the ID in the directory name or the filename. I’ve never actually tried putting it in both. All of these seem to be equivalent, and the ID trumps the rest of the filename.

These all match as Arsenic and Old Lace - the power of the ID match!

.../Casablanca (1942)/Casablanca (1942) {imdb-tt0036613}.mp4
.../Casablanca (1942) {imdb-tt0036613}/Casablanca (1942).mp4
.../Casablanca (1942)/Casablanca (1942) {tt0036613}.mp4
.../Casablanca (1942) {tt0036613}/Casablanca (1942).mp4
.../lakjsdflkasdjfklajsdf/jlaksjfdlkasjfd {tt0036613}.mp4

And some square cousins that also match:

.../Casablanca (1942)/Casablanca (1942) [imdb-tt0036613].mp4
.../Casablanca (1942) [tt0036613]/Casablanca.mp4
.../lakjsdflkasdjfklajsdf/jlaksjfdlkasjfd [tt0036613].mp4

Even these work, but it’s gross and nobody should ever do it:

.../{tt0036613}.mp4                 (as AaOL)
.../[tt0034583].mp4                 (as Casablanca)
.../{tt0036613}/klasjdflksdjaf.mp4  (as AaOL)
.../[tt0034583]/klasjdflksdjaf.mp4  (as Casablanca)

Edit: the file takes precedence if there’s a conflict:

.../{tt0036613}/{tt0034583}.mp4     (as Casablanca, tt0034583)
.../{tt0034583}/{tt0036613}.mp4     (as AaOL, tt0036613)
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To comment on another part of this, does this imply that the scripts are dangerous? Once you’ve handled spaces, quotation marks, and square brackets, curly brackets should be pretty safe.

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In one of the documents I was reading, it says that once matched using the folder’s name, the file name doesn’t matter. In different wording, but basically that.

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