I have read through the guidelines for naming series episodes and spent 30 minutes trying to get it right with no success. Can someone give me the actual file name and format I would need for the series “Empire, season 3 episode 14”? Thanks!
Btw, I would like them to show up in my “Movies” folder, or would it be smarter/easier to create a separate videos folder?
Empire - s03e14 - Optional episode name.
But the structure is more important than the name.
See:
TV Shows <— The library points here
---------TV Show Name (Year first aired if needed) <— This folder holds the season folders
------------------Season 01 <— This folder holds all the episodes for season 01
-------------------------ShowName - s01e01 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------ShowName - s01e02 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------And so on for the rest of season 01
------------------Season 02 <— This folder holds all the episodes for season 02
-------------------------ShowName - s02e01 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------ShowName - s02e02 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------And so on for the rest of season 02
------------------Season 03 <— This folder holds all the episodes for season 03
-------------------------ShowName - s03e01 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------ShowName - s03e02 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------And so on for the rest of season 03Note: The year after the show name is only normally needed or desired if there is more that one show with exactly the same name. Check http://thetvdb.com/ if you are not sure and match exactly the name used there.
There are naming methods other than the above that work but this does work 99.9% of the time.
If you are going to use Plex it is best to use the proper naming conventions so Plex makes the best match possible. Trying to force Plex to use other naming methods is just asking for frustration.
https://plexapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200220687-Naming-Series-Based-TV-Shows
Hope that helps a bit.
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Yea, that’s what I read through for like 10 minutes but I wasn’t sure what punctuation to use. So it would be “Empire(dash)sxxexx”? That seems to be where I’m confused -what should go in the parentheses, a space or a dash? Now to put all the episodes into a folder I would just create one with the series name?
No-Can-Do, Kemosabe…
You can’t have TV Shows and Movies in the same Library.
Unfortunately there are several versions of ‘Empire’ at TVDB and none of them have a Season 3, so you’re likely going to have to research that show name a little deeper before I can provide any clues about how to name and structure it, but ideally it should look something like:
A TV Show Library/
…Some Mysterious Empire Show/
…Season 03/
…Some Mysterious Empire Show - S03E14.xxx
Search out the actual show name here:
http://thetvdb.com/
Inject Actual Show name in the above structure.
Undocumented in any guidelines is the fact that if there are several ‘versions’ of the show at TVDB you’ll need to also ‘Inject’ (YEAR) into the folder and file names:
Some Mysterious Empire Show (YEAR)/
…Season 03/
…Some Mysterious Empire Show (YEAR) - S01E01.xxx
FileBot, link in my signature can do most of this for you in seconds.
Ahh ok. That may be part of the problem. I went through that database and the series isn’t in there.
You got a picture of the series? More details about it? Sometimes they like to hide things inside other things at TVDB and If I had more to go on I might be able to get the bloodhounds on the scent.
Ok, I just went in and added the “TV Shows” lubrary amd it looks like I got it figured out. Problem was my trying to put these in my “Movies” library. Thanks for your help!
@rage4order said:
So it would be “Empire(dash)sxxexx”?
“Empire(space)(dash)(space)sxxexx”
Just opened up Plex and everything’s perfect! Thanks Otto and Juice!
…and Elijah! 
If you are talking about this series:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3228904/ (IMBD Link)
Then the naming:
Empire (2015)
…Season 03
…Empire (2015) - s03e14 - Optional Description.ext
Place that in a TV TV library folder and everything should be good.
As @JuiceWSA says movie libraries and TV libraries MUST be separate and I would add that movie libraries can be a good bit liberal in their structure BUT TV libraries need to pretty strictly follow the rules/structure in order to identify content correctly.
Yes, that’s the one.
Interesting to note - (2015) isn’t required with the current bug level of Plex/TVDB 'cause every call for Empire will ‘default’ to the most recent version.
If you are unfortunate enough to want to match to any other Empire, particularly the earliest version, FileBot will be of little use. FileBot will match to the name used by TVDB and that name is simply ‘Empire’ - that will default to the most recent version. The users (us) will have to know about this undocumented, but heavily researched bug
( https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/254362/tv-series-name-matching-research )
exists and manually Inject (1962) into the Show/Episode Names - or Fix Match. Employees keep telling us it only takes a few moments so no big deal, right? Uh, wrong. It’s no big deal for employees or perhaps Power Users that know about it - but what about the hundreds of thousands of other users?
Fix Match - the ultimate cure for mysterious design.
