Naming TV shows in Plex - Multiple series with identical names

[bartb045]

I’d like to know what others are doing with TV series to name them properly for PLEX to automatically find the RIGHT show when there are several with the same name. I’ll use the old TV series from 1978, “The Incredible Hulk” as an example.

Normal naming convention is to name a series with the show’s exact name:

Shows
The Incredible Hulk
Season 01
The Incredible Hulk - s01e01 - Pilot
The Incredible Hulk - s01e02 - Death in the Family
Season 02
The Incredible Hulk - s02e01 - Married
The Incredible Hulk - s02e02 - The Antowuk Horror
Season 03
The Incredible Hulk - s03e01 - Metamorphosis

Now, on TheTVDB.com there are 3 TV shows with this name:
“The Incredible Hulk”, “The Incredible Hulk (1982)”, “The Incredible Hulk (1996)”

By just dropping this series into my shows library the way it’s named above, PLEX automatically matches it to the “1996” version, not the correct, 1978 version which is the first one with no date in the title on TheTVDB.com.

Of course, I can use the option to fix the match for the series, but I like it to do this automatically when possible. I find that I can fix it by naming the folder and episodes like this:

Shows
The Incredible Hulk (1978)
Season 01
The Incredible Hulk - s01e01 - Pilot
The Incredible Hulk - s01e02 - Death in the Family
Season 02
The Incredible Hulk - s02e01 - Married
The Incredible Hulk - s02e02 - The Antowuk Horror
Season 03
The Incredible Hulk - s03e01 - Metamorphosis

I was surprised this worked actually, because I didn’t have the same title for each episode. This seems to indicate that once PLEX matches a series based on the top level directory it gets all episodes correct, basically just looking at the “s01e01” section of the episode name.

I would have expected to have to name each episode too, like this:

Shows
The Incredible Hulk (1978)
Season 01
The Incredible Hulk (1978) - s01e01 - Pilot
The Incredible Hulk (1978) - s01e02 - Death in the Family
Season 02
The Incredible Hulk (1978) - s02e01 - Married
The Incredible Hulk (1978) - s02e02 - The Antowuk Horror
Season 03
The Incredible Hulk (1978) - s03e01 - Metamorphosis

However, that’s alot of work. and if I ever wanted to rename the series then I’d have to rename each title too.

What do others do? Might something break in the future if I use the second example above and just add the date to the show title?

Why don’t I just “Fix Match”? Because in the future if I move the show to a new PLEX server I’d have to fix the match again if PLEX isn’t automatically getting the right one…

Thoughts or insights?

Bill

[NewPlaza]

@bartb045

Normal naming convention is to name a series with the show’s exact name:

Normally, perhaps.
I always include the year in every series title.
I would name them

The Incredible Hulk (1978)
The Incredible Hulk (1982)
The Incredible Hulk (1996)

@bartb045

I was surprised this worked actually, because I didn’t have the same title for each episode. This seems to indicate that once PLEX matches a series based on the top level directory it gets all episodes correct, basically just looking at the “s01e01” section of the episode name.

You are very correct on that. Take a look at this example.

Double Episodes - The Office Season 3

But it doesn’t deviate from the naming convention. Each file has the season# and episode#. That’s all you need. I’ve seen this a lot. Many people seem to think the entire show is somehow tied to the title name of the episodes. They are not. Plex does not base entire series on a single episode name or a collection of episode names. The series is based solely on the folder name it finds. Plex does not base episodes on the title wording. The episodes is solely based on the numbering you give the…

While most people will argue that you should use the same name(me too for other reasons). It can be done.

Though, I strongly advise you use the TITLE and YEAR in the filename.
I once had a RAID failure with no backup and I was able to recover all files(but not the folders they were in). It was a nightmare, going through thousands of like files

The Flash
Doctor Who
Battlestar Galactica
Bionic Woman

and many more…

[bartb045]

Your comments make sense. I try to keep everything backed up properly, but there’s always that possible first time where you’re left with thousands of orphaned file-s and no good way to reintegrate unless you have a descriptive file name.

I think going forward I’m going to follow the same standard we have for movies and include the series begin date, even for the episode files.