Hi again. I have a doctor who library containing every Classic doctor who 1963 - 89. I have animated versions for missing episodes - some unofficial, Now have these inside a Doctor who folder within my tv folder. I have dragged the first 18 series folders in. Within each series folder I have the numerically numbered folder for each story. Eg 1 An unearthly Child. 2. The daleks. Within these folders I have files labeled xxxx part 1 etc etc . Having allowed plex to scan these files all I get is 6 seasons and the episodes not properly sorted. Is there an easy way to sort this? I’ll rename every file if I need to, but would like some numeric labeling retained so I continue to know what order to watch in. Also Should I change the default search from Plex to TMDB
Best check out the respective TheTVDb.com entries.
https://www.thetvdb.com/series/doctor-who
Most often, those “cluster episodes” are split across multiple episodes – not multiple files of a single episode (e.g. “An Unearthly Child” is actually 4 episodes – not 1 episode split across 4 files).
The official “aired order” structure and naming should look like this:
TV Shows <- the folder linked to your Plex Library
Doctor Who
Season 01
Doctor Who - s01e01 - An Unearthly Child (1).ext <- 1st episode of "An Unearthly Child"
Doctor Who - s01e02 - The Cave of Skulls (2).ext <- 2nd episode of "An Unearthly Child"
Doctor Who - s01e03 - The Forest of Fear (3).ext <- 3rd episode of "An Unearthly Child"
Doctor Who - s01e04 - The Firemaker (4).ext <- 4th episode of "An Unearthly Child"
Doctor Who - s01e05 - The Dead Planet (1).ext <- 1st episode of "The Daleks"
...
Where .ext is the file extension
It’s possible to use DVD order in which case the 4 “An Unearthly Child” episodes are grouped as 1 season etc. – personally I’d not go down that rabbit hole as DVD order basically just covers the first 13 episodes, leaving a total of 810 episodes “unassigned” (similarly, “Absolute Order” leaves 682 episodes unassigned.
There’s apps that can help you with the re-naming of your files if needed (FileBot is one of them).
Many thanks this has solved my problem - I paid for filebot. Still taking a while as my file labelling was just so bad before.
For some doctor who missing episodes I have two versions - for example I have “Mission to the unknown” in a recreated version or animated version. If I label two files the same way will I just get two instances of the same content in plex?
Also, how do I label media for the rare occasions that I have a a combined file containing 4 episodes?
Many thanks!
Multiple versions of the same episode…
You can use the file name suffix to distinguish different versions of one episode. Keep in mind that Plex will not use that part of the file name… inside Plex this will show as different versions and you have the option to pick one when you start playback.
The Play Version dialog will provide you only with some technical details (e.g. bitrates and resolution) to distinguish the files – not the file name or name suffix.
TV Shows
Doctor Who
Season 03
Doctor Who - s03e05 - Recreated Version.ext
Doctor Who - s03e05 - Animated Version.ext
Multi-Episode files
You can name the file so Plex knows this is multiple episodes. This will result in each episode being displayed in your library.
However… Plex has no idea where each episode starts within the file… so you might run into a situation where the same file plays again.
TV Shows
Doctor Who
Season 01
Doctor Who s01e01-e04 - An Unearthly Child.ext
Schema: Show Name > Season XX > Show Name - sXXeYY-eZZ.ext
Where XX is the season number, YY is the number of the 1st episode and ZZ is the number of the final episode in that group
If the different episodes can be recognized e.g. by chapter markers, you could consider splitting them in 1 episode per file.
This is brilliant Tom thanks so much. One final thing I’m struggling with… for Resurrection of the daleks there are 4 episodes but it is only recorded in the database as two as there were two per night. I therefore need to get 4 episodes into two titles
Doctor Who - S21E11 - Resurrection of the Daleks (1)
Doctor Who - S21E12 - Resurrection of the Daleks (2)
So I somehow need to have part a and part b for each episode. Can you help?
Many thanks again. I’m up to Season 21 of 26 so almost done!
If I understand right, you have 2 files for ep 11 and 2 files for ep 12.(4 files under 2 tiles) This is from the Plex page, this part I think is specific to your issue. Hope I got your issue right and this helps. I read your post again and maybe confusing myself. Do you have 2 files, that are suppose to be 4 episodes? If that is the case, on the same picture under Season 02 you can see there is 1 file that is 3 episodes, it’s named S02e01-e03.avi This will show on plex as 3 episodes even though it is 1 file. That is how to solve it if that is the problem.
I suppose @nice1stu provided the correct answer to that problem 
From what I can see on TheTVDb.com, this 2-episode story consists consists of “double-length” episodes (45 minutes per episode vs. the usual 25 minutes for the show).
If you got those episodes as multiple files, naming could/should look like this:
TV Shows
Doctor Who
Season 21
Doctor Who - s21e11 - Resurrection of the Daleks (1) - pt1.ext
Doctor Who - s21e11 - Resurrection of the Daleks (1) - pt2.ext
Doctor Who - s21e12 - Resurrection of the Daleks (2) - pt1.ext
Doctor Who - s21e12 - Resurrection of the Daleks (2) - pt2.ext
Some notes:
- For this to work, your files need to have the same type and streams (e.g. video, audio and subtitle streams in the same order within each file).
- Naming of the files must be identical except for the suffix
- ptX(instead ofptyou can also usecd,disc,disk,dvdorpart) - you can stack up to 8 files to a single item
See “Episodes Split Across Multiple Files” in this support article:
Recommendation:
Keep in mind not all players can deal with files stacked that way. Personally I think it’s best to actually merge those files (link to how to join multi-part video files with MKVToolnix is also described in the support article above).
Worked a treat - cant thank you enough Tom!
If I am not mistaken it originally aired as two episodes but whenever it was repeated, it was edited into the more traditional four episodes. The DVD release included both versions.
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