It seems that since plex implemented the .plexmatch for the series scanner feature ( release notes ) plex series scanner does not recognise anything except what is documented in https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/ ALL of my files have the following formats: Series Name [1x01] - Ep name or Series Name - 2050-02-02 - Ep Name depending on need.
After the update only the second example I gave was getting parsed and added (as they are coincidentally the same as documented in the section Date-Based Television Shows ).
When I changed some of the newer additions to my file server to the format specified in the second link provided, i.e. Series Name s01e01 - Ep name they all got parsed.
I checked logs and no errors exist, in fact when it gets to a folder with new additions it will say in the logs that it found X amount of new files not in the database and starts parsing them. Only the ones with the changed naming structure get added.
I have ran the database optimisation and checked logs (before after and during) for any errors or warnings (and I get warnings about slow queries, but I’m 99% sure that has something to do with my bad vhdd configuration that i have been too lazy to fix), and I have no errors.
In fact in the logs plex knows that new episodes exist in a folder but again, it ignores all if not in the format described above.
Suffice it to say that my library is not small and renaming all my series is a non starter…
Devs! what about an if statement? and if .plexmach not present use old series scanner range of formats??
Thanks!!
The [00x00] naming is no longer supported, I had to go thru mine and remove the [` ], plex now explicitly ignores anything in brackets.
EDIT: That was due to a related parser change to enable ignoring stuff in file names.
The most important bit in the file name is the appropriate season and episode number notation s02e17 which in this example means Season 2 Episode 17
Many users use Filebot or Tiny Media Manager to assist with naming. Microsoft PowerToys PowerRenamer is also useful for simple pattern match replacements.
thank you. I spent the last 20 hours trying to replace my media server and it just would not detect anything, even though it’s the same library I’ve been using for years. I’ve had to rename 22,000 files over this, even though my naming used “[s00e00]” format, since everything within brackets is ignored, even if it’s the season and episode.
I’m afraid it’s not over though. Is this going to end up hitting me over the way my movies are named? Is “Thor [3] Ragnarok” going to be misinterpreted as some movie named only “Thor Ragnarok” now? Sigh. I’m really not looking forward to trying to rename the movies - they are nowhere near as consistently named (nor could they be) and if I have to remove the brackets on all of them I’m sure that’s going to cause more problems than it could possibly save by creating external hint files. /sigh
Supposedly this is just the series scanner so your movies should be safe. for now…
so to anyone going through this pain, beware we can keep our old file names as long as we add nothing new to that containing folder.
Series_Name
Season 1
Series_Name [1x01].avi
Season 2
Series_Name [2x01].mp4
If you add something new to the Season 2 folder (like the properly named Series_Name s02e02.mp4) plex in its infinite wisdom will wipe its knowledge of any other files in that folder (Season 2) and you have to rename them all correctly.
Unlike @shawnkhall I only changed what I needed, my library is 20 years big and I’m not about to start bulk change things when i don’t have to.
<vent>
seriously plex… it was all so perfect why did you have to mess with what works…
no podcasts, less powerful parser… bah!!! </vent>
