So I was testing a video on my media server cause windows wasn’t playing it for some reason. Which I normally do before transferring them to my server. I didn’t change the text-Mobile Suit Gundam SEED DESTINY Phase 41 - Freedom and Justice (1920x1080 H264 AC3). Plex identified the episode without a problem. Before I normally had to put E01 or such for it to properly Identify it. IDK when this has been improved but I was impressed. It may of just saw the 41 and was able to identify it that way.
File names which don’t conform to the required naming schema
may work for a while.
Until they eventually don’t.
If you want this to be reliable, rename your files.
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This kind of thing is almost always naming/structure problems.
I recommend:
TV Shows ← The TV library points here
_______ShowName (year)
____________Season 01
__________________ShowName (year) - s01e01 - Optional Name.ext
_________________ShowName (year) - s01e02 - Optional Name.ext
__________________and so on for the shows in season 01
____________Season 02 ← just like Season 01
____________Season 03 ← and so on for each season
____________Season 00 ← or “Specials”
__________________ShowName (year) - s00e01 - Optional name
__________________ShowName (year) - s00e02 - Optional name
__________________and so on for each special
Note 1: the eXX part of the specials must match EXACTLY what is found in TheTVDB
Note 2: The (year) may be omitted for shows that do not have more than one occurrence throughout the years.
There are many other structures and naming systems that work but this is the one I use and it just works.
For a mass rename I use FileBot with this format string {n.replaceTrailingBrackets()} - {s00e00.lower()} - {t}
I strongly recommend this structure as it simply works. Do not complicate that which works when simple.
I normally just do
Series name (Year, if desired)
Season
series name and episode number, example E10
This has worked so far for years, except for say episodes that are two parts. example episode 1 part 1 and part 2. Those can be a pain at times.
I was just surprised plex named the episode correctly in this case cause I had not renamed it yet.
I’ll have to give filebot a look. That would probably save me a tone of time.
Never, I repeat, NEVER be surprised by any matching Plex does to eps that are incorrectly named and simply naming an episode E10 is incorrect.
It is technically correct but it is at best incomplete. The only reason I can think of to not name each episode fully like:
"ShowName - SxxEyy - Optional info.ext "
is that if full naming might exceed some imposed limit on path length or some such problem.
I have tested naming eps simply Eyy or SxxEyy (without the actual show name) and it does work, mostly, but it is not, it seems to me, best practice. It prevents knowing what the show.is when the file is isolated and that is well less than optimal.
I need to correct myself also. If it is multiple seasons I do “Show name - SxxExx”.
If its 1 season I just put the “Show name - Exx”. I have not ever used the optional info.ext. I don’t know what I would use it for to be honest. But I am going to probably make sure all episdoes are named properly once I get bacvk into digitizing my collections. I am also using filebot and I do like it so far.
While not required it is better, a LOT better to have full naming and season folders even if it is only one season and a unique name for the show.
It hurts nothing and might help on some of the fringe cases.
I try very hard to get the naming right and with my best efforts there is still the occasional mismatch. When that happens it is easy to fix 99.995% of the time if the naming is like I have shown.
It should be noted that I have only one show that I simply cannot match in Plex or Emby but it is a quite obscure and not widely distributed. It is only one season and only the one show and only 18 episodes so manually setting it up is pretty easy.
It is possible that it might match now as I imported it 7 years ago and the matching engines and methods for Emby and Plex have both gotten much better.
I still would always have season folders. It just works better.
One more thing: Some people like to use single digits when they can like Show - SxEy. It sode usually work but it might introduce problems. SxxEyy is much better and not any harder to use.
Name shows EXACTLY as Plex wants.
Use two digit seasons and episodes (This does not include the three or four digit situations but I have nothing that uses three or four digits in either season or episode numbering.)
Use season folders in all cases.
Avoid spurious info in the file name. I know Plex (Emby too for that matter) is supposed to ignore everything within square brackets but I trust Plex and Emby in the matching department very little and I have seen too many posts with issues because of naming to deviate even a little.
I strongly believe that we should trust Plex’s and Emby’s matching but we should make it easy for them.
One more thing a LOT of files contain bad embedded metadata and that screws up almost everything if it is seen during matching. It is best to remove all embedded metadata and make sure Plex does not even look for it. Pxex defaults (or at least they did in the past) local media asserts to the first position in matching. That is usually wrong but Plex has known about the bug for many years and have never even acknowledged it was a problem.
So, for best matching, unless you want to use embedded data for matching, get Plex to ignore local media assets.
I’ve NEVER had show names in the video files themselves, and it has worked wonderfully. I religiously use SxxExx in all my files, even for single season shows though. I also do NOT use a Season 01 folder if that is the only season the show contains (lot of anime are single season).
A while back, when I first started using Plex, I had a lot of shows that were just “/Showname/01 - EpisodeName.ext”, and that worked too (mostly). From my experience, just having a 2-digit number is enough, Plex will assume it is part of Season 1. Even if it sits in the root of the show folder without a Season 01 folder. But if you try to number episodes as “01 - EpisodeName” in a Season 01 folder and ANOTHER file called “01 - EpisodeName” in a Season 02 folder, Plex will think they are BOTH S01E01, and that you have a duplicate file for an episode.
- In my opinion, the MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO is to name the folder containing the episodes correctly, WITH year in (parenthesis).
- After that, use SxxExx format for every file.
- If there are multiple seasons, then do a folder for each season. I haven’t tried a completely flat no-folder structure, but it seems important to at LEAST separate each season into their own folder.
But… if in doubt, follow the naming schema. Plex found that Gundam episode because it had a number 41 in it. It assumed it was episode 41 in season 01.
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