After a few months of hair-pulling, I finally “imported” all my media content to Plex. All that is except for 5 remaining tv documentaries. The docu’s that were theatrically released, I put into the movies container, and renamed to “Documentaries”. The remaining are TV documentaries that I want to put into the TV container, renamed “Documentaries 2”. I manually named and tagged all the shows according to Plex structure requirement and confirmed with TVDB.
This is where the mystery begins. Although all the shows were tagged/named the same, Plex is only recognizing one; Ken Burns “The West”. The other 4 Ken Burns, along with the BBC “Planet Earth” are not.
Here’s the successful one:
/Media
/Documentaries 2
/The West (1996)
/Season 1
The West - S01E01 - The People (1500-1806).avi
Here’s one of the ones that are not:
/Media
/Documentaries 2
/The Civil War (1990)
/Season 1
The Civil War - S01E01 - The Cause (1861).avi
I’m at a loss as to how Plex is recognizing one and not the others. Am I missing something? I’ve even tried many different namings to no avail. Also tried using FileBot and got even worse results.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Anyone with these shows in your collection?
So close to finishing, I can almost see daylight.
Hopefully someone can come up with a solution to my dilemma. My fate is in the hands of the community!
If your TV library is pointing at “Media” then that is the problem. TV libraries cannot have sub-folders except the shows themselves. Your TV library should point to “Documentaries 2”
Also single digit season numbers have been known to cause problems. Try using “Season 01” instead.
Aside from that there are many documentaries that are not in TheTVDB but are in theMovieDB. Those are considered movies not TV shows.
make sure the 1st part of the episode file names matches the show name as found in the main folder. Should be…
Media > Documentaries 2 > The West (1996) > Season 01 > The West (1996) - S01E01.avi
Media > Documentaries 2 > The Civil War (1990) > Season 01 > The Civil War (1990) - S01E01.avi
a few comments…
try to use 2-digit season numbers… 1-digit season folders work most of the time but there’s examples where this is causing trouble for Plex.
the episode name after the sXXeYY pattern is optional and should work most of the times… if there’s some special notation, punctuation, digits this might interfere with the scanning. that’s why I recommend to drop it.
Question: does Plex not find the files at all or are they just not matched properly?
Didn’t realize that about the season numbering. I’ll try that first when I get the chance tonight. Thx.
{And yes, all shows are pointing to the “Documentaries 2” folder.)
You should only have one (1) pointer for each TV Show Library.
Individual TV Shows don’t have a pointer.
If structured properly all TV Shows in a TV Show Library are found.
Tried the “01” for Seasons, but still no luck. To answer tom80H’s question, no, Plex is not recognizing ANY of the other docus. Just the one. And to answer NewPlaza, the docu’s are all in their own folders as I indicated above. Again, none of this makes sense because ALL my TV Docus are structured in EXACTLY the same way, but only one of them is being recognized!
Tomorrow I’ll try tom80H’s other suggestion to drop the episode names and see what happens.
Thx for all your suggestions.
MCEB-TV folder is not part of another TV Show or Movie Library. The folder is unique. MCEB-TV is a folder off the root of my F:/ drive. No TV Show Folders are added to this TV Show Library. The pointer is aimed at MCEB-TV and nowhere else.
File Naming (renaming) and folder structuring (restructuring) is best done OUTSIDE the library - out of the view of Plex and you’re probably going to want to start a whole new bundle for these shows soooo…
I greatly appreciate everyone’s replies/suggestions. Thanks JuiceWSA for those screenshots! At least I see someone was able to get Plex to recognize the Ken Burns docus. It is however EXACTLY as I have created.
I have read about the “Plex Dance” before and will give it a go (probably not till the weekend). Had a feeling I would be re-creating the docu folder. That must be where the problem lies.
Again thanks to all. I always try to work out problems before going on forums because I know how valuable everyone’s time is. If I have problems still I’ll provide you with screenshots.
Problem solved! (But still not understood.)
So what I did was to create a new TV folder called “Documentaries 3”. Moved all docus from “Documentaries 2” into the new one. Hit Scan Library and…voila! Everything populated.
Am I to assume the “Documentaries 2” folder that I previously created got corrupted somehow?
Happy man am I! I can sleep tonight!
Thx again to everyone. Hope my simple solution might help someone else out with the same problem.
