Plex reads wrong date for date based custom TV show file names

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

I have a custom TV show setup in a separate TV library with the following settings

  • Library Type = TV Shows
  • Folder contains only my custom TV show
  • Agent = Personal Media Shows

For my custom show I have seasons set to hide to display all videos in one list by date

My directory is setup as follows
\Custom TV Shows\TV Show
Files are named as follows
YYYY-MM-DD-Show Name.mp4
YYYY-MM-DD-Show Name.jpg (for poster)

For most of the files, this works correctly. Plex is able to read the date from the file name and display the video and poster correctly in the application.
But for some files, it reads the wrong date from the file name and displays the poster for one video on multiple videos (eg poster for video a is displayed on video a and video b).
Some times the name of file show (pulled from mp4 metadata) will be correct for video a and video b but some times it will display the title for video a on video a and video b.

When view the Media Info for each video, the Media Info displays the info for Video A when I select Video A and the info for Video B when I select Video B. Also playing the videos plays the correct file. I don’t have this problem when I use a sequential number at the beginning of the file name instead of a date.

An example of what I am seeing now is I have the following files
Video A
File Name: 2020-03-07-File A.mp4
Poster Name: 2020-03-07-File A.jpg
Metadata Title: Video A

Video B
File Name: 2020-03-08-File B.mp4
Poster Name: 2020-03-08-File B.jpg
Metadata Title: Video B

What I am seeing in the application when viewing the videos in my custom show
Item 1

  • Video Title : Video A
  • Date: 3/16/20
  • Poster: Video B

Item 2

  • Video Title: Video B
  • Date: 3/16/20
  • Poster: Video B

I have done the plex dance, I have dropped the entire library and rebuilt it, I have deleted and recopied the affected files, but nothing I do will resolve the issue. I doubt it is related to the way I have my files named as it will randomly start working for one set of videos and jump to another set.

Any help or insight as to what might be causing the problem would be appreciated. Thanks.

1 Like
2

Have you tried naming it with date after show title? https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/#toc-1

Screen Shot 2020-03-16 at 6.38.07 PM

3

Have you tried this set up with the ‘Other Videos’ library rather than TV library? You could eliminate a problem with the agents that way. ‘Other Videos’ appear to be dependent on your custom settings or in the case of MP4 the meta data.

4

If you put videos in a TV Show Library they have to conform to TV Show structuring - even if they use the Personal Media Agent (required for ‘unmatchable’ items).

Fix Match at the show level of ‘The TV Show’, go to Search Options and Select Personal Media from the Agent Drop Down. This prevents Plex from trying to match it and requires hand editing.

A TV Show Library/
....The TV Show/
.......Season 01
........The TV Show - S01E01.mkv

No date is needed
No embedded metadata is needed.
The files will play one after the other just like a TV Show.

If you get tired of fighting Plex with those images - edit the show/episode as required and drop the images in the editor instead. They’ll go right in the bundle. This does put the artwork in the database - if you hold the database on a local drive with ample space this may be an option for you.

5

I added sub folders for the seasons and added the show name to the beginning of the file names to exactly match the Colbert Report example from the documentation.

  /The Colbert Report
      /Season 08
         The Colbert Report - 2011-11-15 - Elijah Wood.avi

That has resolved the issue with the art and titles displaying incorrectly. The only thing that is still not displaying correctly is the date that displays under the art and title when I am viewing the list of episodes. It appears to show the files Modified Date instead of the date from the title. Other than that, the videos are sorting and playing as expected.

Not a big issue, just trying to figure out how this works and what I am doing wrong.

Thanks,

6

What is in the info at TVDB?

If the item is matching doesn’t that info have to come from them - as it can’t come from that AVI file?

7

it is a custom show of his own. that is why he is using personal media agent.

8

OK.

Why not just name, structure and match it at TVDB?
or
Is TVDB the problem?
(I wouldn’t be surprised)

9

This has zero to do with the TVDB. It is a custom show. like maybe he made home videos of his child’s life into tv episodes, that is what the Personal Media Shows agent is for. Like the Other Videos library it does not get online metadata.

I think the reason is it taking the modified date is that usually when using the other videos library and people are using home videos they care about the date the video was made/modified not when it was added. I’m trying to figure out why when I made one ( in screenshot) it used the date in file name but his did not. it might have to do with him using MP4s and i was using MKVs but not sure yet.

Personal Media Shows is not used much so I’m sure it has some quirks that need to be addressed

10


 all things being equal - he should use MKVs and name them just like you did.
seems like the fastest way to happiness, to me.

11

I ran some tests as described below, each time doing the Plex dance inbetwen each test.

I did have some success with small tests removing the “Media created” attribute found under the Origin header under the Details tab on the Windows Explorer file properties window. The small set of videos displayed correctly for that test. However, when I removed that attribute from all of the videos, the issue returned and got worse, impacting a larger number of videos. The art, title, and dates for a number of the videos started appearing in Plex in the same way as I described in the original post.

I then remuxed all of the files to MKVs using FFMPEG and that made all of the videos display incorrectly.

Now no matter what I do, the videos will not display correctly and now I am getting a weird mix of some videos showing a date and some videos showing an episode number.

Even moving the videos into a separate library that is setup as Other Videos I still experience the exact same problem.

At this point, is there any way to clean out the entire database and rebuild it short of uninstalling the program?

12

The Plex Dance should clear it all away.

Remove any and all videos, structures, images - the works.
Scan the library.
Empty Trash
See that everything is gone.
Clean Bundles

From here it should all be brand new.

13

That and rebooting the computer seem to have gotten things back to where they were to begin with, much improved over what I managed to get myself into.

I came up with a work around that appears to be working. Instead of using the date format in the file name I repurposed the season and episode numbers to store the dates. I put the year as the season number and then put the full year month day as the episode number.

The videos now display in chronological order, adding new videos regardless of date should automatically fall into the correct order (main reason I wasn’t using an incrementing episode number), Plex can now keep the metadata for each video separate. Assuming this doesn’t fall apart the next time I add a video, this should solve my problem.

Thank you to everyone that offered assistance with this.

1 Like
14

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