Plex Series Metadata Not Importing Correctly

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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I added the mp4 files for a new series, The Little Rascals, from 1922. I renamed all my episodes using Filebot. They are “The Little Rascals - SxxExx - Episode Name”. Ive tried moving local media assets to the bottom of Agents. I’ve tried selecting TVDB and TMDV both but no matter what the epsiode Metadata does not import at all. I just keep seeing the episode titles as the archive.org web address they came from.

Anyone know how to get Plex to grab the correct Metadata for these?

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See that your season and episode numbers are following

/TV Shows
   /The Little Rascals (1922) - {tvdb-70572}
      /Season 01
         The Little Rascals - S01E01 - Episode Name
         The Little Rascals - S01E02 - Episode Name
         The Little Rascals - S01E03 - Episode Name
         ...

The Plex library must point to the folder /TV Shows only.
Disable this checkbox in the properties of the library, on the Advanced tab: “Prefer local metadata”

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So I’ve got the names setup like that. And then I went into libraries > advanced > and changed that but the names of the episodes are still showing the archive.org address as the episode titles and no synopsis.

4

I assume that your files are mp4 containers, right?
I think the titles are embedded metadata.
Disabling the above mentioned checkbox should tell Plex not to prefer them, the next time you trigger Refresh Metadata of the series.

But of course you could also eradicate the metatags from the files. I use mp3tag for that kind of thing.

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So I used mp3tag to remove the tag and the files now show as just Episode numbers (Episode 1, Episode 5 etc.)

I’ve done all you’ve mentioned above.

Screenshot 2025-09-09 195929
Screenshot 2025-09-09 1959292310×1596 147 KB

6

Do your files use season numbers from 01 onwards, or do they use years from 1922 on?

Do the episode numbers restart from 01 with each new season, or does a new season continue the episode numbers from the previous season?

Did you edit the show and have set the “Episode Ordering” to “TheTVDB (aired)”?

7

Got it to work a few minutes ago. You helped by cueing me into the hyphen in the main folder name. I had it named as The Litttle Rascals (1922) - (tvdb 70572). With no hyphen between tvdb and 70572. As soon as I added that hyphen it worked. That is weird. None of my other TV series have that issue as they all simply use tvdb, a space, then the ID number. This is the only one that needed that hyphen added. So odd.

Thank you so much for such a simple fix that saved me a looooot of typing.

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Ensure that you use braces instead of regular parentheses to enclose the tvdb id number.

That means that Plex is not using them to help with matching. It was successful by using the show’s title (and year) from the folder name, so it didn’t matter in most cases that you didn’t use the right syntax.

The correct syntax for these id matching hints is documented in the official support articles: https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/

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