Plex will not add episode names to Personal Series

[jonhgeorg_gmail_com]

Server Version#: 1.25.3.5409
Player Version#:

I’m hoping someone can help me. I wanted to add videos my kids watch incessantly to its own library but no matter what I try I cannot seem to get it to list the episode names and I don’t want to make the changes manually.

All files are in the following format-
/Series (year)/Series (year) - sYYYYeMMDD - Episode Title.mp4
/Series (year)/Series (year) - sYYYYeMMDD - Episode Title.jpg
/Series (year)/cover.jpg

It adds the series correctly by folder name rather than bundling similary named series into one folder, and I finally came across the post telling me to name the thumbnails the same as the media file which solved the thumbnail issue.

I’ve deleted and re-added the library several times trying it with various scanners/agents as priority, with and without local media as priority, with every setting variation I can think of. I’ve cleaned all the bundles yet again following the plex dance post. One time at the beginning I got it to show episode titles but that was when I was still struggling with getting the images to load [I was using cover.jpg and separate sub folders and it just wouldn’t load them] and I don’t remember what settings I used.

The server is running on a Win10 Pro PC that’s always on.

Current library settings-
Library type - TV show [tried ‘other videos’ which worked but added everything like a separate title which was exhausting to try and search]
Scanner - Plex TV series
Agent - Plex TV series
Episode sorting - library default
Episode ordering - The Movie Database
Checked-

• use original titles [added after library creation. Refresh all metadata changed nothing,]
• prefer artwork based on library language
• use local assets
• prefer local metadata [added after library creation. Refresh all metadata changed nothing,]
• find extras

Agent order-
*Personal media

• Local media assets [when I put this first it grouped the series incorrectly by embedded tags vs folder location].

Server logs attached.

Pages I’ve already tried-

Plex Server Not Showing Episode Name

Server Version is: Version 1.5.5.3634

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200241558-agents/

Thanks
Plex Media Server Logs_2022-01-16_12-22-09.zip (5.3 MB)

[tom80H]

You mentioned this is a personal series – so I take it none of those titles are on TheTVDb or The Movie Database?

The “Plex TV Series” agent will only look up those online sources for metadata of known commercial shows. Even if you’re actually using the “Personal Media Shows” agent, Plex won’t pull episode names from file names.
You can configure Plex to prefer embedded metadata – in which case you need to add the metadata to your files.

Alternatively you could actually use an other-video type library and use collections to organize those videos in categories (e.g. birthday parties, holiday trips, x-mas…).

[jonhgeorg_gmail_com]

Some of the videos are from YouTube as I got tired of listening to commercials every 3 minutes when the kids watch the same thing over and over as background noise. Some are in TheTVDb but if they are, the listings are wildly out of date. Honestly your solution of using collections, while a pain, is probably going to be the best solution. I wish Plex had an Other Videos [Series] option as that would dramatically simplify things. I cannot be the only one who would find that useful. I’ll take a look and see if I can import the metadata to the files themselves and try that route. Thanks for the tip.

[jonhgeorg_gmail_com]

I edited the metadata and it fixed the issue. Thanks for pointing that out. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that, was so obsessed that it should just read the filenames that I forgot to do that.