Hi all. Hope I’m posting in the right forum as I can’t find one specifically for support. The Plex Twitter directed me over here for help with my problem.
I have a TV episode labelled S06E10 to match TheTVDB but it refuses to match correctly and instead shows up as a duplicate for S07E07. I can’t find an ‘unmatch’ button that works on an individual episode for some reason. I’ve done the Plex dance (moving files away, scanning libraries, cleaning bundles, moving them back, scanning libraries again) and it keeps doing the same thing. There is metadata built into the actual file, but that all refers to S06E10 and there is no reference of S07E07 in this. All other episodes in this series match correctly and have exactly the same filenaming structure. TheTVDB doesn’t appear to have any issues with this particular episode.
If anyone knows how I can rectify this properly (i.e. without manually editing the display in Plex) I am all ears!
Thanks to anybody who can help! I have a feeling that the iPlayer code in the filename may be an issue as it contains “7x7” but I would have thought Plex would be reading the filenames from left to right, not right to left.
I would also guess its getting confused by the 7x7 at the end of the series 6 filename (you could try removing this first if you dont want to fully rename, or place this inside square brackets which i think causes it to be ignored)
Personally i would rename them to
P:\TV\Doctor Who (2005)\Season 07\Doctor Who (2005) - S07E07 - The Rings of Akhaten.mp4
P:\TV\Doctor Who (2005)\Season 06\Doctor Who (2005) - S06E10 - The Girl Who Waited.mp4
I have series 7,8 & 9 and the aboce naming works without issue
Thanks. I tried square brackets but it didn’t seem to ignore the code. This is unfortunate as I was trying to keep everything after the episode number the same as the original filename so that I can easily identify the source, should I wish to find a better quality version in the future. For now I’ve just had to remove the code and it does identify the episode properly. I’m sure I read that Plex Scanner ignores everything after the episode number.
I think this might class as a software bug of some kind. What if in the future this sort of thing is in an episode title? “ABC - S07E03 - 2x2 equals 4”? Would that identify as S07E03 or S02E02? A little bit annoying…!
Your naming is wrong! Plex tries as well as it can to match episodes but sometimes it fails when the naming is not correct. The correct format for episode names is:
Show name - SxxEyy - optional info.ext
The dashes are important because Plex uses them as deliminators.
Everything up to the first dash is considered the episode name everything between the first dash and the second is the season and episode info and everything after the second dash is ignored.
Plex tries to match what it sees but you really need to help it so it knows where to look for each piece of data.
Also, since you are using an mp4, you might have embedded metadata in the file that is confusing Plex:
In settings go to agents and each agent (except the "personal) one) move “local media assets” below the others.
Plex is pretty good at matching but it is also just a computer program and needs help to work correctly.
TV Shows <— The library points here
---------TV Show Name (Year first aired if needed) <— This folder holds the season folders
------------------Season 01 <— This folder holds all the episodes for season 01
-------------------------ShowName - s01e01 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------ShowName - s01e02 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------And so on for the rest of season 01
------------------Season 02 <— This folder holds all the episodes for season 02
-------------------------ShowName - s02e01 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------ShowName - s02e02 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------And so on for the rest of season 02
------------------Season 03 <— This folder holds all the episodes for season 03
-------------------------ShowName - s03e01 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------ShowName - s03e02 - Episode Name.ext
-------------------------And so on for the rest of season 03
This repeats for each show and you can have more than one “TV Shows” directory but the library needs to point at each of them.
Note: The year after the show name is only normally needed or desired if there is more that one show with exactly the same name. Check http://thetvdb.com/ if you are not sure and match exactly the name used there.
There are naming methods other than the above that work but this does work 99.9% of the time.
If you are going to use Plex it is best to use the proper naming conventions so Plex makes the best match possible. Trying to force Plex to use other naming methods is just asking for frustration.
Just FYI, the issue did turn out to be the “b014j7x7” iPlayer code in the filename, it was picking up the 7x7 at the end. I had heard that Plex ignores anything after the episode number so left the remaining data in the filenames the same to help with source upgrading in the future - but obviously this is only the case if I use the recommended naming scheme with hyphens.
Topic can be closed if a moderator is reading this.
