Preference for Cataloging anime using Plex?

[chucksroofrepair_gmail_com]

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See my previous posts here: Plex Keeps Unmatching Movies In My Library - #86 by Insomnic_1

@Insomnic_1
Do any of you have a preference for Cataloging ANIME? I seem to have an issue with metadata being recorded for my anime entries. It usually just displays screen caps of the episodes but i want actual cover data, sypnosis, summary’s, staff information, etc like the TV shows and FILMS categories. Usually for anime I use the Plex MOVIE scanner and nothing is missmatched that way. Anime Tv seasons or shows are still able to be viewed as long as I used “folder” format on my device. If I try to use the Plex tv Scanner, I end up with all kinds of miss matching as I did also with my regular live action Tv shows.

I changed the structure to “FOLDERS” with movie scanner instead on my device and that works for the most part. But it would be nice if I can get a more attractive layout for anime as well that follows the same format where I can select “TV series” or “Tv seasons” and check out the various anime stored on my HDDS, grouped by tv show. Is there a special way to catalogue anime on plex?

Specifically for my regular Tv shows, i use a file strucutre that is TITLE > SEASON > EPISODES with the exact naming parameters from TMDB site. How ever with anime its a bit more complicated because you have title names that have to indicate certain other things like fansubs, type of encoding, english, japanese, etc. (See screen shot). Can I use the same basic structure as my Tv shows, but just not change the title names because that would be a nightmare. I been downloading anime for years and I have some archives that are older then my kids. Probably around 15 TB total and it would be an absolute NIGHTMARE if i had to rename everything to fit the standards of what is on TMDB.

I can’t tell you how AMAZING it would be though if i had a plex that looked like this.

[Insomnic_1]

I say everything here from the perspective of someone who helped title Fist of the North Star VHS tapes back in the day so… mostly love for most of the anime community.

This is where anime collectors and regular movie\TV collectors clash… organization. Your screenshot of “AMAZING”? That’s what my anime browsing Plex looks like so it’s doable - with some effort because anime fansubbers\rippers are freakin’ esoteric on purpose. Do you know how many codecs and font packs you had to install just to watch these things before VLC or even CCCP was a thing? And SSA subs? C’mon.

First let’s start with the built in standard options to comply with standard Plex build (and honestly most media builds like Jellyfin, XMBC, Emby… pretty much everything).

You’re going to have to split Anime TV series and Anime Movies up. There’s no “Anime Library” that mixes and matches both. No way around that unless you want to go DLNA and you don’t want that option if you want pretty (okay you can but that’s beyond the scope here). That mass of folders? Not going to work at all that way and no way to force it to work - it’s going to take some effort.

You can absolutely put Anime mixed in with your regular TV and Movies if you like… I put my anime movies in my regular movies library. I have a dedicated Anime TV library though - for various reasons.

I’m pretty well caught up on my series and I don’t really “collect” anime so… I don’t usually keep it once I’m done with it. I got outta that habit with anime a long time ago so that’s just me.

Movies are pretty easy actually so we’ll do series first. These are the naming rules you have to follow for TV shows: https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/

Same is true for anime.

Where ever your TV library is create a folder for your first Anime series. Lets use Durarara. Start by renaming that folder to “Durarara (2010)”. Why? Because that’s the title at TMDB (Durarara!! (TV Series 2010-2016) — The Movie Database (TMDB)) so that’ll match. That also is how it’s named at TVDB (デュラララ!! - TheTVDB.com) so double helpful. Adding the year can help with matching.

Note on TMDB vs TVDB - I like TMDB but pick what works for you. TVDB had alternate order for episodes that can be helpful in some situations and luckily you can mix and match per series.

Which one is used is set in your library or series in the options:

So here’s where we have a hiccup - your folder says “25” episodes but there’s only 24 episodes listed… something is off. So… file cleanup. Make sure your files match TMDB or TVDB listings for Season 01. Now you have to create a Season 01 folder and add your files to that folder and name them along the lines of “Durarara S01E04 Title of Episode”.

They won’t match otherwise. If they don’t match they won’t be pretty. You have some flexibility here between TMDB and TVDB episode ordering so you can pick TMDB or you can pick TVDB Aired, DVD or Absolute. If you use Absolute you still do S01EXX but EXX is just increasing.

Note - you can sometimes cheat with Season 01 file numbering. You can skip the season folder if it’s the only season and it’s numbered 01-57 or whatever. It’s not right… but it works most of the time… and if you want to absolute order it sometimes you can get away with it this way. It’s NOT RIGHT… but it sometimes works. Use at your own peril.

So… now it’s time for Durarara season 2! Create a Season 2 folder and now you’ll add your Season 2 episodes and rename them to match your source as well. Done!

You can mix and match episode order on shows - not seasons - so if you have multiple seasons see which order from TVDB or TMDB works best for ALL seasons.

Honestly… that’s it. Make your file names S00E00, match the ones you see at TMDB or TVDB, and use the expected TV folder structure and you’re done. As I said, I prefer TMDB to start and then use TVDB when I need an alternate order.

Here’s how mine end up:

Yeah… that file naming gets tedious. That’s the biggest headache.

You can do it manually (which is what I usually do because I don’t have tons to rename and I cheat sometimes) but otherwise folks recommend FileBot or TinyMediaManager to help you automate and do this for you. TMM is free but FileBot is more flexible for anime naming.

Anime Movies… same as regular movie library management really but again just match up to TMDB or TVDB for naming. You can do one folder with all movie files or you can do movie folder->movie file system. Up to you there. https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/
Extra subfolders seems to cause more issues these days so … avoid that and if you have organizational folders add those as a “top level” folder to the library. So for example I split up Movie titles by alphabet so 1-G folder is added to my library, not ..\Movies\1-G. Make sense?

OVA … this gets awkward. This depends a bit and you’ll just want to match what TMDB or TVDB say they are and go with that - sometimes it’s a movie and sometimes its a series (and TVDB can sometimes be both). But they work the same - just match.

This is where Black Lagoon was a problem, for example, because season 3 and some episodes were released as OVA and naming was all over the place… but flipping to TVDB DVD order for Black Lagoon worked out so I could keep them all together where as TMDB wanted to split them up between TV Series and Movie.

There is a bit of an alternative that’s outside the norm if you want… you can look into HAMA as an Anime specific scanning agent. That seems like a lot of extra effort but anime fans seem to love extra effort so maybe that’s okay (remember the codecs and also SSA SUBTITLES).

Really… FileBot is going to be your best solution here I think and then your Anime TV Library and Anime Movie Library will look great!

Oh… depending on your Library settings it’ll be better to rename before adding to your library. Adding and then renaming can cause extra effort so just rename first and then add to library.

Mixing and matching “lite” option. If you name a collection in a TV library the same as a collection in a Movie library they’ll kinda link. Here’s an example of my old Macross collections. They don’t work exactly the same (no combined watch order) but it’s something anyways.

Hope that helps you out … it’s mostly going to be about the file renaming effort. Once you get your batches done though it’s not that big a deal and if you have FileBot that can automate a lot of it for you.

I’m sure others will have some more advice … like I said… anime fans are esoteric.

[chucksroofrepair_gmail_com]

Wow, that seems like ALOT of effort and time to commit to that but thank you very much for the information. I think I may try the file bot method and if it can effectively Rename alot of my titles with the correct naming conventions of TMDB and then I just have to go in and rename the few that it didn’t rename, that may be my optimal solution. Does the File bot actually rename files on the physical Drive, or just archives stored in the Plex servers? Also in terms of naming parameters for anime series I have ALOT of titles that are titled with first the fan-sub group, the title of the anime, then a specification of rather or not its TV and some times even the video output resolution of the series all in the same title like this.

[Vivid-Asenshi] Akame ga Kill [TV 720p + ONAs]

For the most part I do store Movies and Tv shows seperatly but every now and then some of these batch files do have “specials”, “movies” or ova’s in the same directory because that is just the way they are bundled. Finally, is there a language barrior when trying to get Plex to recognize these titles. For example some anime series are brand new aired in japan and have only the japanese kanji translation for the name before it officially is changed into an english title. Then again some series don’t ever get a full english translated name and just stick with the japanese like Akame Ga kill. Does this ever become an issue with the Plex scanners being able to differentiate between the two?

I have stored and catalogued anime for years. The reason i keep alot of my archives though is because some digital media is rather obscure and unique in a way that you can’t obtain it any more. I have some of the old fan-subs from back in those glory days of when anime was more of an underground hobby Vs all the corporate mainstream lisencing we get now a days. Some of this stuff at least in my opinion is culturally preserved and has a certain air of nostalgia or quality to it for my own personal taste. I have even seen where many shows fan-subs have actually been more accurate in terms of representing the translation from its natave Japanese language to english but this is not a topic about Fan-subs Vs localized subs debate.

I am also a collector of physical media and I do own a pretty sizable collection of anime of various series and films, from old lisencing companies like pioneer and adv, to newer still present companies like discotec and funimation so I deffinitly support the industry as much as I have alot of free digital libraries. I am a collector all around basically.

[Insomnic_1]

I agree FileBot is probably your best bet in your situation.

@chucksroofrepair_gmail_com

Does the File bot actually rename files on the physical Drive, or just archives stored in the Plex servers?

It’s flexible so can do in place or create new copies or rename and move them. Plex doesn’t touch files - it reads files so there’s no “archives stored in the Plex servers”. So how Plex shows things is entirely based on Plex matching the files to the references from TMDB\TVDB\IMDB.

@chucksroofrepair_gmail_com

Also in terms of naming parameters for anime series I have ALOT of titles that are titled with first the fan-sub group, the title of the anime, then a specification of rather or not its TV and some times even the video output resolution of the series all in the same title like this.

You can see in my file screenshot that you can often keep additional info in the files. Plex has some ways to format it so it’s ignored and FileBot can incorporate it. I don’t remove the extra bits in the filenames themselves but for folders you’ll want to clean it up a bit (you can keep that data, but you need to format it a particular way so the scanner doesn’t try to use it to match).

@chucksroofrepair_gmail_com

Does this ever become an issue with the Plex scanners being able to differentiate between the two?

If something is a movie or TV show depends entirely on the sources for the matching and how you setup your TV and Movie library. If TMDB or TVDB sites list a title as “TV” it’s a TV show for Plex and should be put in the TV library. Sometimes you can mix and match between TMDB and TVDB as sometimes one will classify something as Movie while the other might give it a TV reference (usually only true for some OVA content).

It sounds like you’re still getting used to Plex as a product as well so some more research about it might be helpful to you too so some of these things will click and you can manage these items a bit easier. Check out some of the getting started stuff here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/

[chucksroofrepair_gmail_com]

I don’t have alot of sucess with TVDB or TMDB with some of my anime. How ever I get perfect matches almost every time when I fetch and Match the data from AniDB. Now I just need to know what scan settings will parse the meta data for plex for AniDB and I should be good to go. is it Absolute scanner?

Will AniDB work instead of using TVDB and TMDB for anime