Simple string in a filename leads to disappearing

General Discussions
1

Hi,

I always had the problem that Plex only shows a part of my files.
I guessed it had to do with the naming conventions that u can find here on the plex site.

Its was always annoying, but never prohibited me of watching my movies.
I always simply worked around it, by taking the movie file out of its subfolder and naming it like “aaa.mkv”
This normally worked fine.

But today i finally took my time and carefully checked why it is like that.
It does not have to with the naming convention.
At least not with that one Plex wrote about here on the site.

One file for example is showing up if i remove the string “S01E01” to the name . - No dashes, dots, paragraph signs or anything. Just numbers and letters.
If i add it again, the file disappears again.

The lengh of the file name is very small, only 12 letters.
The full path is also pretty short. Only like 25 characters.
I have files with longer full path that this and they work.

This is gonna make it really difficult to troubleshoot. Especially if im talking about 600+ files.

Does anyone know why Plex behaves like that?
I installled the latest version of Plex server a couple of weeks ago.
It was a fresh setup. No upgrade.

Regards,
ND

2

Maybe it is because this Media library is of type “Movies”, with strings like S01E01 are typically used in series.
This one library is actually containing mixed types. (movies, series,…)
Could this be the reason?

3

@“nd@izla.org” said:
Maybe it is because this Media library is of type “Movies”, with strings like S01E01 are typically used in series.
This one library is actually containing mixed types. (movies, series,…)
Could this be the reason?

Yes!!! Movies and series MUST be kept separate. Strings like s01e01 if found in the filename in a movies library tells Plex that it is a TV series and therefore should be ignored.

If you want correct metadata follow Plex’s naming directions EXACTLY and keep movies in a movie directory and TV shows in a TV directory do not ever overlap the two. If you don’t want metadata then you can use an “Other Videos” type of library and Plex will just display what is there and, if it is a supported file format, then you will see it in such a library.

4

Ok , i marked the library as “personal media” , and now everything is showing up.
→ Topic Solved. :slight_smile:

5

i do have separate Series and Movie libraries, but i also do have 1 library that contains mixed content. This is content that frequently changes, like a “daily buffer” where files go in and out :wink: I cannot divide that one into subsections coz it would be too much work all the time. Better use “personal media” for that one instead, and it did the trick.