Sports events

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Hello everyone. I’m addressing those who use PLEX and are also Formula 1 enthusiasts.

The new F1 season is fast approaching, and I’m seeking your expertise in organizing the Grand Prix and weekend schedules in PLEX.

Since PLEX doesn’t have an agent to recognize sporting events, I understand that everything needs to be done manually in a series library.

For my files, I’ve thought of using the following structure:
Sports \ Formula 1 Grand Prix \ Formula 1 Grand Prix 20XX \ Season XX Grand Prix of XXXXXX \

I’ve also changed the name of each file in this way:
Grand Prix name – SXXEXX – weekend event
Example: Canadian Grand Prix – S09E01 – Free Practice 1

Finally, I’ve added the directory Sports \ Formula 1 Grand Prix \ to the library.

This way, in the SPORT F1 library, I have a (series) called “Formula 1 Grand Prix 2023” and 23 (seasons), each representing the Grand Prix of a city, with (episodes) representing the weekend days. The problem is that the seasons are named Season 1, Season 2, etc., so it’s not easy to know which Grand Prix it refers to unless you know the calendar by heart. The same goes for the episodes. I thought that by changing the name of each file, the episodes would be named Free Practice 1, Qualifying, Race, etc., but instead, they are simply named Episode 1, Episode 2, …

As a result, it’s a lot of work to change all the file names, and the outcome is only average.

I know I can manually edit the metadata of each season and episode, but… it’s a lot of work, and I would have liked to automate the process."

Any suggestions? Or perhaps some expert advice :wink:

Thanks in advance.

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You should be able to use the Plex TV Series scanner and Plex Series agent, at least for the specific example you provided. For example, for 2023, with this naming:

test_tv/   <--- The library points here, the name is unimportant
└── Formula 1 (1950)
    └── Season 2023
        ├── Formula 1 (1950) - S2023E41 - Optional Name.mkv
        ├── Formula 1 (1950) - S2023E42 - Optional Name.mkv
        └── Formula 1 (1950) - S2023E43 - Optional Name.mkv

Results in this (automatically):

image
image1000×750 71.5 KB

Note:

  • Some series, particularly sports, use the year for the season number. In this example, season 2023.
  • The “Optional Name” part of the file name is not used by Plex; that’s for the user when browsing the filesystem. The episode names are being pulled from the online DB. (There is a way to use embedded tags, if you’re using an MP4 container.)
  • In this specific example, the episode order needed to be set to “TheTVDB (Aired)” and a metadata refresh needed to be done.
  • You can get an idea of what your naming and folder organization for a particular series should look like by having a look at watch.plex.tv. Here’s the Formula 1 2023 season page:
    https://watch.plex.tv/show/formula-1/season/2023
  • There are bulk file renaming utilities which can help with tidying up file names (switching from “SxxEyy” to “SyyyyEyy” naming).
  • Only ever add the top-level folder which holds your series to the library, not the show folder itself. In the example above, “/tv_test” was added to the library, not “/tv_test/Formula 1.”

I just re-read this part. To achieve what I show above, your folder structure and general organization would have to change. Plex considers the series to be “Formula 1.” Each year is a season, with each episode being a particular day of qualifying/practice/race. If you want automatic matching and metadata, you’ll have to conform to this.

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OK thank you very much. I’m going to make some changes to my current structure to do some testing and be ready for the 2024 season.

If I understand correctly, it won’t be possible for each Grand Prix to have its own season. This year there will be 24 Grand Prix with an average of 5 to 8 events per weekend, so more than 140 episodes per season. It’s going to be a bit messy to find a particular Grand Prix in all of that, and can PLEX handle that many episodes per season?

But if that’s the way to do it, I’ll accept it. Thank you.

Edit 1 PS…I went to see the link you provided. Ultimately, it’s not so bad and quite easy to navigate. I’ll do it this way. Thank you.

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Correct. Each year will have to be its own season, with all the events being episodes (event being a practice, qualifying, race, etc.).

Yes, but I’d recommend naming all of your episodes with 3-digit episode numbers. So, episode 1 would be, for example: “Formula 1 (1950) - S2023E001 - Optional Name.mkv”

You’re welcome!

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Excellent. Thank you, this assistance is exactly what I wanted. It’s going to be a lot of work for the 2023 season. Fortunately, it’s the only one I have to do for past years. For 2024, it will be done gradually with each Grand Prix, which should be easily manageable." Thank you

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