First of all, let me say it so I can releafe myself: Plex titles matching for series is pure crap. My 6 year old cousin could have done better job coding that part of Plex.
That said, I already understand how Plex naming conventions work. I really do. I have read the “Naming your series episodes” a hundred times. And I still can’t believe such a silly thing is coded so poorly in Plex.
Take for example Doctor Who (2005), season 7. Episode “231” (the sixth) is the xmas special, but it was aired in the middle of the season. Apart from being a special episode, it actually introduce the new companion of the Doctor, which is why it makes perfect sense for this special to show in the middle of the season 7. Not at the end. Not at the beginning. Not in a folder called “Specials”.
Why is so freaking damn hard to get this silly thing right?
Isn’t there a way I can tell Plex to just stop doing crazy ■■■■ and just show all the files in my “S07” folder, names of the files included? (but just for that season, or maybe that serie).
I know there is an option to globally stop Plex from pulling and matching titles from the internet, but I don’t want that. It works good, generally speaking. It just completely breaks apart in those corner cases.
Yes, I know it doesn’t have a season number. So what? Let’s just ignore it, despite being such an important episode in the season? (I repeat myself, it’s the episode in which the new companion was introduced).
The answer is to create a “Specials” or “Season 0” directory and place your special episodes it in it using the standard naming but naming it , as example, Doctor Who (2005).S00E231.ext
That is insane. It just doesn’t make any sense for that episode to be in another folder…
It’s completely stupid.
There must be a way to tell Plex “hey, you’re usually smart, but not this time. Stop pulling data from TheTVDb and just show everything I have in that folder”. Just for this serie/season.
Now I “could” be wrong because I have not watched a series in a LONG time that had “specials” that aired during a season and were in my database but I believe that if there are specials correctly labeled in a “specials” folder ( or a folder labeled “Season 00” ) the special will play is the correct order based on the “Originally aired date.” That is it will play between the two episodes that it is between based of the “originally aired” date in the Plex database. That date is picked up from The TVDB or it can be manually edited.
That is from my memory of earlier threads about the same issue and, if I am wrong, someone will, I’m quite sure, correct me.
You’re not seeing it because there isn’t an episode “231” in either season.
Specials, by definition, fall outside the normal season/episode naming rules as defined by TheTVDB itself. Even TheTVDB marks them as such in their listings.
That said, either use absolute episode numbering for everything OR use season/episode numbering. You cannot mix both unless you adopt something hybrid such as S00E701 for the first special in season 7, S00E702 for the second special, etc and place "Season 0’ episodes in that directory. This is how I and everyone else does. It gives us the best we can when TheTVDB is in control of the source listing data
@Elijah_Baley is right IIRC as well. Sort by air date and regardless which ‘season’ (Specials or Season 6/7) it will display in order
Try to understand my point. Instead of Plex doing the sane thing, aka, showing the contents of folders, it forces me to do something ridiculous. It literally pretends to make me move some of the files from each folder of each season to a folder called “Specials”. And then what? I’ll end up with a folder that I can’t humanly know what actually contains, as all the files in there would have just some numbers (which I can’t remember, let alone know which one to which season belongs).
Basically, that folder would be viewable (in the correct sequence of episode) only by Plex.
Edit: Tools like FileBot and TheRenamer handle all the restructuring for you. FileBot even has a {plex} renaming rule to simplify your job. You drag & drop the files into FileBot, have it perform a ‘match’ (exactly like PMS does), and it will show you how it wants to restructure & rename (final pretty renaming). When you’re happy with that, you click Rename and it will do all the work. You’ll end up with the perfect Plex-structured library and all the episodes will have titles included which make sense to you.
@ChuckPA that link doesn’t provide any additional info for “specials”. Furthermore, I already said that I completely understand how Plex matches titles. And I still believe it’s not doing the sane thing in this concrete example.
Please show me the filename(s) exactly as you have them. We are probably misunderstanding each other because of that. Exact names will prevent any further ambiguity in that regard.
Next, how do you think the first special in season 7 should be named?
@ChuckPA,
You see it right. Nothing is wrong with the OPs naming.
What the OP wants is to have season 7 look something like this.
SEASON07
1 Asylum of the Daleks
2 Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
3 A Town Called Mercy
4 The Power of Three
5 The Angels Take Manhattan
Special Vastra Investigates: A Christmas Prequel
6 The Bells of St John
7 The Rings of Akhaten
8 Cold War
9 Hide
10 Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
11 The Crimson Horror
12 Nightmare in Silver
13 The Name of the Doctor
or maybe…
SEASON07
1 Asylum of the Daleks
2 Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
3 A Town Called Mercy
4 The Power of Three
5 The Angels Take Manhattan
5.1 Vastra Investigates: A Christmas Prequel
6 The Bells of St John
7 The Rings of Akhaten
8 Cold War
9 Hide
10 Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
11 The Crimson Horror
12 Nightmare in Silver
13 The Name of the Doctor
This way the episode are in “order”
Having special and regular episode “merged” in the season.
Note that I surrounded in red the special episode, which was aired in the middle of the season, introducing the new companion, which is extremely important. I keep insisting on this so you can understand that “special episode” in this case doesn’t mean “director talking crap during 20 minutes with some cut scenes from the season”, but it’s actually very important to the story itself.
This is how the filesystem of my Synology looks like:
Again, I surrounded the special episode.
And this is how my Plex looks like:
Not only it completely skips the special episode, but it somehow manages to “rename” the episode 7 to episode 6.
So, it’s doing two things wrong:
It’s not showing all the content of the folder
It’s mangling the names I have in my filesystem (and I’m not even sure how it does that).
Extra notes: Clicking on the “Get info” on the episode 6 reveals that the file/path that is using is 7x07.
@ChuckPA I posted a screenshot of wikipedia because this is the first thing I found, but the same thing would appear in any (sane) metadata database.
What I want is Plex to show the episodes as they appear in my folder, which is how they were aired, and which is how the story of the season makes sense.
Thanks for showing me your naming but the names, even as you have them now, is not correct.
Series namedelimiterseason/episode specifierdelimiteroptional title is how they need to be named. Sometimes we do get lucky when the Series name isn’t there, sometimes we don’t. This is why Series name in the episode file is strongly recommended.
I can give you the rules to name them like this (which looks great on my Syno as well) . Filebot and PMS both support various delimiters . Don’t think of my examples as absolute.
You will immediately see I don’t have any of the Dr Who specials. Because Specials are by air date, I believe you are best served by using air date naming format. PMS won’t ignore you
[chuck@lizum Season 07.114]$ ll
total 40705736
drwxr-xr-x. 2 chuck users 4096 Jul 6 06:27 ./
drwxr-xr-x. 12 chuck users 4096 May 27 20:21 ../
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3404283358 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005).S07E01.Asylum of the Daleks.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 2346826411 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005).S07E02.Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 2346797667 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005).S07E03.A Town Called Mercy.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 2347254837 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005).S07E04.The Power of Three.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3088777936 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005).S07E05.The Angels Take Manhattan.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518864192 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005).S07E06.The Bells of St John.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518262996 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005).S07E07.The Rings of Akhaten.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518867136 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005).S07E08.Cold War.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518401909 Jul 6 04:42 Doctor Who (2005).S07E09.Hide.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518739048 Jul 6 05:01 Doctor Who (2005).S07E10.Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3517311271 Jul 6 05:19 Doctor Who (2005).S07E11.The Crimson Horror.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3519688889 Jul 6 06:09 Doctor Who (2005).S07E12.Nightmare in Silver.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518510622 Jul 6 06:27 Doctor Who (2005).S07E13.The Name of the Doctor.mkv
[chuck@lizum Season 07.115]$
I created a dummy Chrismas special so you can see how it works.
[chuck@lizum Season 07.115]$ ll
total 40705736
drwxr-xr-x. 2 chuck users 4096 Jul 17 18:41 ./
drwxr-xr-x. 12 chuck users 4096 May 27 20:21 ../
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3404283358 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005) - (2012-09-01) - Asylum of the Daleks.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 2346826411 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005) - (2012-09-08) - Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 2346797667 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005) - (2012-09-15) - A Town Called Mercy.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 2347254837 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005) - (2012-09-22) - The Power of Three.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3088777936 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005) - (2012-09-29) - The Angels Take Manhattan.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck chuck 88 Jul 17 18:51 Doctor Who (2005) - (2012-12-05) - Los hombres de nieve.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518864192 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005) - (2013-03-30) - The Bells of St John.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518262996 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005) - (2013-04-06) - The Rings of Akhaten.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518867136 Jun 23 14:44 Doctor Who (2005) - (2013-04-13) - Cold War.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518401909 Jul 6 04:42 Doctor Who (2005) - (2013-04-20) - Hide.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518739048 Jul 6 05:01 Doctor Who (2005) - (2013-04-27) - Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3517311271 Jul 6 05:19 Doctor Who (2005) - (2013-05-04) - The Crimson Horror.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3519688889 Jul 6 06:09 Doctor Who (2005) - (2013-05-11) - Nightmare in Silver.mkv
-rw-r--r--. 1 chuck users 3518510622 Jul 6 06:27 Doctor Who (2005) - (2013-05-18) - The Name of the Doctor.mkv
[chuck@lizum Season 07.116]$
If you wish to rename-in-place, simply remove all the directory components and do that part manually.
Regardless which method you choose, when done, you will need to “Plex Dance” the media (move to another share, update libraries, empty trash, clean bundles, move back, and update libraries again for it to be found again as fresh. This is because PMS keeps the old fingerprint even if not ‘matched’. The dance removes the fingerprint.
Your last screenshot (the one in which episodes are supposedly sorted by airdate) is still wrong. The special episode should appear right in between “The Angels Take Manhattan” and “The Bells of St John”, but it appears at the top, as if it was the first episode. I keep insisting on the fact that this concrete special episode should appear in the middle of the season.
I’m not sure what words I should use to stress enough this fact. And I’m not sure if I’m just not expressing myself clearly enough or if you’re misunderstanding the problem.
@alexandernst,
Plex can not do what you ask for. Special episodes will not be displayed with the regular ones. This is a limitation that Plex has because of how it uses thetvdb.com for information. If the humans from thetvdb listed the episodes like that, then Plex could show them in the order you want to see.
Furthermore, if you feel like this episode should be in the middle then you will have to get with the humans on thetvdb and explain why that episode should be listed in the middle of the season.
