Training type media in a new library is getting group together

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Server Version#: Version 1.41.2.9200
Player Version#: Plex Web Version 4.140.0

I’m confused how to get a proper new Library for some of my “training” media. Here is an example of what I have for file structure - same as I would for other regular tv shows
Photography - Foundations - Topic1
-----Season 01 - Introduction
----------S01E01 - name
----------S01E02 - name
-----Season 02 - What is
----------S02E01 - name
----------S02E02 - name
-----etc
Photography - Foundations - Topic2
-----same as above
Photography - Foundations - Topic3
-----same as above
Piano - a course name
-----Season 01 - Introduction
----------S01E01 - name
----------S01E02 - name
-----Season 02 - What is
----------S02E01 - name
----------S02E02 - name
ETC with other training series’.

So this is in a new folder, separate from regular tv shows. I created a new library to it, and tried some different settings, but it’s doing weird things. If I browse the library, out of 12 different “training shows”, there are only 4 showing up in the library list, 3 of them by the name, and the rest are all grouped/bundled under a generic “The Season” named show. I tried clicking the ‘unmatch’ but it didn’t change anything.
If I go in to this “The Season” and then Season 1 and do a Get Info on Episode 1, it lists s01e01 from 9 training shows so it’s lumping most of them altogether.

How do I create a library for this, I want it to be a tv show type library because it’s formatted in seasons so I can get play order and such (orig I tested a home video type but it didn’t group it together by seasons it just listed every single individual file as it’s own thing).
I don’t care about matching / lookups online at thetvdb or whatever because they are not actual tv shows.

I just want it to list the name of the training series (same as a TV show name would be), then I click on it and it shows me all the seasons, click on that and it shows all the episodes. the names of seasons/episodes should just reflect what the actual file names are, no changes from trying to match and such. What are the best Library settings to do this? I think originally I selected the default Plex TV Series with agent Plex Series, then I tried changing it to Plex TV Series and agent Plex Personal Media and did a rescan which didn’t do anything. So I’m confused.
I did see some different things online, such as this https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265256-naming-home-series-media/ but I am organizing the same way but it doesn’t seem to work as expected; I tried changing to Plex Series Scanner and Personal Media Shows but after a rescan nothing changed.

thank you

2

Okay, commenting on this in case it helps someone else. Setting it to “Scanner: Plex Series Scanner” and “Agent: Personal Media Shows” seems to work, I just had to delete the library and create it with this setting. Changing the setting and doing a rescan didn’t have any effect. So now the training “show” shows up, followed by seasons, and then “Episode 1, Episode 2” etc - doesn’t keep the actual file names but like the above url I referenced mentioned, apparently that’s the way it works for now - hopefully this gets changed in a future update.

3

The episode names of tv shows are never derived from the file names in Plex.
The only way to bring them in for non-matchable content is to embed them as meta tags into the files. And that in turn works only with mp4/m4v files in Plex.

6

A future nice to have / wishlist :slight_smile:

If it helps someone else, I found online a quick and easy way to help with this, use the free software mp3tag, select the files and then do Convert > Filename-tag
image

and in the box type in %title%

image
image220×152 7.1 KB

and it will put the filename into the Title meta tag and then when refreshing the metadata that looks to show up in Plex.

7

Make that %dummy% - %title% to put only the actual episode’s title in.

8

Good tip