I’ve searched through lots of posts and tried many things…none seem to work.
For some reason, even though I have followed the same naming convention for all of my tv shows… Plex won’t pull the episode name correctly. I’ve reordered the Agents as some suggested and refreshed all metadata… I’ve erased the episode name, ensured that it was not yellow “locked” and refreshed the metadata…all this does is change the name to the date of the episode.
I am using M4V files…which I now know isn’t recommended…oops… and I use the same process for every file: Rip to MKV (MakeMKV) and then compress with Handbrake. My naming convention is: Show - Season xx - SxxExx
When I first rip a show, there are multiple files on each disk… so I will often use a naming convention that shows a range of episodes so that I can know which set is which..(see pic 2)..however, as soon as the MKVs are ripped, I change the file names to the correct one before I compress it to an M4V… so I’m not sure how it keeps picking up the weird old name. Additionally, if I look at the file itself in the details, it is named correctly.
/TV Shows
../Cheers
..../Season 01
....../Cheers - s01e01.m4v
....../Cheers - s01e02 - Sam's Women.m4v <-- You can add the episode name if desired.
After you rename correctly, Plex Dance the entire show. This will clear out any incorrect metadata from the Plex Media Server database.
Also check the Agent settings in your server. Go to Settings → Agents → Shows. In TheTVDB and The Movie Database, make sure Local Media Assets (TV) is selected and at the bottom of the list. This will help prevent any faulty embedded metadata from causing issues with correct matching in Plex. If you reorder the agents, refresh the metadata for the library afterwards.
I tried naming my files the way you suggested and that didn’t work either. Plus, I’ve named all my files using the same format and it only messes up some of them…not all of them… Why would my format work for some and not others?
I had already changed the Agent settings as I found on other posts… didn’t help. (yes…I scanned my tv show library again and refreshed all metadata)
I also tried to remove one of the files completely, went into properties on my computer, saved a new version of it without metadata… replaced that on the file server… still didn’t work…
I’ll try the Plex Dance but I’m fairly skeptical that it’s going to work.
Whatever you are using to rip the videos to .mkv may be embedding the name in a tag. These tags should be removed for use in Plex.
I’m not sure what software is recommended to remove the tags. I use MP3TAG in Windows.
Because Plex tries very hard to make a match and sometimes Plex succeeds even with very poor naming. Also there seems to be a lot that happens in the background that changes from time to time. That means that something that works, mostly, in one instance may not work in others and that there could be background changes that suddenly break marginal cases that did work and fix others that did not.
The only way to be mostly sure that Plex gets good matches is to conform 100% to Plex’s naming requirements and to get the “Local media assets” agent as out of the way as possible. I turn it off completely as I NEVER want anything imbedded in the file to effect my matching.
It is always best not to try to fight the great Plexisaurs.
This is the most important thing for your issue.
Your files are using the mp4 / m4v container, from which Plex is able to read the embedded Title meta tag.
Unless you do the above configuration change, Plex will prefer whatever is contained in this meta tag. (And, unfortunately, most of the time its contents are utter bollocks.)
All episodes must be named & organized correctly, not just one or two files.
Local Media Assets must be at the bottom of the list to protect against poor metadata.
You have to Plex Dance the entire show, not just a few episodes.
When adding the show back to your server, you can add just one or two episodes to start. Plex will have to scan fewer files, download less metadata, etc. Once you have things working correctly, you can modify the remaining episodes and add them to the server.
Same here.
For Mac users, Subler, https://subler.org/, is a good metadata editor for MP4/M4V files (also for muxing in subtitles & other tracks).
Well, not really sure what worked…but I didn’t rename or move anything… just un-checked the “Local Media Assets” or whatever it’s call… for the TV stuff. Of course, now it won’t download the right posters for any moves I upload… grrrrr… it just takes a random scene from the movie but never the cover. I’ve had to go find them on google images and upload them myself. WTH.
It was working just fine… not sure what happened… Anyway, all my movies are under public–>Movies
Each movie has it’s own folder unless it’s a series, as seen in the example below. I use the movie name followed by the year it was released.
In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie (Legacy)
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase
Afterwards, Refresh Metadata of the affected items.
If your movie library already uses the new “Plex Movie” agent, do this instead: Edit your movie library
go to the ‘Advanced’ tab clear the check mark out of “Prefer local metadata”
Afterwards, Refresh Metadata of the affected items.
