I am using BeyondTV (BTV) to record TV shows. BTV puts all of the shows in the same folder and names the files with the following format SeriesName-(EpisodeName)-YYYY-MM-DD.tp. If I organize the files into folders with the SeriesName, the scanner finds and plays everything fine so this tells me that the file name contains everything that Plex needs to get the metadata.
I know that the Series Scanner in Plex needs the video files to at least be in sub folders with the Series Name. How can I modify the scanner to look for the video files all in the same folder but parse the file name to find the Series Name? I have tried to reverse engineer how the Series Scanner is working by putting print statements in and running it in the command line but I can not understand what is happening when it looks at the sub folders with the Series Name. It does not even appear to enter the scanner script for these but does for other video folders that contain sub folders with the series name or with .mp4 files. Am I missing something?
Please help. Ultimately I want the Plex series scanner to recognize video files that are all in one folder and seed it with the Series Name that has been parsed from the name of the file.
I don't use Beyond TV so I can't guarantee what will work for you, but... When I dump all of my TV shows into one folder, named "SeriesName - SnnEmm - EpisodeName" or "SeriesName - nnxmm - EpisodeName" then Plex identifies and organizes them correctly, I don't need subfolders for either the series or the season.
Filebot does a great job of movie and TV show renaming.
Are you using the series scanner? Are you putting all of your video files into the same folder and then that folder is the one added to plex?
I saw in the documentation that the series scanner ignores video at the root folder level and will only look for video in a sub folder. But this works for you, I wonder why it doesn't work for me. Maybe I will play with it some more.
I just tried it: deleted my TV Shows section, emptied the bundles (to make sure Plex didn't remember the shows), created a new TV Shows section in an empty folder, then moved 10 episode files into the TV Show section root folder. Plex picked up the 2 seasons of the same show without issues.
I'm running 0.9.9.14.531-7eef8c6 on a Windows 7 machine.
That is interesting, it does not do this for me. I wonder what is different. Can you give me an example of the naming convention that you are using on your movies? Are you using the stock TVDB scanner? I don't understand why this works for you and not for me.
One of the episodes picked up with no issues in the root folder was "Gravity Falls - S02E06 - Little Gift Shop of Horrors". Yes, with the stock TMDB scanner; as far as I can remember, I've never used any special scanners or settings on this PMS machine.
I just updated to the latest PMS 0.9.11.1.678-c48ffd2 and tried it again with 20+ episodes from 3 seasons of the same show and it worked, example "The Amazing Race Australia - S01E01 - Leg 1".
My scanner settings for TV shows are:
- Personal Media Shows, Local Media Assets and Personal Media Shows
- The TVDB, TheTVDB and Local Media Assets and Opensubtitles.org and Plex Theme Music
- The Movie Database, TheTVDB and The Movie Database
As long as Plex can identify the season and episode number, it should work. The reason to have series folders (besides for organizational purposes) is if you want to add your own local data like posters, artwork, and themes.
What did you try? This thread was about putting all the episodes in 1 folder, no subfolders. If you use subfolders, Plex will try to use the folder name as the show.
