@Doramius said:
I’m not sure why the transition in the code, but it’s quite drastic in a very negative way.
‘The Switch’ is partially due to Plex losing access to Google’s API that kicked in when bad file names were encountered - that was some time ago (early/mid 2016). The Plex naming guide has never changed however. If your file names and structure where bad then, they’re still bad now. Just because you only now became aware of it and Plex stopped working with them doesn’t necessarily constitute a ‘forced change’.
Things do change over time. Plex things will also change again in the near future and we all may have to alter the way we do bidness in a TV Show library soon. At this time we have at least one ‘work around’ - adding the previously unnecessary (YEAR) for TV Show Remakes and different versions. Before all we had to do was match the name at TVDB. Now we need to do things that aren’t yet documented. Unfortunate, but factual.
One of the main reasons I switched to Plex was because of the excellent search in diverse naming schemes. I could keep my show naming simple.
Simple doesn’t mean correct, unfortunately. Plex does now and always has had to communicate with the online databases in order to get that material we all love (posters, descriptions, air dates, etc). The Plex Naming scheme is simple. It’s just different from what you think is simple. The Plex Naming scheme works across all the major media handlers. Other media handlers may be able to ‘handle’ your naming. Apparently Plex does not.
Plus, the “Plex Dance” that required in order to get it searching properly AFTER you update the naming?.. Not cool at all.
I can’t argue with that logic. The Plex Dance® is the community work around invented long ago when it was discovered a button with ‘Refresh’ written on it was unable to ‘Refresh’ the bogus info in a bundle. ‘Long Ago’ being the key words in that sentence. It’s an ongoing bug that Plex is either unwilling or unable to fix, but the fact remains if you want to update your bogus bundle with a proper one you’re going to need The Plex Dance®.
The trick is getting it all right BEFORE it hits the library - and in walks FileBot (Yep, in my signature). Filebot can work manually by dragging entire TV Shows into it’s left window then ‘Matching’ and ‘Renaming’ by pressing the appropriate buttons. It’s then up to you to make sure the Structure is correct. Filebot can also be set up in an automated environment (that link too is in my signature).
TL:DR…
That’s the problem with Guides - if you don’t read them they don’t help much:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/categories/200028098-Media-Preparation
:bz
