I’m having an interesting problem when adding TV shows to Plex, hoping someone can help me out. When I create a TV Show library, if I go into my media share\TV Shows\Show Name and add the “Show Name” folder, which has each season as a subfolder and then each season’s episodes names as per Plex’s Guidelines (Show Name - SXXEXX - Title), it adds each season folder as a separate library item and doesn’t find any correct data. Just random shows for each season folder.
However, if I add media to my library and add each season folder at a time, it finds the correct data and adds them to the correct TV Show item.
My question: Is there no way to add multiple shows or seasons at one time by using the main directory, or do I have to add every Season folder for every TV show individually? Seems extremely cumbersome and there has to be a way to add in bulk that I am missing.
I hope you are not implying your path is: \TV Shows\Show Name\Show Name which is how your write-up sounds.
If you are strictly adhering to the naming guidelines then the best free tool I’ve found is “Rename my TV Series”. Takes about 2 minutes to make it plex compliant and it has worked flawlessly for me. It will rename your episodes correctly, build folders as needed all you provide is the base path and tweak the naming with their howto guide which took 2 min for me:
No, my path is \TV Shows\Show Name\Season XX\Show Name - SXXEXX - Title
When I try to add a show and I try to add the folder “Show Name”, it creates new entries for each “Season XX” folder, and then finds random TV show metadata to the episodes in each Season item. But when I add by going a step further and selecting each “Season XX” folder individually, it finds the right data and puts them with the same show.
I.e. I have all 9 seasons of the show 24. My path is 24\Season XX\24 - SXXEXX - Title. When I add media and only select the folder “24”, it creates 9 season entries (one for each season folder), and then it finds 9 random TV shows and assumes they are the season # of that show (i.e. Season 05 folder got assigned to “Breaking Bad” and the episodes were labelled along with Season 5 of Breaking Bad). But when I add by going past the “24” directory and add each “Season 01” through “Season 09” folder individually, it finds all of the “24” information and puts it together as the correct show.
So basically, I have it named correctly and it works if I add each season folder individually, but I cannot add from the main show directory and import all seasons/episodes at one time.
Are you trying to add all your “Show Names” as separate library folders? Your library folder should be \TV Shows that way you can create and populate the entire show, it’s seasons, and shows in your HDD and scan the library to import it all in on go.
Ok, I think I got it. I had all of my TV shows in one big folder and was going to create separate libraries by genre on Plex, and add each one individually by selecting the show’s folder and adding to the separate genre libraries. But it appears it only works if you add the parent directory above the “Show Name” folder. So I organized on my drive to be TV Shows\Genre\Show Name etc. and just added each “Genre” folder as a Plex library. And it’s finding them all correctly now.
