TV Shows Misidentified - No Split or Fix Option

[onethumb]

Server Version#: 1.42.5.9522
Player Version#: all (issue on server)
Host Server: Mac Mini M2 Pro, Sequoia 15.4

<If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only debug logging should be enabled>

I have done the following on the host server console using both the desktop app and the browser access through plex.tv (via the host machine). The “stacking” described is seen in all clients (AppleTV, iOS, macOS, and Android).
…
Recently my “TV Shows” are not identifying correctly. All new shows “stack” into the first title of that letter. Looking at MORE INFO on “Ain’t Life Great with Computers” would show a litany of A titles stacked inside that one title (“Another fine mess”, “Am I doing this again”, etc. You see “Ain’t Life Grand” (3 eps) reporting 33 seasons.

Like with my “Movies” I changed the structure from:

[root]/data/pub/TV Shows/[show folders by subtitle like always]

to

[root]/data/pub/TV Shows/[A-Z]/[show folders by title like always]

After a forced scan (empty trash enabled), it started stacking the wrong episodes into shows. It appears that whatever show it first IDs, it plants all additional shows with that starting letter (A, B, etc.) into the first title it IDs. 5 bazillion episodes of “Ain’t Life Great with Computers” as an example.

Unfortunately the “split apart” and “fix match” don’t seem to be anywhere around, except at the top-most (title level) and they stack the wrong way again. No Split or Fix at the season or episode level.

I went so far as to move all the content to

[root]/data/TV Shows/[A-Z]/[show folders by subtitle like always]

There has to be an easier way than pulling all folders and adding them in 1 at a time, scanning, cleanBundels and optimizeDatabase, scanning again, then trying to manually fix the dog pile before adding a new folder back in. Which doesn’t seem to work anyway.

[tom80H]

Don’t add extra folder levels to the official structures.
If you need the alphabetical index folders, make sure to point the library to

• [root]/data/TV Shows/A
• [root]/data/TV Shows/B
• [root]/data/TV Shows/C
• …
• [root]/data/TV Shows/Z

[onethumb]

So not [root]/Data/TV Shows/

For all of them? Define each path explicitly?

In the past, i’ve successfully used [root]data/pub/TV Shows/[each show folder dropped here]

It was fine until i introduced a-z subfolders. that’s when it went sideways. Yet doing it for movies continues to work with those similar subfolders.

And, if using 28 explicit paths (#-z), where does plex drop its DVR of OTA content? In the past, with just r/d/tv s/ defined, it dropped them there as a peer to other shows.

[dbirch]

@onethumb

It was fine until i introduced a-z subfolders. that’s when it went sideways. Yet doing it for movies continues to work with those similar subfolders.

It works until it breaks.

You need to add everything up to {show folder} as a library path for TV shows, TV is the strictest format due to it having to group media together.

Movies may work for now, but I suspect that they will break at some point and you will be back here again.

I dont have a tuner, but if you go into your Live TV & DVR settings of your server I am going to bet there is a path defined to save stuff to. However I doubt that will work well with the per letter subfolders.

[onethumb]

I answered my own last question. New content drops above the a-z subfolders, since dvr path is picked up from the tv shows definition. So r/d/tv s/new recording

Which is a secondary thing i wanted. To have the new content jump out when scanning the directory tree manually. But the primary was to keep per folder entries minimized. It worked with movies, but that may be different like split-apart and fix-match work on individual entries (movies) but only a match at the topmost show level exists for tv shows, so this stacking can’t be addressed manually.

Sadly, i’m moving everything back up a level to restore order in the universe.

If anyone is following, please don’t remove that extra layer (#-z) from movies. There’s a months long thread about content disappearing from the database when folder entries reach X. The files are there but the database gags.

[onethumb]

Moving everything in TV Shows up a level (and removing #-z) fixed the issue. Can’t clean it up like I intended, but at least it’s working again.

Odd that it works okay in Movies and that they did things differently in TV Shows.

At least I got things a little less complex by going from

r/d/pub/[Movies and TV Shows]

to

r/d/[Movies and TV shows]

Thanks for the assist.

[MovieFan]

With movies there isn’t a specific folder structure so you can have them in any folder, but for tv show, Plex is looking for a specific folder structure so it’s not as flexible.