So, when you go to the plex websites for these series, seasons have actual names and the corresponding season posters look good. .
Question 1: Is it possible to get that kind of setup for my plex server’s anime seasons (where applicable)? If so, how?
I just noticed that only my Cyber Formula Season 1 files have registered to the server, when I have five seasons. I structured the Cyber Formula series files by season and have season 2-5 in the same directory as season 1. Changing the episode order to something else does nothing, as far as I can tell - I tried TheTVDB (Aired and Absolute). Seeing as the plex website has them listed all under one series, I assume this is correct. Or should I be treating each season of cyber formula as a separate series instead?
Question 2: How do I get my Cyber Formula Season 2-5 to appear on the plex server?
Anime gets funny so you sometimes have to do some work with the naming setup.
I’ve found matching TheMovieDB is usually the easiest to manage and more complete. Partially that’s because they are a bit more flexible about things compared to TVDB. Sometimes though, TVDB lines up easier (particularly if DVD order works out better).
Check out the section called “Dynamic Alternate Orders” in the link OttoKerner sent that covers switching the setting for that matching between TMDB and TVDB options.
It looks like TMDB is the better maintained option.
Since you said you have all the episodes from S1-S5 in the same directory that’s not really going to match up past S1 but if you don’t want to deal with renaming them all and putting them into dedicated season folders you might be able to get away with choosing TVDB Absolute order though that’s still not great to match up to as TVDB didn’t really set that up much beyond the minimal match.
The best option would be to break those episodes out into the respective seasons. Season 1 is 37 episodes but the rest are only 8 so doing it manually shouldn’t be a big deal but there are tools and tricks that can automate renaming for you. MacOS bulk rename can do some automatic stuff for example but lots of folks like FileBot as a more complete solution and it’s probably going to be worth it to get that if you plan on collecting a lot of anime as the file names for anime releases tend not to play well with media centers. You can check around these forums for other renaming help.
I personally recommend TMDB to match your file naming and once you get your Show\Season\Episode files in the right structure it should match up okay.
The library ‘Use Season Titles’ feature does in fact rename S1 for Cyber Formula as ‘TV’ (which matches the plex listing). Requires the use of TMDB for Season2+.
I placed S2-5 files in season 1 because plex refuses to acknowledge the files are on disk. It was an attempt to get plex to simply show the files in season 1, which did not work.
The folder setup I usually (currently) have is that each season has it’s own folder, Namely “Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4 and Season 5”. However, as I previously mentioned, season 2-5 do not show up in plex. So, how do I go about getting plex to recognize these episodes?
For reference, plex’s own listing looks like this here
@Insomnic_1
It didn’t matter which one I use, TVDB or TMDB.
Even when each season has it’s own folder, I can only play the first season on Plex.
I think the reason why Plex won’t recognize my files is that seasons 2 to 5 do not share the same file naming convention as season 1.
Season 1 episodes are named as TV ep1
Season 2 episodes are named as OVA I round 1
Season 3 episodes are named as OVA II round 1
And… just tried the theory, renaming the file ‘OVA I round 1’ as ‘TV ep1’ in Season 2, does show up on Plex.
In order to avoid renaming the entire file (I wanted to keep the original filename), I just appended e01 to the end of the filename. i.e. OVA I round 1 e01, OVA I round 2 e02, OVA I round 3 e03, etc.
I haven’t figured out an easy way for bakemonogatari, will work on that later.
I strongly recommend you stick with the official naming schema for the episode files. Appending epXX is a half solution that might be recognizable to Plex, but it’s not a full match.
The further your files deviate from the official naming, the higher the chances of running into trouble further down the road (just look for forum threads complaining „I know it’s not the official naming but it used to work“).
As for avoiding effort… there’s apps that can help renaming the files, e.g. FileBot (or some OS even have a decent renaming tool).
I understand what you’re saying.
It does worry me, but at the same time, I really don’t want to change the filename.
I understand that end users of plex will likely never see the filename so it shouldn’t matter, but I’d like to retain information like release group, checksums, how fansub groups organized their content, etc.
If I were to rename these files, I wouldn’t immediately know seasons 2-5 are actually OVAs.
