I have heard it used to be possible. I have an antenna TV capture device connected to another PC and use NextPVR to record shows. Plex for some reason is unable to “see” them in order to provide a file for me to click on to play when I set up a test library. It can see the files when I am setting up the library, but then scans and says there are no files. I’ve even tried converting the files via handbrake, movavi video converter and free ts converter and when saved as an avi or mp4 Plex still cant seem to see the files. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. I also use Playon and have discovered that I can add all my playon recordings to the Plex server and I can now play almost everything via Plex. If I could play the hundreds of ts files I have I would have one app for my entire library of media file types. Any ideas?
Plex handles .ts files. That what it uses when you tell it not to transcode. You’ll need to provide the scanner file after trying to add one of these.
Is NextPVR recording directly into the library folder PMS uses? Do you have PMS set to automatically scan for files? This could be the problem. The scanner does not like reading files in progress.
My NextPVR app is on a different machine and I move the files to an external USB drive on my PMS, folder is called TVDVR. Nothing changes on the USB drive except moving the files after they are created on the other machine. I have noticed one thing. I scanned the entire Folder structure of my TVDVR folder which contains folders named for TV shows and folders named for movies. Plex was able to read a few of the movie folders and I can play the movies, but it also read some of the TV show folders but doesn’t see there are 50 .ts files in the folder. It acts like there is one file in the folder. Thanks for the direction, I think I’m making some progress. Seems to be related to the agent used to scan the files.
Wait. Do you have movies and TV shows in the same folder?
My Videos
\ TV Show 1
\ TV Show 2
\ Movie A
\ Movie B
Like ^^ that? If so, that won’t work. When Plex looks for movies, it ignores files that are named like TV shows, and when looking for TV shows, it won’t pick up files that are not names like TV shows. Separate your folder.
My TV Shows
\ TV Show 1
\ TV Show 2
My Movies
\ Movie A
\ Movie B
And have your libraries point to the appropriate folder.
Ok, I’m making progress. I created a folder and put each movie.ts file there and scanned and it saw all of them and is currently parsing them. Looks like most if not all of my issues is folder and media type issues and naming convention problems. All of my ts files are tvshow_date_time.ts and NEXTPVR creates a folder with the ts file(s) in the folder. For movies, one folder and file in the folder and for TV shows one folder with all the same shows with different date and time in that folder. Movies work fine.
Looking like I’m going to have to try to figure out the TV shows, can’t seem to get them “found”.
I created a folder and just moved 5 episodes of a TV show into it and created a TV show library item and it says “there are no items in this library”, with the shows in a tvshow_date_time.ts format. Tried again with 5 different files in a separate folder, with a tvshow_season_X_episode_X.ts format and it still can’t see them. Maybe it’s still processing, but the movie files showed up immediately.
I’m not understanding how a file name like “A Fistful of Dollars_20170826_18002000.ts” can be read when creating a movie library, but “Adam-12_20170626_12001230.ts” can’t be read when creating a TV library. There has to be something stupid that I’m missing. I’ve been reading about how to name files and it really doesn’t seem to make a difference, the scanner still seems like it can’t see the files. Unless it takes a long time to process and I’m too impatient. But at least a half hour and nothing and it’s only scanning a few files.
@545x39 said:
I’m not understanding how a file name like “A Fistful of Dollars_20170826_18002000.ts” can be read when creating a movie library, but “Adam-12_20170626_12001230.ts” can’t be read when creating a TV library.
Plex is a computer and doesn’t understand what those numbers mean for a TV show. For a Movie, it just ignores them. Please follow the naming guide.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/media-preparation/naming-and-organizing-tv-shows/
@545x39 said:
I’m not understanding how a file name like “A Fistful of Dollars_20170826_18002000.ts” can be read when creating a movie library, but “Adam-12_20170626_12001230.ts” can’t be read when creating a TV library. There has to be something stupid that I’m missing. I’ve been reading about how to name files and it really doesn’t seem to make a difference, the scanner still seems like it can’t see the files. Unless it takes a long time to process and I’m too impatient. But at least a half hour and nothing and it’s only scanning a few files.
Well, you could go the title that won’t play and click on the ellipsis (…) and select optimise from menu /original quality/ select Location. You should then be able to watch the title.
Ok, I got it. As soon as I renamed the files to Adam12 - s01e01.ts
it saw the files. Now comes the fun part of either watching them to determine what episodes they are or just naming them.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
