Unexpected content in TV Shows from Plex Server

Selecting the TV shows from my home Plex library shows me one show. This isn’t a show I recognise, and is not in my shared folder.

The shows that are in my TV shared folder are not showing.

Looking at the Alerts for the NAS I can see the correct folders for the TV shows are being scanned.
No errors are shown in the Alerts.

Background

  • Plex Server working correctly with all media (Movies, TV shows, Music and Home Photos) showing from a home PC;
  • NAS box introduced as an upgrade for Plex Server (new server, new parts, fresh software loads and raid configurations)
  • Data copied from PC to Plex share on NAS (each media with it’s own folder)
  • Movies, Music and Home photos all work as before, however, TV shows now does not show my shows, but does show an unknown show I don’t have.
  • As the TV show files were copied from my previous library (on the PC), these are presumably known good.

Questions

  • Why do I have an unknown show showing?
  • What do I have to do to have my shows visible (NB these are already proven good files)?

Server Version#: Plex Media Server 1.23.4
Player Version#: via the web, version unknown

Unknown show:

My Shows being scanned:

Data Path:

Could just be a “Bad Match” Happened with me, thought Firefly was Sailor Moon (did 4 plex dances (after I reencoded some bad files from .mp4 to .mkv) and didn’t see the show come back after a scan.

Just go to one episode and with the hamburger menu (3 vertical dots) look at “Get Info” and see the folder that is showing. Then try to “Fix Match” or “Unmatch” then “Match” it correctly.

Thank you Forkboy

No real progress, sadly.

Trying the Fix Match showed me other shows called “Snowfall”, I don’t have a show called Snowfall.

It did allow me to do an Unmatch, but now the option has disappeared.

When I go to Get Info it shows me it has three different shows from different folders against this unknown one (see picture)

Let’s say it all looks a ‘little less than ideal’ (aka SNAFU?)

Do you know if the Plex option to Delete Files actually deletes files from my data store, or just removes the entries in PMS?

You have an extra subfolder in there that shouldn’t be there.

/TV Series/Paul & Michelle's TV Series/Series Name should just be:
/TV Series/Series Name.

Otherwise it thinks the show is called Paul & Michelle's TV Series and tries to match that to something.

See: Naming and Organizing Your TV Show Files | Plex Support

Thank you drozoidberg33

I didn’t realise the naming was folder depth sensitive, the idea was to build a folder structure something like…

  •          Movies / Parents Movies
    
  •                  / Kids Movies
    
  •          TV Series / Parents TV / Show Name 
    
  •                                 / Show Name 2 ...
    
  •                    / Kids TV / Show Name 
    
  •                              / Show Name 2 ...
    

Clearly, with folder depth sensitivity this structure won’t be possible.

(I’m still a little surprised how “Paul & Michelle’s TV Series” became Snowfall lol)

I will restructure the folder hierarchy and rescan…

You also need to clean up your file names. Use sXXeYY, not s-XXe-YY or s-XX.e-YY.

You can still use your folder structure. Just add the sub-folder to the library instead.

Example:
For “All Movies” library, add both “Parents Movies” and “Kids Movies”.
For “Kids Movies” library, add just “Kids Movies” folder.

If there are any movies directly in the Movies folder, create a new subfolder “Other,” move the movies there, then add “Other” to the appropriate libraries.

Repeat for TV shows.

Edit: FYI, Power Renamer in Microsoft Power Toys can help with the file names. Tell it to replace .e- with e, or similar patterns. It gives you a preview of the new names to help avoid unintended changes. It is Windows only, not available for Linux/Mac.

In addition to the other comments above, is there a reason you are using that folder structure? They will all get combined into 1 Plex library. If you are trying to actually separate content, it may be better to create different libraries for each folder.

Parents Movies library pointing to the Parents Movies folder
Kids Movies library pointing to the Kids Movies folder
etc.

This will also allow you to share only specific libraries if you want to give your kids their own Plex accounts or setup managed users for them.

Thank you FordGuy61, some good info there.

Yes while restructuring the folders I also updated the filenames to something more standard (show name -sXXeYY - episode).

Renamer would have been great, unfortunately, I’m working remotely on a NAS tonight.

Thank you MovieFan.Plex
Working from the link drzoidberg33 sent, I have restructured the folders for better access control, exactly as your suggestion :slight_smile:

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