My absolute Series Scanner does read anidb.id, tvdb.id, tmdb.id and modify the title to “title [tvdb-xxxxx]]” (the spelling can also be used) and hama agent load anidb tvdb, tmdb data that way… (thibk it does tmdb movies part only, to check)
None of this would be a problem if Plex was flexible enough to use the IMDb ID as part of the filename. Folks have been asking for this feature to be brought back for years, but it falls on deaf ears, even though it’s 100% foolproof. Every. Single. Time. Back when Kodi was still called XBMC I could even use the IMDb ID for a particular episode of a TV series, such as a comedy special or a concert, and get a perfect match…and have it show up in the movie section instead of me having to remember that such and such concert was actually part of such and such TV show.
But all you will ever get here is “Follow the naming convention! Follow the naming convention!” as though it’s completely and utterly inconceivable that we might use something (gasp!) other than Plex with our media collection. Simply adding “Alfred Hitchcock” to the beginning of the filename of all of my Hitchcock movies breaks Plex. “Follow the naming convention! Squawk squawk!” Ugh
For a paid product, Plex is spectacularly unbending and unwavering when it comes to implementing one of the simplest common sense requests. “If there is a tt followed by seven digits in the filename, look that up on IMDb and don’t concern yourself in the slightest with anything else.” God forbid we choose how to name our own media lol
And to the person who said we “downloaded some software for free” so we shouldn’t complain: the apps aren’t free and the server is pretty useless on its own.
@WasabiNME: Hello, let me try to answer point by point…
create a feature request https://forums.plex.tv/discussions/tagged/feature-request/p1 or point to one already done to raise awareness including the link…
Found this page… Please search the issue and indicate the links, it would spare time for some people like me: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/78209/use-the-imdb-id-in-the-filename-to-match-movies-and-series+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie which point to a custom scanner…
“Simply adding ‘Alfred Hitchcock’ to the beginning of the filename of all of my Hitchcock movies breaks Plex.”.
I would have added "[Alfred Hitchcock] " to the beginning, since brackets contents are scrapped and that would still follow naming conventions. Furthermore, Plex supports tags, so you could custom select him as producer… Why would you edit the filename for it ?
IMDB and metadata sources
If XBMC (now Kodi) does what you want, please go for it, but the reality i believe is that they are nearly on the same page. All metadata aware players (Media Browser, Kodi, Plex) separate series from movies (although i joined movies and series with my scanner+agent for anime, and even use metadata id forcing so it can be done without changing plex itself through agent+scanners) and you need to specify a metadata source and stick to its numbering.
There is no official imdb agent to my knowledge as using imdb’s metadata costs money.
The Open Movie Database agent retrieves metadata through The OMDb API, which indirectly provides access to information from IMDb. https://github.com/haeY/OpenMovieDatabase.bundle
why no imdb agent: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/196770/imdb-agent-attention-all-imdb-employees is why there isn’t really an agent in my opinion
themoviedb(does series+movies now, best for movies) and thetvdb (best for series) are the best metadata sources with an API and plex agent available.
Thetvdb works perfect if folders decently named. you can add crap in brackets and it gets scrubbed (or use my scanner)
There is few ways to go at it but the one i used for my anime (anidb + tvdb) metadata agent is this one:
. scanner to search for a metadata id in serie folder name " [tvdb-xxxxxx]" or add one if tvdb.id file is in serie or serie/Extras folder
. agent search to force the id if present in serie name passed by the scanner
. the update function needs no change since it download from the metadata id for its metadata source
A custom scanner could search for the imdbid and just keep that as name.
the agent should find the movie since using the imdb id as title when doing custom search is supported and the search function is the same one used in both case.
This link below point to exactly that: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/78326/custom-scanner-use-imdbid-in-filename-instead-of-name-and-year/p1
Putting parenthesis around the tvdbid isn’t the best yeah…
You basically make up your own convention to complain afterwords it breaks things…
observations:
Plex does not survey the forum much, so i gain nothing coding an agent, apart form the few generous souls that donated after somebody hinted i should have a donation page. Apparently suppporting anime series without having to rename and allowing both series and movies in a single folder (specific to anime, since loads of series have separate movies) made a difference, to a point the functionality exist nowhere else…
PMS allow web steaming and a web interface and for me is the best, especially since we can add scanner and agents easily even though not many people get bothered and the documentation is scarce but editing existing agents is enough to learn…
I could see no structure nor search in your post, and that is putting it nicelly, just somebody complaining and pointing out xbmc used to do it, then why not use XBMC instead? After all, “None of this would be a problem if Plex was flexible enough”, and “the server is pretty useless on its own.”, “Back when Kodi was still called XBMC I could even use the IMDb ID for a particular episode of a TV series, such as a comedy special or a concert, and get a perfect match”. Please use it then, or be constructive, because your post paint you this time as a whinny self entitled ass to be fair…
This works?
@ZeroQI said:
I could see no structure nor search in your post, and that is putting it nicelly, just somebody complaining and pointing out xbmc used to do it, then why not use XBMC instead? After all, “None of this would be a problem if Plex was flexible enough”, and “the server is pretty useless on its own.”, “Back when Kodi was still called XBMC I could even use the IMDb ID for a particular episode of a TV series, such as a comedy special or a concert, and get a perfect match”. Please use it then, or be constructive, because your post paint you this time as a whinny self entitled ass to be fair…
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I didn’t say XBMC used to do it. I pointed out that Kodi was able to do it even as far back when it was called XBMC, and it still can.
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Plex did do it! It was great! That feature was removed for whatever reason.
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“Please use [Kodi] then”. Why? I paid for Plex back when it had this feature that was important to me (and obviously others, hence this thread). I paid for Plex because it could transcode to less-powerful devices. Kodi can’t transcode.
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A paying customer should get to complain about the removal of a very useful feature. I did just that.
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I appreciate your advice, and your scanner sounds lovely, but Plex is dead to me now because I no longer own any devices that aren’t powerful enough to stream directly. So I can carry on naming my media however the hell I want B)
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@Hossa What you need to understand is that there’s more to a movie than just the movie file. You have subtitles. You have supporting artwork. You have deleted scenes, cast interviews, trailers, blah yadda etc. Therefore, every movie has to be in its own folder, even if your case, that folder only contains one file.
I do agree with you that the IMDB # needs to be the main identifier for every movie file. Doing so would eliminate the kind of errors that happen when you have a movie that has different versions throughout the years.
Same goes for TV shows. Using the SxxExx as the main identifier is a mistake. Using a combination of the TVDB # and the episode Air Date would solve what I call the Firefly problem… which is when a network makes a boneheaded decision to air episodes out of order… then when the DVD is eventually released, you run into the issue of episodes having different numbers (and even seasons if you’re Futurama). Using TVDB+AirDate solves that issue. Because once a series is released on DVD, you can use their order as the “official” order and change the SxxExx in the database without messing up the titles of the episodes, only changing the order they are in to what they producers originally intended.
@Hossa said:
Hi,I know what you are talking about.
But seriously; why make a folder for each movie, when there is only one file in it…!?
I really don’t get the cause of this “scanning behaviour”!
Hope someone from the developers will answer in the futue!
Regards
and good night
Hossa
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