Version of Sailor Moon Not In TVDB

I’m trying to add my VAST Sailormoon collection to Plex and running into some issues. I have:

Sailor Moon Crystal (working)
OG Sailor Moon Season 5 (Sailorstars) (Pulling season 1 metadata)
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Live action, Japan only) (Not in TVDB, Also not showing up in Plex, they are .avi, do I need to convert?)

How do I get correct metadata for all this stuff? The show has had so many incarnations and is super confusing!

AVI might cause your clients some transcoding but it won’t impact the matching of your media.
In most cases all you need is to properly name your files, following Plex’ naming convention for tv shows.

OG Sailor Moon (Sailorstars)

Can you share some details on how you have named “OG Sailor Moon” (incl. folder structure) – that’s the one I couldn’t find in TheTVDb.com with the given names…
If I’m reading wikipedia correct, this is actually simply the 5th season of the regular show
So naming should be like this (I’m including the optional year the show first aired to avoid further confusion with similarly named listings):

TV Shows
   Sailor Moon (1992)
      Season 01
         Sailor Moon (1992) - s01e01.ext
         Sailor Moon (1992) - s01e02.ext
         ...
         Sailor Moon (1992) - s01e46.ext
      ...
      Season 05
         Sailor Moon (1992) - s05e01.ext
         Sailor Moon (1992) - s05e02.ext
         ...
         Sailor Moon (1992) - s05e34.ext

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon

As for Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon – that show is quite prominently placed in TheTVDb.com :wink:
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon - TheTVDB.com
so naming should be like this…

TV Shows
   Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
      Season 01
         Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon - s01e01 - I'm Sailor Moon.ext
         Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon - s01e02.ext
         Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon - s01e03.ext
         ...
         Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon - s01e49.ext

Plex Dance

Once you’ve completed fixing your names, you might need to perform a “Plex Dance” for Plex to recognize the changes

  1. move the show folders outside the tv show folder linked to Plex
  2. scan the library for updates
  3. empty the trash for the library
  4. move the folders back in place
  5. scan the library for updates again
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Crazy, I searched Sailor Moon and that didn’t come up! Thank you! I’ll keep messing with this one.

I have Stars saved as

Sailor Moon --> Season 5 --> Sailor Stars xx.ext

Thanks!

And that’s why it doesn’t work…
Plex needs the sXXeYY section in the episode file name; it appears missing that made Plex believe the episode actually belongs to season 1…
Correct Naming follows that pattern:
[Show name] > Season XX > [Show name] - sXXeYY [ - episode title (optional)].ext

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UGH. I spent the afternoon renaming files to match the syntax Plex is looking for, and now it insists on lumping all of PGSM (live action) with season 1 of Sailor Moon Crystal! I split Crystal into 3 folders like it has on TVDB also, to make sure that wasn’t the problem.

TV Shows --> Sailor Moon Crystal --> Season X --> Sailor Moon Crystal sxxexx.ext

TV Shows --> Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon --> Season X -->Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon sXXeXX.ext

I know that some files are overlapping others in the listing too, I don’t get why it’s not finding the right data and sorting even with correct syntax!

Any thoughts?

Did you perform the “Plex Dance” after updating your file structure and names?

Yes. A couple of times.

hmmm… just double checking.
you mentioned you split Sailor Moon Crystal in 3 folders…
can you please show that file / folder structure? According to TheTVDb.com it should be a single main folder w/ 3 seasons (potentially plus specials folder). There should be no 3 separate top-level folders.

Example:

TV Shows
   Sailor Moon Crystal
      Season 01
         Sailor Moon Crystal - s01e01.ext
         Sailor Moon Crystal - s01e02.ext
         ...
         Sailor Moon Crystal - s01e14.ext

That’s basically what I have

TV Shows

Sailor Moon Crystal

Season 1

Sailor Moon Crystal - s01exx.ext

Season 2

Sailor Moon Crystal - s02exx.ext

Season 3

Sailor Moon Crystal - s03exx.ext

The episode numbers reset in each season (Act 15 is s02e01.)

can you paste a real example of the ones where Plex wrongly combines/overlaps seasons/episodes?


44%20PM 03%20PM

Screenshots. The entire first season of Crystal looks like that, it sees two “versions” of the episodes. Also the listings for Crystal and PGSM in the directory.

When you click on Edit for one of those duplicate episodes… which 2 file names are showing under Info?

Sure! 58%20PM

You could try including the year the show’s first aired in the folder / file names.
By the way… as you’re using macOS, you don’t need to fix each file individually! Just select all applicable files and select Rename All from Finder‘s context menu. There you can simply replace Sailor Moon Crystal by Sailor Moon Crystal (2014).

Edit: don’t forget the Plex Dance when done!

That rename thing is super cool, but it didn’t help :frowning: I feel like there is some metadata buried in the files somewhere that is messing with the sorting and I don’t know how do drill down and find it.

That should only play a role if you’re dealing with mp4/m4v files. Plex ignores embedded metadata from other file types such as mkv.

Details please. Messing how?
Screenshots help.

Adding the year to the files doesn’t help much. The top show folder is where it’s more important to have.

Also, check your spelling:
In one of your screenshots above, you have
“Guradian” instead of “Guardian”.

catmorgan, did you get it sorted? If not, I can try and help you out, I’ve had to deal with a lot of similar-named series!

I need to get up and take a look at it – Work got busy and I’ve not had 10 minutes to mess with it! I’ll let you know!