Where is the folder location for the Scanner?

General Discussions
1

Hey!
Quick question that someone of you might be able to answer for me.

Where is the folder location for the scanners?

I’m trying to install Hama (Agent) + BABS (Scanner) since the Scanner/Agent that comes with plex fails on multiple occasions to correctly name, put the cover art and ultimately even find the animes I’ve been adding to my library.

All the threads I’ve found on Google-searches are at least 1 ½ year old, some way older than that. And every guide is pointing to a location that seemingly doesn’t exist anymore.

I’ve put the Hama.bundle-master folder in;
C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins

But I can’t find where to put BABS scanner(BABS.py), the guides are pointing me to;
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Scanners\Series
But that folder doesn’t even exist - In fact, the only folders I have are; Cache, Codecs, Crash Reports, Logs, Plug-in Support and Plug-ins

Thanks in advance, sincerely
Yatagarasu :slight_smile:

Oh, and thanks for having me on the forums!

2

Hi,
Before going through all kinds of trouble, let’s first take a look at the names you are using and why PMS can’t resolve them as is. 99.99% of the time, the problem is because the file name isn’t named per the standard.

If you will show me a few examples, exactly as you have them, I will help you get that resolved.

3

@ChuckPa said:
Hi,
Before going through all kinds of trouble, let’s first take a look at the names you are using and why PMS can’t resolve them as is. 99.99% of the time, the problem is because the file name isn’t named per the standard.

If you will show me a few examples, exactly as you have them, I will help you get that resolved.

My names are as follows (single season, example anime);
Ace Attorney - 01
Ace Attorney - 02
Etc~

In this case Plex only show me the extras, and not a single episode from the actual series.

Another example of a multi-season anime;
High School DxD Born Ep.01
High School DxD Born Ep.02
etc~
(season2)
High School DxD New Ep.01
High School DxD New Ep.02

In this case season 1 shows up, but Plex fails to even recognize the existence of the second season (“New”), doesn’t add it as season 2 nor as a standalone show.

Another multiseason example;
Seraph of the End - 01
Seraph of the End - 02
etc~
(season2)
Seraph of the End S2 - 01
Seraph of the End S2 - 02
Etc~

In this case season 1 shows up just fine - But season 2 only shows the “extras” from the Season 2 folder, again not recognizing any of the actual Season 2 Episodes.

Edit:
The extras are labeled;
Seraph of the End S2 - Extra 1
Seraph of the End S2 - Extra 2
etc~
They’re in the same folder as the normal Season 2 episodes.

I should add that I have previously used 3rd party agents/scanners that connect to AniDB, and that have resolved all of the above issues.
Hence I asked how to install Scanners/Agents now that the file structure seems to have changed (ran an older version of Plex before I had to change server, but with the new server I had to install the latest version of Plex server - effectively killing support for the old setup I had).

4

Those are not good names. You’re missing punctuation in important places. It may be obvious to us, but not the computer.
(the Media Preparation link in my signature shows you all the different ways PMS can accept names)

Series Name <punctuation> SxxExx <punctuation> optional title.ext

For “Ace Attorney”, this would be:

Ace Attorney/
  Season 1/
    Ace Attorney - S01E01 - episode title.ext

Television extras are placed in Season 0. They use Series - S00Exxx - Name you want shown

A tool, such as FileBot or TheRenamer, will help you with all these. Since starting to use FileBot, I have had no difficulties with matching series or movies.

My episode naming is {n}/Season {s.pad(2)/{n} - S00E00 - {t}
My movie naming rule is {n} ({y)}/{n} ({y})

Filebot will 1) Look up the file names you give it (drag & drop); search for the full proper names; show you what it found, asking you to correct if ambiguous with another choice; rename and move the files into their final structure.

Here is an example of how I name extras. This lets me easily see extras for each season. This is not ideal, but it works very well.

[chuck@lizum Star Trek Enterprise.103]$ ll
total 36
drwxr-xr-x  7 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 14:26 ./
drwxr-xr-x 26 chuck users  4096 Dec  7 12:15 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users 12288 Oct 23 15:53 Season 00/
drwxr-xr-x  3 chuck users  4096 Dec  8 00:50 Season 01/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 23:12 Season 02/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 22:58 Season 03/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 22:56 Season 04/
[chuck@lizum Star Trek Enterprise.104]$ cd Season\ 00
[chuck@lizum Season 00.105]$ ll
total 4256128
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck users     12288 Oct 23 15:53 ./
drwxr-xr-x 7 chuck users      4096 Oct 23 14:26 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  32463288 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E101 - Admiral Forrest Takes Centre Stage.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 104679942 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E102 - Cast Impressions.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 227544264 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E103 - Celebrating Star Trek.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 126447826 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E104 - Creating Enterprise.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  38762514 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E110 - NX-01 File 03.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  86877684 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E111 - Oh Captain! My Captain! - A Profile of Scott Bakula.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  26213978 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E112 - Star Trek Original Series Boxset Trailer.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  79445580 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E113 - Time Travel, Temporal Cold Wars and Beyond.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users   6708422 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E201 - Borg Invasion Trailer.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 181097656 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E202 - Enterprise Moments Season Two.avi
5

As followup, I’ve spoken with a couple employees,

The scanners you want to install are like any other plug-in.

Create the ‘Scanners\Series’ directory and put the contents in there.

example: C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Scanners\Series ew_scanner.py

6

@YatagarasuKamisan said:
But I can’t find where to put BABS scanner(BABS.py), the guides are pointing me to;
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Scanners\Series
But that folder doesn’t even exist - In fact, the only folders I have are; Cache, Codecs, Crash Reports, Logs, Plug-in Support and Plug-ins
You just need to manually create that folder.

7

@ChuckPa said:
Those are not good names. You’re missing punctuation in important places. It may be obvious to us, but not the computer.
(the Media Preparation link in my signature shows you all the different ways PMS can accept names)

Series Name <punctuation> SxxExx <punctuation> optional title.ext

For “Ace Attorney”, this would be:

Ace Attorney/
  Season 1/
    Ace Attorney - S01E01 - episode title.ext

Television extras are placed in Season 0. They use Series - S00Exxx - Name you want shown

A tool, such as FileBot or TheRenamer, will help you with all these. Since starting to use FileBot, I have had no difficulties with matching series or movies.

My episode naming is {n}/Season {s.pad(2)/{n} - S00E00 - {t}
My movie naming rule is {n} ({y)}/{n} ({y})

Filebot will 1) Look up the file names you give it (drag & drop); search for the full proper names; show you what it found, asking you to correct if ambiguous with another choice; rename and move the files into their final structure.

Here is an example of how I name extras. This lets me easily see extras for each season. This is not ideal, but it works very well.

[chuck@lizum Star Trek Enterprise.103]$ ll
total 36
drwxr-xr-x  7 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 14:26 ./
drwxr-xr-x 26 chuck users  4096 Dec  7 12:15 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users 12288 Oct 23 15:53 Season 00/
drwxr-xr-x  3 chuck users  4096 Dec  8 00:50 Season 01/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 23:12 Season 02/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 22:58 Season 03/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 22:56 Season 04/
[chuck@lizum Star Trek Enterprise.104]$ cd Season\ 00
[chuck@lizum Season 00.105]$ ll
total 4256128
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck users     12288 Oct 23 15:53 ./
drwxr-xr-x 7 chuck users      4096 Oct 23 14:26 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  32463288 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E101 - Admiral Forrest Takes Centre Stage.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 104679942 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E102 - Cast Impressions.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 227544264 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E103 - Celebrating Star Trek.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 126447826 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E104 - Creating Enterprise.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  38762514 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E110 - NX-01 File 03.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  86877684 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E111 - Oh Captain! My Captain! - A Profile of Scott Bakula.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  26213978 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E112 - Star Trek Original Series Boxset Trailer.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  79445580 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E113 - Time Travel, Temporal Cold Wars and Beyond.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users   6708422 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E201 - Borg Invasion Trailer.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 181097656 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E202 - Enterprise Moments Season Two.avi

I completely understand what you’re trying to say, and I will definitely try this out on a couple of episodes!

However, this is barely feasible for me in the long term since I have well over 10Tb worth of data I have to sip through and edit - Almost everything I have ever downloaded comes in the formats I mentioned earlier.
Talking about literally thousand upon thousand of episodes/movies.

And this is 99% of the time just tied to Anime’s, never movies/TV-Shows - they mostly work without any edits what so ever.
With an AniDB Agent + a scanner like BABS this issue is barely present, so if I may be so blunt as to ask you to forward to the developers to look into adding that natively it would be great! I even think AniDB have API’s you can use.

@ChuckPa said:
As followup, I’ve spoken with a couple employees,

The scanners you want to install are like any other plug-in.

Create the ‘Scanners\Series’ directory and put the contents in there.

example: C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Scanners\Series ew_scanner.py

Thanks a lot!

Will try this out ASAP!

8

I have 6TB of Television episodes (7000+ files), it takes only a few minutes to completely rename my entire library.

9

@YatagarasuKamisan said:

@ChuckPa said:
Those are not good names. You’re missing punctuation in important places. It may be obvious to us, but not the computer.
(the Media Preparation link in my signature shows you all the different ways PMS can accept names)

Series Name <punctuation> SxxExx <punctuation> optional title.ext

For “Ace Attorney”, this would be:

Ace Attorney/
  Season 1/
    Ace Attorney - S01E01 - episode title.ext

Television extras are placed in Season 0. They use Series - S00Exxx - Name you want shown

A tool, such as FileBot or TheRenamer, will help you with all these. Since starting to use FileBot, I have had no difficulties with matching series or movies.

My episode naming is {n}/Season {s.pad(2)/{n} - S00E00 - {t}
My movie naming rule is {n} ({y)}/{n} ({y})

Filebot will 1) Look up the file names you give it (drag & drop); search for the full proper names; show you what it found, asking you to correct if ambiguous with another choice; rename and move the files into their final structure.

Here is an example of how I name extras. This lets me easily see extras for each season. This is not ideal, but it works very well.

[chuck@lizum Star Trek Enterprise.103]$ ll
total 36
drwxr-xr-x  7 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 14:26 ./
drwxr-xr-x 26 chuck users  4096 Dec  7 12:15 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users 12288 Oct 23 15:53 Season 00/
drwxr-xr-x  3 chuck users  4096 Dec  8 00:50 Season 01/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 23:12 Season 02/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 22:58 Season 03/
drwxr-xr-x  2 chuck users  4096 Oct 23 22:56 Season 04/
[chuck@lizum Star Trek Enterprise.104]$ cd Season\ 00
[chuck@lizum Season 00.105]$ ll
total 4256128
drwxr-xr-x 2 chuck users     12288 Oct 23 15:53 ./
drwxr-xr-x 7 chuck users      4096 Oct 23 14:26 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  32463288 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E101 - Admiral Forrest Takes Centre Stage.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 104679942 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E102 - Cast Impressions.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 227544264 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E103 - Celebrating Star Trek.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 126447826 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E104 - Creating Enterprise.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  38762514 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E110 - NX-01 File 03.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  86877684 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E111 - Oh Captain! My Captain! - A Profile of Scott Bakula.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  26213978 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E112 - Star Trek Original Series Boxset Trailer.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users  79445580 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E113 - Time Travel, Temporal Cold Wars and Beyond.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users   6708422 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E201 - Borg Invasion Trailer.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 chuck users 181097656 Aug 18  2013 Star Trek Enterprise - S00E202 - Enterprise Moments Season Two.avi

I completely understand what you’re trying to say, and I will definitely try this out on a couple of episodes!

However, this is barely feasible for me in the long term since I have well over 10Tb worth of data I have to sip through and edit - Almost everything I have ever downloaded comes in the formats I mentioned earlier.
Talking about literally thousand upon thousand of episodes/movies.

And this is 99% of the time just tied to Anime’s, never movies/TV-Shows - they mostly work without any edits what so ever.
With an AniDB Agent + a scanner like BABS this issue is barely present, so if I may be so blunt as to ask you to forward to the developers to look into adding that natively it would be great! I even think AniDB have API’s you can use.

@ChuckPa said:
As followup, I’ve spoken with a couple employees,

The scanners you want to install are like any other plug-in.

Create the ‘Scanners\Series’ directory and put the contents in there.

example: C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Scanners\Series ew_scanner.py

Thanks a lot!

Will try this out ASAP!

Use a program like Filebot to assist in renaming

10

@ChuckPa said:
I have 6TB of Television episodes (7000+ files), it takes only a few minutes to completely rename my entire library.

I have now renamed 1 part of my anime library (around 30~ ish series), but one problem have already occurred;

Plex can’t differentiate between Berserk, Berserk Golden age and the new Berserk 2016.

Original (1997) berserk name;
Berserk - 1x01 - The Black Swordsman
etc~ (25 ep. total)

Berserk 2016 (reboot);
Berserk (2016) - 1x01 - The Branded Swordsman
etc~ (12 ep total)

Berserk: Golden Age:
Berserk Golden Age Chapter I - 1x01 - Egg of the High King
Berserk - Golden Age Chapter II - 1x02 - The Capture of Doldrey
Berserk - Golden Age Chapter III - 1x03 - Advent

Plex shows as “Berserk (2016)”, but it adds the old 1997 show. Hence neither the golden age episodes nor the new 2016 episodes show up at all.

EDIT: After rescanning again, the library somewhat fixed it itself.
Only 2 problems now;

  • Episode 25 sits before episode 1 in the 1997 Berserk.
  • Golden Age still not showing up at all.
11
  1. Look up your show on TheTVDB
  2. Take the title as it is used on TheTVDB. If there is something in parentheses, take that too. If the title contains invalid characters (depends on your file system), like § : % *, simply leave them out.
  3. Check the naming and the folder structure of your show. Name the top folder of the show exactly after the title on TheTVDB. No abbreviations. No additional subfolders. No aliases.
  4. Name the episode files according to the above linked naming guide. Use the same title as for the top folder. Show's Title - s01e01 - additional info.ext (’- additional info’ can be left out)
  5. After you corrected the naming and folder structure, perform the Plex Dance with all files for this show.

Berserk - The Golden Age is not a separate show. These episodes are merely treated as ‘Special’ episodes for ‘Berserk’: http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=73752&seasonid=21214&lid=7

Your file naming above is still not right. Installing Filebot is not enough, you must also tell it to use the plex naming schema and not that from Kodi https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/191687/plex-naming-schemes-for-filebot

12

@OttoKerner said:

  1. Look up your show on TheTVDB
  2. Take the title as it is used on TheTVDB. If there is something in parentheses, take that too. If the title contains invalid characters (depends on your file system), like § : % *, simply leave them out.
  3. Check the naming and the folder structure of your show. Name the top folder of the show exactly after the title on TheTVDB. No abbreviations. No additional subfolders. No aliases.
  4. Name the episode files according to the above linked naming guide. Use the same title as for the top folder. Show's Title - s01e01 - additional info.ext (‘- additional info’ can be left out)
  5. After you corrected the naming and folder structure, perform the Plex Dance with all files for this show.

Berserk - The Golden Age is not a separate show. These episodes are merely treated as ‘Special’ episodes for ‘Berserk’: 剣風伝奇ベルセルク - TheTVDB.com

Your file naming above is still not right. Installing Filebot is not enough, you must also tell it to use the plex naming schema and not that from Kodi https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/191687/plex-naming-schemes-for-filebot

Thanks a lot for the information!
I will try to use the Plex naming scheme for shows that fail to be recognized correctly (1 thus far).
I will then perform the “Plex Dance” :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not sure why/how TheTVDB treats Berserk Golden Age as specials, since Golden Age is a summary in 3 episodes of the entire original anime (1997), but redrawn from scratch in 2012 to match the new 2016 show.
Kinda like a remastered prequel to Berserk 2016.

13

@YatagarasuKamisan said:
I’m not sure why/how TheTVDB treats Berserk Golden Age as specials, since Golden Age is a summary in 3 episodes of the entire original anime (1997), but redrawn from scratch in 2012 to match the new 2016 show.
Kinda like a remastered prequel to Berserk 2016.

Then it is clearly ‘connected’ to the original show.
These things tend to get added as specials in TheTVDB, rather than be treated as separate shows.
The same applies to other remakes or ‘summary movies’ (those created by simply re-cutting material from episodes).
Examples: the Movie based on Eureka Seven also appears as a special, even though it was made way after the original series was aired.

‘Highschool DxD’, ‘Highschool DxD New’ and ‘Highschool DxD Born’ are treated as one show with 3 seasons (which makes sense, because the “plot” :wink: is a continuous one).

14

I want to thank everyone that helped me through all this!

Never expected so many great responses - You’re the very essence of a good core community! :slight_smile:

I still have not been able to resolve the issue around “Berserk Golden Age”, regardless of aforementioned methods - But I can just watch that anime “manually”, no biggie :wink:

15

@YatagarasuKamisan said:
I still have not been able to resolve the issue around “Berserk Golden Age”, regardless of aforementioned methods - But I can just watch that anime “manually”, no biggie :wink:

As I said, put it into the Specials season for Berserk.
Here is a little guide for specials in tv shows: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/779113/#Comment_779113

After changing all the file names, perform the Plex Dance with all episodes of the Specials season.
This erases all mismatches from Plex’s database.

You’ll need to ‘dance’ when some episodes or movies were attributed to the wrong show or the wrong movie title.

  • Either due to bad file naming or bogus embedded ‘Title’ metatags (only in mp4/m4v files).