Movie and TV Show Naming Procedure

[JayPSU]

Hi there. It seems to me that I saw someone post a database that lists the proper way to name your movies and tv shows so that Plex and Infuse can identify them and get the proper art for them. Am I mistaken? Can someone post a link to that site? Thanks!

[d00zah]

Something like this?

Naming and organizing your Movie files

Naming and Organizing Your TV Show Files

[JayPSU]

This is helpful too! But what I saw was an actual database where you do a search and it tells you how it’s listed. But then again this might be better since it’s Plex telling you how it needs to be titled. Thanks!

[Radiocomms237]

Not sure whether this is what you're after but for movies there is https://www.imdb.com/ and for TV Series there is https://thetvdb.com/

If you search IMDb for a movie and then look in your browser's address bar you'll see a "tt" number for that particular movie (every movie has a unique "tt" number).

For example, if I search for "Blade Runner (1982)" I get "tt0083658"

Plex then allows you to use that "tt" number in either the folder and/or file names, as follows:

Movies/Blade Runner (1982) {imdb-tt0083658}/Blade Runner (1982) {imdb-tt0083658}.mkv

When Plex sees that IMDb number it will ignore the name of the folder/file completely and use metadata directly from the entry relating to the "tt" number (you could then name your folders and files in some other language for example).

Similarly, when you search The TVDb for a TV series you'll see a number assigned to that series in the results screen. For example, if I search for "Blade Runner: Black Lotus" I get this result displaying the series number of "356155":



Now I can use that in my folder name as follows:

TV Series/Blade Runner Black Lotus (2021-2022) {tvdb-356155}/Season 01/Blade Runner Black Lotus - S01E01 - City of Angels.mkv

Note that every episode also has a unique number on both IMDb and TVDb, but Plex doesn't (yet) allow match hinting on individual episodes, it's been requested numerous times but never implemented.

[d00zah]

This is helpful too! But what I saw was an actual database where you do a search and it tells you how it’s listed. But then again this might be better since it’s Plex telling you how it needs to be titled. Thanks!

I use an old program (YAMMM) someone wrote ages ago for WMC. With all the metadata fetching disabled, all it does now is rename the folder\video to the correct "media center friendly" structure which Emby/Plex are fond of.

Don't know if it can still be found, but it still works for my purposes? All of my stuff is in storage ATM, but it's handy for auto renaming stuff prior to feeding it to the media server for processing. YMMV

[Checkerknight]

Hi there. It seems to me that I saw someone post a database that lists the proper way to name your movies and tv shows so that Plex and Infuse can identify them and get the proper art for them. Am I mistaken? Can someone post a link to that site? Thanks!

I run a Jellyfin server in my home and it took me a while to get title names correct and whanot. Not sure how plex is set up, but if its anything like Jellyfin it will try to pull the movie information from the Header title in the video portion of the MKV file. Whatever you have the file named to it will search your selected database (in my case TMDB which is pretty much a copy of IMDB) and pulls the metadata matching the name for that file. What happens is that sometimes movies are named project names instead of the acutal movie title, or they are named Title001 and such. If this is the case then your database is going to try to pull some nonsense or nothing at all. You will need to change this to the correct name.
Much like naming a file in windows properties there are 2 ways to do it. If you right click on a file and go to properties, there is the general information name (user friendly name), and then the detail information name (the true name). In this example the name listed under the "Details" tab is whats considered the "True" name of the file, and thats the name that is going to be searched for to pull metadata. Windows will let you edit this information by clicking the "remove properties and personal information" link UNLESS you are trying to do so with specifically an MKV file. You need a seperate program to do change their "True Name". Using MKVToolnix is the best and to my knowledge the only way to go. Open the app, go to the "Headers" tab, and drag your file in. It will list every track contained within that file (video, audio, subtitle) and what you're going to want to do is to drop down the video track information, click title, and add/modify that title to the title of the movie. You can also add a year afterwards in parentheses for a more accurate result, or if you're dealing with things such as a remake. Now your file should hopefully be correctly identified. And if Plex is NOTHING like Jellyfin, I apologize for making you read all of this

[ronknights]

Maybe I'm being simplistic here. I get my titles from the disc. If I rip a movie, I already know the name of the movie. If I rip various episodes from a TV series, I already know the name of the show. I can run each individual episode to know its name.

I usually take the lazy way out. I just label the TV episodes with the show's name and episode numbers. (Ex: True Blood S01E01).

I use Plex to handle my multimedia files. Plex does a great job of getting the proper names.