Plex - Help with file naming

The_Lanbone

New member
I'm having some trouble getting some of my stuff to show up in my Plex media library, I'm wondering if anyone can help me out. I've got a pretty big library of movies, tv, and racing (F1 & WEC...it's a bit of an obsession). My movies and TV shows are all fine, Plex found them without issue, but my racing folders are an absolute mess and I can't figure out why. I've spent the last few days on the Plex forums and reddit threads that discuss the specifics of how Plex needs files named, formats, etc. but I'm still at a loss as to why I can't get these files to show up.

Here's an example I was trying to work on last night: I have the complete 2008 season as well as the complete 2009 season. Both seasons were "acquired digitally"... and not renamed at all. The complete 2008 season shows up just fine, but none of the 2009 races show up in the Plex library.

I've tried changing the media agents for both whole library, and just the 'Racing' folder from Personal Media Shows to both TheTVDB, and The Movie Database. Neither of these seemed to do anything so I changed them back to Personal Media Shows.

This is what the file structure looks like on my PC
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And this is how it appears on Plex
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This is what both the 2008 and 2009 folders look like, as well as what Plex shows for the 2008 season
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And finally just for reference:
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Inside the 2009 season folder I tried creating individual folders for each race, exactly how the 2008 season folder is setup, but this did nothing. Late last night it hit me that the big difference between the 2 folders is that 2009 is all .ts files while the 2008 folder is all .mp4 files. I threw a few 2009 races into Adobe Media Encoder and converted them to .mp4 files thinking that would solve the problem, but I was wrong again. I'm officially stumped. Can anyone help or offer suggestions?
 
I think i know what the problem is but im not sure how to word it so you could try it, could you be as so kind to upload one of the files you're having problems with so i can try it on my end see if it works then i maybe able to show you a fix
 
Sure, I'll give that a shot. My upload speeds at home are pretty horrible though. I used to have 75/75 at my old place, but since I moved I was forced to change providers my upload speeds are pretty frustrating.

I'll start uploading the 2009 Germany mp4 when I run home for lunch (here in the states). Is there a good site to upload these larger files to?
 
I got the file uploading now, but yikes it's gonna take a while. ETA 3.5hrs+. I ended up having to use mega because my dropbox account wasn't large enough for this file.
 
Just wanted to update the thread. I spent the whole day trying to upload that file to a few different sites with no real luck. Google drive failed at 96%, mega went from a 3.5hr eta to 17hrs @100kbs, dropbox failed from size limits, then I gave up lol

I played around with Plex again last night and think I figured it out. I had to delete my entire racing folder and add it again as Home Movies with Plex Video File Scanner and Freebase agent. Sadly all the time I spent creating folders and subfolders was for nothing as this is now how Plex shows my media
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If I change from the default view to folder list it's a bit more manageable, but it looks like I'll be spending my weekend renaming a few hundred files again!
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Thanks anyway for your help MrKambo!
 
Plex is all about being OCD with the way the files are placed on a HDD and the way in which it is named. renaming is a bitch, took me days to go through all my media to get it right. Follow the simple structure when it comes to adding TV shows or "Series" of anything :

TV > Series name > Series number > all media files named for each "episode" in together

For F1 i would suggest :

TV > F1 > F1 (season year) > ##Each race file named by track and date
 
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