Is there a good naming convention for episodes of TV shows to help match metadata?

Further, I'm pretty sure, but would like to confirm, that the metadata matching algorithm doesn't merely look at the file name of a video file, but is also aware of internal MKV metadata, like the title field MKV files have.

My current file naming works TERRIBLY with the Zidoo, but that's not surprising. My file naming conventions for TV shows are meant to keep TV shows sorted in season/episode order, and they use a very abbreviated form of the series title, which is spelled out in full only in the containing directory structure. For example:

Star Trek (TV) •

Star Trek - 03 - The Next Generation §

Season 5

ST-TNG-S05E02-Darmok.mkv​

I'd rather not change my file naming conventions, but I do want to update my internal MKV title fields to something the Zidoo and my poster wall can take the greatest advantage of.

What would be a good internal title for this MKV file? Something perhaps like:

Star Trek: The Next Generation; S05E02; Darmok?

Also, is there a good way to clearing indicate a file is an episode of a TV show, so that it doesn't end up incorrectly on my movie poster wall?

I'm currently using the "§" character not only to indicate that a directory contains a TV series, but as a character that tells my Zidoo not to scan the directory - as things are now, I can only rely on making a good movie poster wall. I've also got all movie and TV bonus material in directories named "-Extras-" which my Zidoo has been instructed not to scan.

 

Discussed many times, and the best is SeriesName.S**E**.ext and nothing else. Adding in the episode name can confuse the parser.

SeriesName should be exactly the same as the scraping source you use but obviously without illegal file characters.

So your example would be Star Trek The Next Generation.S05E02.mkv

Obviously you can't have a colon because that's an illegal file character, but don't replace it with anything else.

You can also use a dash to delimit between the name and episode number:

Star Trek The Next Generation - S05E02.mkv

Probably not what you want to hear I know.

 

Yes, definitely not what I want to hear, especially the part about leaving the name of the episode entirely out of the naming.

If the episode title is placed at the end (but before the extension, obviously), like Star Trek The Next Generation - S05E02 - Darmok.mkv or Star Trek The Next Generation - S05E02.Darmok.mkv, is that at least less likely to confuse the parser?

 

Not a technical answer but from my experience with the Zidoo, if you leave the ep name and there is some obscure movie by the same name, you can have a problem. If it’s unique seems to work ok. For me I name my TV series as they appear in TMDB or TVMaze. eg Startrek Strange New Worlds S01E01.MKV or mp4.

 

I'll try some small-scale experiments, like messing with the 2001 series "The Tick" (which I thought was great, but sadly lasted only 9 episodes).

By the way, is that a typo, or is "Startrek" actually run together like that, without a space between "Star" and "trek", in either TMDB or TVMaze?

 

Probably a clumsy finger at 6am

 

Star Trek Strange New Worlds S01E01.mkv for clarity especially now I've had my double shot espresso

 

My little experiment turned out well, even keeping episode titles tacked on after the SxxExx part, so I'll go ahead and make an automated process to rename all of my TV files the same way. The not-yet-modifying-anything-yet version of my code indicates I have around 44 different TV series, so I should have only a limited number of special cases to deal with. If I have to manually fix a few episodes which get mismatched because they include the episode title, so be it.

I recently automated a lot of metadata clean-up, with follow-up manual fixes, for all of my movie files. Now I'm in the middle of backing all of those changes up to my backup NAS. At the rate things are going, it'll take a couple of DAYS for the backup to complete. Since I don't want to be changing too much stuff on the source NAS while this backup is running, my next changes are on hold for a bit.

 

I once had to copy my music collection from a backup (NAS to NAS) after a hard disc crash and it took 5 days

 

That's either a staggeringly HUGE music collection, or a slower transfer rate than I'd expect. I've got about 60GB of music, but 15TB of video. My current backup isn't of all of that 15TB, just the movie portion, no TV shows or movie bonus materials. Perhaps half to 3/4 of that 15TB? It's currently transferring at a speed of about 80 MB/sec, so hopefully it'll be done in something under two days.

The backup started yesterday afternoon, and this morning I'm up to Indiana Jones.

 

It's a staggering huge collection although it was a few years ago and network cards weren't as good as they are now...

 

I gave into renaming all of my TV show files. Fortunately I was able to almost completely automate this process. I went with this filename format:

Star Trek Strange New Worlds - S01E01 - Strange New Worlds.mkv

...with the title of the episode at the end,. Having the title on the end didn't appear to cause me any matching difficulties at all. My automated process also used mvkpropedit to update the internal title fields of the MKV files like this:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds • S01E01 • Strange New Worlds

Even though question marks (and some other characters, like colons) aren't allowed by many files systems as characters in file names, I've found I can around that like this:

Babylon 5 - S04E02 - Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi？.mkv

...where the '？' isn't an ASCII question mark, but the Unicode U+FF1F Fullwidth Question Mark. I translated those back to ordinary questions marks for the internal MKV title.

I must say I've very pleased with the results. Once my Zidoo could figure out how to match my files with TVDB/TVmaze metadata, the way everything is organized on the Poster Wall with images and per-episode descriptions is wonderful.

One show that gave me a little grief was the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series. Even though TVDB has the DVD/Blu-ray episode order as an option, arranged as four seasons, I could only get this show properly matched by reorganizing all of the shows into the TV broadcast episode order, arranged as seven seasons.

 

What about the naming convention for the tv show images? (the main poster, season poster)

I provide my own images and HT4 finds my movie images just fine (poster, fanart, clearlogo)

But my tv show images are ignored and I have to manually select the images from inside HT4. I think it might be because I have them titled incorrectly.

my current folder and name structure.

Code:

Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The (1993) [74670] {hd comp} [folder]
     Season01 [folder]
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E01] The King Of The Road.hd.comp.mkv
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E01] The King Of The Road.hd.comp.nfo
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E02] Day Of The Dot.hd.comp.mkv
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E02] Day Of The Dot.hd.comp.nfo
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E03] The Nightcrawlers.hd.comp.mkv
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E03] The Nightcrawlers.hd.comp.nfo
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E04] Rangeboy.hd.comp.mkv
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E04] Rangeboy.hd.comp.nfo
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E05] Tool And Die.hd.comp.mkv
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E05] Tool And Die.hd.comp.nfo
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E06] Don't Tread On Pete.hd.comp.mkv
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E06] Don't Tread On Pete.hd.comp.nfo
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E07] When Petes Collide.hd.comp.mkv
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E07] When Petes Collide.hd.comp.nfo
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E08] Hard Days Pete.hd.comp.mkv
          Adventures Of Pete And Pete, The [S01E08] Hard Days Pete.hd.comp.nfo
     poster.png
     season00-poster.png
     season01-poster.png
     season02-poster.png
     season03-poster.png
     tvshow-trailer.webm
     tvshow.nfo

any suggestions?

Thank you for your time.

Allister Fiend

 

I name simply “The Adventures of Pete and Pete S01E01 (1993).mkv. For the folder the same but without the episode details of course. I don’t use the episode title as it may be the same as a movie or other tv series. In my experience keep it simple. Since HT uses MediaInfo, not required to include technical details unless you want them to identify the file for your needs. HT doesn’t need it.

 

Thank you for your time Netmask. Right now I use TMM to scrape my movies and all is working fine. HT4 seems okay with everything else.

My problem is actually the poster image files. I like to choose my own poster and place it in the folder. This works fine with HT4 and my movies, but for some reason I can not get HT4 to recognize my image (PNG) files. Do you know the filname format HT4 is looking for? I'm not sure if 'season03-poster.png' or 'poster.png' is correct.

 

I sometimes use TMM but if I wish to use my own art work this is the naming I use
<movie name plus (year)>-poster.jpg
<movie name plus (year)>-fanart.jpg
so Tales of the City S04E07-fanart.jpg
season4-poster.jpg

 

Thank you Netmask!

I think I see what I might be doing wrong. I have a new series I'm putting together and I will see if it works!

Allister Fiend

 

Hi,
May be you could help.
I have several serie where 2 episodes are merged in one file. It often the case for pilote that are counted episode 1 and 2.
I try to name the file show title.S01E01 S01E02.year.mkv.
but it doesn't work

Do you know how i can cop with that?

many thanks

 

I'm not sure how to handle that with Home Theater 4. I would just split the mkv into two files to make things easier. I use an old program called 'MP4 Splitter', which should work with the mkv files. They probably have something newer these days.

Allister Fiend

 

MKVToolNix is the program to use for MKV files.
MP4 Splitter is for mp4 files