TV shows: Complex folder structure issues

[AlanBatie 5]

I have enough shows that I've broken them into lettered subdirectories A/Almost_Human etc. The problem is with shows like The 4400 that I put in 0/4400 and Emby thinks it's Hawaii Five-0 for some reason. I'm not going to put shows that start with The in the Ts... and 2001 doesn't have a The anyhow...

[Luke 42078]

33 minutes ago, AlanBatie said:

I have enough shows that I've broken them into lettered subdirectories A/Almost_Human etc. The problem is with shows like The 4400 that I put in 0/4400 and Emby thinks it's Hawaii Five-0 for some reason. I'm not going to put shows that start with The in the Ts... and 2001 doesn't have a The anyhow...

HI, do you use years at the end of your series folders? That would help immensely.

[AlanBatie 5]

I'm going to start putting imdb ids on the problematic ones (uggh, except the format requires using characters that are special to the shell, which is really problematic!); also, I recall there's a way to force the episode number from the file name, but can't find it? Firefly in particular is problematic because it aired out of order

Edited March 30, 2025 by AlanBatie

[darkassassin07 652]

11 hours ago, AlanBatie said:

I have enough shows that I've broken them into lettered subdirectories A/Almost_Human etc. The problem is with shows like The 4400 that I put in 0/4400 and Emby thinks it's Hawaii Five-0 for some reason. I'm not going to put shows that start with The in the Ts... and 2001 doesn't have a The anyhow...

If you're going to break your libraries into lettered sub folders, you absolutely MUST add each of the lettered sub directories as root folders of your library:

So for the structure:

/movies/A/Aladdin (1992)/[movie files]

Add:

/movies/A/

/movies/B/

/movies/C/

Etc

Do NOT just add

/movies/

 

 

 

I've also taken to adding tvdb id's to my folder names, to ensure proper matching:

/Movies/Aladdin (1992) [tmdbid=812]/

Movies and shows with identical titles, or lots of similar titles sometimes get mis-matched even with perfect naming. The various looney toons shows for example. Adding the IDs fixes this. 

 

If you use tools like radarr/sonarr, you can tweak the naming settings to include these for you.

Edited March 30, 2025 by darkassassin07

[Happy2Play 9780]

33 minutes ago, darkassassin07 said:

If you're going to break your libraries into lettered sub folders, you absolutely MUST add each of the lettered sub directories as root folders of your library:

So for the structure:

/movies/A/Aladdin (1992)/[movie files]

Add:

/movies/A/

/movies/B/

/movies/C/

Etc

Do NOT just add

/movies/

 

 

 

I've also taken to adding tvdb id's to my folder names, to ensure proper matching:

/Movies/Aladdin (1992) [tmdbid=812]/

Movies and shows with identical titles, or lots of similar titles sometimes get mis-matched even with perfect naming. The various looney toons shows for example. Adding the IDs fixes this. 

 

If you use tools like radarr/sonarr, you can tweak the naming settings to include these for you.

It can be done

 

But will say all your media requires name year naming scheme.

Edited March 30, 2025 by Happy2Play

[darkassassin07 652]

TBH movies is less critical of the structure, poor example on my part.

Tv shows identification really really doesn't like the extra folders though.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Just now, darkassassin07 said:

Tv shows identification really really doesn't like the extra folders though.

Very true as Emby parser it very finicky here looking at that already nested nature of TV Shows.  But from all my testing having name (year) for your TV corrects all the nesting issues I have come across.

But personally think this should be split as the new issue is nested structure per @AlanBatieposts. @GrimReaper

[Luke 42078]

On 3/30/2025 at 1:40 AM, AlanBatie said:

I'm going to start putting imdb ids on the problematic ones (uggh, except the format requires using characters that are special to the shell, which is really problematic!); also, I recall there's a way to force the episode number from the file name, but can't find it? Firefly in particular is problematic because it aired out of order

For your specific issue the year would be best, although adding external ids to the series folder is not a bad thing, but it just won’t help with what’s being discussed here.

 Episode numbers come from file names.

[AlanBatie 5]

On 3/31/2025 at 10:38 AM, Luke said:

 Episode numbers come from file names.

I have the SxxExx structure, but screwed up and left the Firefly- out of the filename, so never mind that part...