Custom file naming - remove date recorded from eposide name from channels dvr

General Support / Questions Metadata and Renaming
1

Channels DVR creates files with date stamp of recording. This can’t be changed.
For example: Rick and Morty S02E05 Get Schwifty 2026-09-19-1439

When I try this formatting, it removes the entire episode name

%showname% (%premiereyear%)\Season %season%##%showname% (%premiereyear%) - S%season%##E%episode%## - %episodename:R=“\s*\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4}$”->“”%

Any help please, I do have metadata on, with force=series.

2

The reason the entire episode name is disappearing is that MCEBuddy does not support inline regular expression replacement syntax (such as %tag:R="..."->""%) within custom renaming patterns. When MCEBuddy encounters an unrecognized variable tag like %episodename:R=...%, it cannot resolve the token and evaluates it to blank.

Here is why this happens and how to cleanly remove the timestamp:

Why the timestamp is in the episode name

When MCEBuddy inspects the Channels DVR recording:
Rick and Morty S02E05 Get Schwifty 2026-09-19-1439

It parses the filename structure directly. Anything following the episode number S02E05 is treated as the subtitle / episode title (Get Schwifty 2026-09-19-1439).

Solutions

1. Enable Channels DVR’s MCEBuddy JSON Export (Recommended)

Channels DVR includes built-in support for generating sidecar metadata for MCEBuddy:

  • In your Channels DVR Server Web Admin, look for the setting to export / generate MCEBuddy JSON metadata.
  • When enabled, Channels DVR places a .json metadata file next to the video recording containing clean fields (title, season, episode number, and episode title without the recording timestamp).
  • MCEBuddy reads this file automatically and uses the clean episode title.

2. Ensure Internet Metadata Overrides the Filename

If you have internet metadata lookup enabled in MCEBuddy:

  • Open your Conversion Task Settings → Expert Settings (or Metadata settings depending on your version).
  • Ensure Download information from the internet is enabled.
  • Make sure Override existing metadata is checked. If this is not checked, MCEBuddy may prioritize the episode title parsed from the raw filename rather than replacing it with the clean title fetched from TVDB/TMDB.

Once internet metadata is fetched and allowed to override, %episodename% will resolve directly to Get Schwifty.

3. Update Your Custom Renaming Pattern

Once one of the above methods is feeding clean metadata into MCEBuddy, simplify your pattern back to standard tokens (also note the path separator \ between the Season folder and the filename):

%showname% (%premiereyear%)\Season %season%##\%showname% (%premiereyear%) - S%season%##E%episode%## - %episodename%

(Note: If you ever need to perform arbitrary regex manipulation on filenames where metadata cannot be downloaded or exported from Channels DVR, MCEBuddy requires using a PostCustomCommand script (e.g., PowerShell) to rename the file after conversion, as string manipulation tags are not built into the renaming engine.)

3

Using the json is working great now. Thanks

4

Glad to hear that sorted it out! The Channels DVR JSON sidecar is definitely the cleanest and most reliable way to feed metadata into MCEBuddy.

Enjoy your recordings, and don’t hesitate to reach back out if you run into any other questions!