Renaming with wrong episode names

General Support / Questions Metadata and Renaming
1

Hi Guys,

My first time using mcebuddy to convert plex recorded shows. I started converting with renaming of the show “48 Hours”. It renames some episodes that contain “..(copy *).ts“ at the end of the file, with wrong episode name. Plex file has the series, episode and name right, but there is a discrepancy during fetching data from TVDB and renaming? I can’t continue using mcebuddy until I resolve this issue. Help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

48 Hours.xlsx (65.5 KB)

2

Hi sqkulaly,

Welcome to MCEBuddy! I understand you’re having an issue with “48 Hours” episodes being renamed incorrectly, especially those with “(copy *).ts” in the filename. This can definitely be frustrating when you’re trying to organize your Plex library.

It sounds like MCEBuddy might be having trouble matching the correct episode information from TVDB due to the naming convention of your recorded files. The “(copy *).ts” part could be throwing off the metadata matching.

To help me understand what’s going on, could you provide some more details?

  1. What version of MCEBuddy are you using? (You can find this in the MCEBuddy interface under Help → About).
  2. Can you give an example of a filename before and after MCEBuddy processes it? For instance, something like:
    • Original: 48 Hours - SXXEXX - Episode Title (copy 1).ts
    • Renamed (incorrect): 48 Hours - S01E01 - Incorrect Episode Name.mp4
  3. Are you using any custom renaming patterns in MCEBuddy? If so, could you share it?
  4. Have you checked the MCEBuddy conversion log file for these specific episodes? The log often contains clues about what MCEBuddy is trying to do and where it might be failing to find metadata.

In the meantime, you might want to try a few things:

  • Manually rename one of the problematic files before MCEBuddy processes it to remove the (copy *).ts part and see if MCEBuddy then renames it correctly. This would help confirm if that’s indeed the issue.
  • Check your MCEBuddy naming conventions. Ensure that the naming convention you have set up is robust enough to handle the variations in your source filenames.

Once I have a bit more information, I can try to provide more targeted advice.

1 Like
3
  1. mcebuddy 2.6 r6
  2. A. ORIGINAL: 48 Hours (1988)\Season 23\48 Hours (1988) - S23E02 - Live to Tell The Birthday Party.ts
    CONVERTED: 48 Hours\Season 23\48 Hours - S23E02 - The Godfather’s Daughter aka Their Father, The Godfather.mkv
    B. ORIGINAL: 48 Hours (1988)\Season 01\48 Hours (1988) - S01E02 - What Happened in Apartment 1601 .ts
    CONVERTED: 48 Hours\Season 01\48 Hours - S01E02 - In Las Vegas.mkv
    C. ORIGINAL: 48 Hours (1988)\Season 31\48 Hours (1988) - S31E19 - The Fitbit Alibi (copy 1).ts
    CONVERTED: 48 Hours\Season 31\48 Hours - S31E19 - Rodney Alcala The Killing Game.mkv
    D. ORIGINAL: 48 Hours (1988)\Season 22\48 Hours (1988) - S22E05 - Relentless (copy 2).ts
    CONVERTED: 48 Hours\Season 22\48 Hours - S22E05 - Vegas Heat.mkv
  3. not using custom naming pattern.
  4. yes, attached to the thread as spreadsheet.
4

Hi, sqkulaly. I believe MCEBuddy is getting the episode names from TheTVDB. Here are the links to Season 1 and Season 23 where you will find those names for those episodes:
48 Hours - Unknown - Season 1 - TheTVDB.com
48 Hours - Unknown - Season 23 - TheTVDB.com

My experience is that TheTVDB episode information is correct. But, I think you can disable the renaming by “unselecting” “Rename and sort by video information.”

1 Like
5

Plex uses an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) that is taken from the provider during recording and then embedded into the .ts file. Is there an option or can it be added for MCEBuddy to use the embedded EPG to name the shows?

Unfortunately, I put my full trust on MCEBuddy and check marked "delete after conversion. :stuck_out_tongue: Its still a great app! Would be phenomenal if renaming using EPG option was added. I have thousands of other shows that I need to convert and figure out how to organize them.

Thank you SJL for the reply!

6

Unfortunately plex doesn’t embed the metadata into the TS file (afaik only Silicon dust DVR does that) so MCEBuddy uses the filename to extract the metadata when there is no embedded metadata available but I think plex can be configured to export the metadata into a .xml or some other format. Maybe @SJL has some insight on this

MCEBuddy can recognize most metadata formats, see more details about does metadata matching here:

If your only issue is the extraenous “(copy x)” in the title when MCEBuddy parses the filename to extract the metadata, you could use regex (if you don’t know regex just use the BOT AI helper, give it and example and tell it what you want to do and it should be able to create the regex for you to use) and metadata correction to strip that out of the title and then either use just that or have MCEBuddy use that corrected title to match the information from the internet. See this topic for more examples:

1 Like
7

Understood. I think the regex or the replace and correction is my solution. Thank you guys for all the help!