Plex Naming Convention: Movies, TV Shows and Artwork

Where Plex's conventions come from

Plex scanners inherit the Kodi / XBMC convention: the folder hierarchy says what something is, the filename says which episode it is. Both live in the naming itself — Plex has no extra database mapping.

Movie naming

• The standard form is title (year) with straight parentheses
• Local artwork: poster.jpg for the cover, fanart.jpg for the backdrop
• Subtitles as video-name.language.srt so Plex lists them as language tracks

                      Movies/
├── Blade Runner 2049 (2017)/
│   ├── Blade Runner 2049 (2017).mkv
│   ├── Blade Runner 2049 (2017).zh.srt
│   └── poster.jpg
└── Whiplash (2014).mp4
                    

TV show naming

• show (year)/Season xx/show.SxxExx is the most compatible combination
• Extensions matter: .mkv, .mp4 and .ts are all recognized
• Multi-episode files as S01E01-E02, specials as S00Exx

                      TV Shows/
└── Dark (2017)/
    ├── Season 01/
    │   ├── Dark.S01E01.mkv
    │   ├── Dark.S01E01.zh.srt
    │   └── Season01-poster.jpg
    └── Season 02/
                    

Naming that Plex gets wrong

                      Game of Thrones Episode 1.mkv      ← no SxxExx, no episode number
GOT.1x01.mkv                       ← 1x01 is non-standard
Some.Movie.2019.1080p.BluRay.x264.mkv  ← release tags interfere with matching
                    

Normalizing a library for Plex with VRenamer

• Add the media folder as an SMB / WebDAV file source
• After scanning, VRenamer separates movies from shows and groups episodes by season
• It scrapes TMDB and outputs name (year)/Season xx/SxxExx
• Subtitles and local images are renamed to match their video, preserving Plex sidecar pairing
• Run Scan Library Files in Plex when you are done