Plex Scanner

[rerooks]

I have started using Plex with SageTV, and I have all of my Sage recordings in one directory. It works fine with TV shows, but it can't scan movies properly. It shows all shows as movies. Based on what I read, I should be using SageTV for Plex Media Center, on github.

It seems, though, to be made for a non-docker installation, since it refers to wanting the user "plex" and for the python install tool to utilize that account. It also comes with some manual install instructions.

Is this the correct tool to use with Unraid and Docker? If so, is manual installation required?

[Taddeusz]

It can be used with the Plex Docker. I used it for a while. However, I find it more useful to allow spaces and put the SxxExx info in the filename. This more easily integrates directly with without the complexity of some kind of connector for the two. The only thing that doesn't necessarily work quite right are recorded movies.

Complete disclosure, I'm really close to dropping SageTV for Plex's build-in DVR.

[rerooks]

I am debating the same. I will have to run both in parallel. I am likely to stick with Sage, but I like to know my options.

BTW, what happens if you assign the same tuner to Sage and PLEX, do they recognize the tuner is busy, or do they fight with each other?

Oh, and did you have to run a manual install for that script that you can remember, or was there a way to do it automatically? I guess the stickler for the installer was the need for a sage user, which the docker for Sage doesn't create.

[Taddeusz]

Not sure what happens if there is a tuner collision. Never ran into that situation. My testing with the Plex DVR has been limited to daytime television. A time when SageTV is never scheduled to record.

I don't remember quite how I integrated the Plex Scanner with the Docker. It's been some time ago since I messed with it. I do remember I had to set a variable in the Docker template so that the scanner could find its configuration files. But beyond that I don't really recall anything.

I will tell you the thing that pushed me to ditch the Plex Scanner and rename all my recordings to the "<Show Title> - SxxExx - <Episode Title>" format is that as long as Plex recognizes the shows it will remember what you have watched and will put "on deck" any new episodes that get added to the library.

Unless things have changed this won't happen when using the Plex Scanner. Using the Plex Scanner, as long as there are existing watched episodes of a show Plex will automatically add unwatched episodes to "on deck". But as soon as you delete all episodes of a particular show in SageTV newly recorded episodes appear to Plex as a completely different show and will be ignored in Plex as something that you might want to watch.

The TL;DR is, Plex itself is actually really smart about looking for shows that you've watched in the past. This intelligence doesn't function through the Plex Scanner.

[rerooks]

I have used Plex successfully to scan the Sage recording directories for shows. It breaks them up into seasons and episodes like you would want.

The problem is that it doesn't capture anything but the shows, no recorded movies. Maybe the Plex scanner doesn't resolve this, don't know.

If I set up a second Plex library for movies, with the same directory to scan as movies, it grabs everything, not just the movies, and labels all of the TV shows as separate files.

I suppose I could move the movies to a different directory, but that is a lot of work, and there is no way that I know of to make Sage throw new movies into that directory without also doing shows there.

Maybe I could build some sort of Linux script and then figure out how to run a cron job.

[Taddeusz]

The two keys to having Plex work successfully with SageTV recordings without the Plex Scanner are:

• Stop SageTV, modify your Sage.properties, set extended_filenames=true
• In Detailed Settings->Customize set "Include season and episode numbers in filenames" to Yes

The old default for filenames was to remove all the spaces and special characters from the show and episode titles when it creates a new recording. Setting extended_filenames=true keeps all the spaces and other characters like ":". This along with adding "SxxExx" to the filename between the show and episode titles allows Plex to successfully scrape metadata for the shows. As long as the filename is in the format "<show title> - SxxExx" it will work. Plex actually ignores everything after "SxxExx"

You can see their naming conventions here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/cat...a-preparation/

Plex doesn't usually find metadata for SageTV recorded movies. The reason for this is that SageTV tacks the airing id and file part (e.g. " - 24697874-0") to the end of the filename. Like I said with TV shows Plex just ignores this information but it doesn't with movies.

Another reason I like Plex better is that for movies, as long as the filename is in the format "<Movie Title> (<year>)" it will be able to get the correct metadata and fanart. The problem I've had with BMT in SageTV is that it can't have separate fanart for different movies that have the same title but were produced in different years. BMT will capture the correct metadata but the fanart is lumped together in the same folder. It just doesn't have the capability to separate it out. BMT also doesn't have the capability of cleaning up unneeded fanart.

[rjones]

Is there any way to change the filenames of shows that I already have recorded (to include SxxExx)? I'm trying to do the same thing--enable a large collection of Sage-recorded shows for scraping by something else (Ember?).

Taddeusz, you mentioned changing to "<Show Title> - SxxExx - <Episode Title>". How did you do that?

[wayner]

There are a few things that might help:
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58024
http://www.therenamer.com/

And if those don't work you could probably write a bit of Groovy code to do this within SageTV.

[Carlton Bale]

For anyone else headed down this path, TheRenamer no longer works with the latest version of Windows 10 and the developer is no longer updating it.

The best alternative I've found is MCE Buddy. It can convert to a new file format and rename it... or it can skip the conversion and rename only. It can also move the files to a new directory or leave them in the original directory. The initial setup is a little confusing, but I think I've mostly figured it out.