I’ve spent a few days now ripping dvds I own of some tv series, but the names of the individual files are all stupid (they’re almost all something like t0_01) so it’s completely unsorted in jellyfin. Is there an easy or automated way to fix this without clicking each one and manually renaming it?
Maybe not quite the right comm, but I’m feeling pretty stupid right now so I think it fits?
Post a screen shot of the episode with a caption stating it to be from an episode that you know is incorrect. Someone will be along within the hour with the correct episode.
Some tricks I’ve used in the past when huge sets of episodes are scrambled or misnamed and you need to start from square one matching them:
- Check if the files have any embedded metadata with the episode name or number using a tool like MediaInfo
- If the episodes have different runtimes, you can try to match them to runtimes listed on a well-labeled list of episodes, like on Wikipedia or in a torrent.
- Download a tool to auto-generate subtitles from the audio track. Probably won’t be accurate, but should give you enough of the dialogue to now search online and see what episode it is.
- If the show has a splash screen with the episode name at a fixed time, like many kids shows, you can auto-generate thumbnails at that time for all episodes
- Last resort: Manually watch enough of each episode to match it to the right episode synopsis on e.g. wikipedia and then label it appropriately
- Pirate option: Pretend you ripped it yourself and download a properly-curated set
I’m in a similar boat with my own ripped media, and the answer is there’s no simple automated way (that’s why it’s easier to “acquire” from a source that already has things labelled and organized on the internet rather than do things yourself). Your best luck is to check the index of episodes on the back of the box and try to use the thumbnails to line up titles with the episodes manually.
There’s no script for this though.
Ugh, I figured that was probably the answer. Shoot. Thanks though!
There’s no automated way to handle it, but you can probably speed it up a bit with a few tools.
Generally once you find the first episode of the disk, the rest will be named numerically after it, so maybe the special features or FBI warning or other misc things are the first track or two (starting at 0), or it could be the first episode, but once you find that one the rest will usually be named in order (t0_01, t0_02, etc).
In Windows, I used a tool called Bulk Rename Utility (https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/) when I did this in the past. Once you figure out how to use it, you can rename all the files at once in the folder in a format (show_s1_e1 or other supported format pretty quickly. It won’t be automatic, but will be way faster than renaming them by hand.
I usually use TheTVDb to do the naming, that way the shows can be found / indexed easily.
The only thing that you’ll have to keep in mind for show rips, is that many times the DVD order isn’t aired order, and they may not match the order on TheTVDb, or other source, so you may have to rename them in Aired order occasionally, or change the settings for Jellyfin: https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-resolved-dvd-order-instead-of-aired-order
Bulk Rename is a great utility.
These days I use Advanced Renamer - it works similarly but also has the ability to rename by using text (CSV) file as the name source.
So of the files are already sequential, you get the new names in a CSV then import that into Advanced Renamer and it’ll do the rename.
Are they all spitting out the same type of naming convention. Like is t0_05 season 1 episode 6 or is it all just random.
It’s random, some of them count up, some of them go like a0_01 b01_01 etc, and some say the disc number. There’s no consistency lol
No such luck then.
Maybe you can integrate MakeMKV with Sonar/Radar if you have a lot of them. Manually set the output to something like Friends s01e01 and output to a location sonar/radar are looking, to have them pick up and dump the output your looking for?
I’ve often found a weird pattern with the file names where they’ll be sequential except the first episode from the disk will be the last sequential file name.
So I’ll manually check, then rename the last file so its sequentially first.
Then I’ll use Advanced Renamer and a CSV of the episode titles to make it rename all the files properly like:
S01E01 ‘episode title’
Advanced Renamer can add the S01E01 and increment the episode number as it does the rename.
It sometimes takes a couple passes to get it the way I want it.
Just earlier I was renaming and had the same problem as you - once I figured out the pattern I just renamed the appropriate file in each season folder, then renamed all the files with their season, episode number and episode title using Advanced Renamer.
When I rip a dvd I have all episodes from one season go into a Season X folder - it makes managing them easier and Jellyfin wants season folders anyway.
Its at the whims of the DVD author. The only mostly painless way is to ID the files before theyre ripped, using the DVD menu to get the name of the video, and cross reference that with the title number.
If you are using MakeMKV when ripping you can override the filename template. So I name them for example “Show s01e04+” based on the disc I’m ripping. Then once encoded it’s relatively quick to rename the files with the full episode number. I personally use dired in Emacs because a macro makes short work of the renaming but I’m sure other solutions are possible.
That’s a good idea, I didn’t know you could override the default filenames. I’ll look into that when I try again, thanks!
What are you ripping with? There’s software out there where you can select the episodes and it’ll spit out individual files with a naming convention you specify.
If you’re importing them into something like Plex, just number them. Use Plex to scan and grab metadata.
