Naming video files/TV shows

Adding videos to the library/Naming files

The TV Show lookup scraper relies on the following naming conventions in order to work as intended.

Directory structure and file names

XBMC needs a TV show folder with just the TV show name and then it needs file names that contain both episode numbers and season numbers (optional, see below). There can be season/year/whatever folders between the TV show folder and the episode files, but XBMC will not use these to figure out what the seasons are. While XBMC and scrapers can sometimes be forgiving of extra data in the file name, it's best to keep it simple and avoid extra text outside of the examples below (such as group names, resolution, etc). Advanced users can tweak the matching patterns that XBMC uses for this with regex and these advancedsettings.xml settings.

Directory layout example

TV Shows
   |----TV Show 1
   |       |----Season #
   |            |--Files
   |----TV Show 2 (year)
   |       |--Files
   |----TV Show 3
   |       |----2008
   |            |--Files

Default TV show folder naming conventions

(year) - can be helpful for some TV Shows such as "Battlestar Galactica", "Doctor Who" and "Knight Rider" which can yield multiple results.

Name

Name (year)

Shows with seasons

Default episode file naming conventions

name - can be the TV show name, episode name, something else, or you can exclude the name and only have the season and episode numbers. You can also place the name after the season and episode numbers.
ext - The file extension, such as .mkv, .avi, .iso, etc.
Spaces and underscores are interchangeable in the examples below.
Periods can be used to break up text, but they cannot be used in between episode-number and episode-names that start with a number. For e.g. name.s01e01.1.0.ext (episode name is one poin zero} so must become name.s01e01_1.0.ext

name.s01e01.ext

name.s01.e01.ext

name.s01_e01.ext

name [s01] [e01].ext

name.1x01.ext

name.101.ext

Defaults for two-part TV Show Episode will match: name.s01e01-02.ext; name_[s01]_[e01-02]_.ext; name.1x01.1x02.ext

Same with three- or four-part TV Show Episode: name.s01e01-02-03-04.ext; name_[s01]_[e01-02-03-04]_.ext; name.1x01.1x02.1x03.1x04.ext

No name

To emphasize, you can also use any of the above examples with just the season/episode numbers:

101.ext

s01e01.ext

01x01.ext

etc

Shows without seasons or only one season

Single or no season shows, such as anime or many types of one-off series (including miniseries) will not have a season number. To scan in shows like this we use scrapers that support "absolute ordering", such as the TVDB.com scraper. To use this you must change the scraper settings to use the absolute ordering option. This setting can be set on individual TV show folders, so that your default settings for all TV shows can support TV show seasons, or vice versa. See #DVD order for an example of how that would be set up. Absolute ordering can also simply be the default setting for an entire source if all TV shows within that source only have one/no season.

Naming conventions for absolute order follow similar conventions to normal episodes, but require "ep" rather than just "e" for the episode, and (obviously) do not have a season number.

Default episode file naming conventions

name - As mentioned above, name is optional and can be after or before the episode number.

name ep01.ext

name.ep01.ext

name ep 01.ext

DVD order

In TV Shows with series like Firefly you can set for instance the main TV Shows and set content to TVDB with regular scraper settings, say No to scrapping content at this time, then navigate your way to the Firefly folder and set sub-content setting TVDB and changing scraper settings to.

Folder contains a single TV show
Either to absolute ordering single season or DVD order
Scan everything by saying yes when you get prompted by XBMC at this time.

e.g. This will set main source with normal content and sub-folder with specific settings.

TV Shows                   <<TVDB normal Settings all seasons>>
   |----TV Show 1
   |       |----Season 0
   |            |--Files
   |----TV Show 2
   |       |----Season #
   |            |--Files
   |----Firefly            <<TVDB Settings altered for single season and DVD order or absolute ordering>>
   |       |----Files

Multi-part episodes

Handling of multi-part episodes (two part episodes in one file, multiple episodes in DVD images, etc.) is supported. The first matched tvshowmatching regexp and "[-EeXx]+([0-9]+)" will be repeatedly applied against a file name until no more seasons or episodes are found.

This allows for file names such as: showname_s01e01e02e03_s02e01e02; showname.104-05-06-201-02; showname.1x07x08x09

To break the file up in episodes that XBMC can work with you will have to create an nfo file with <epbookmark> tags. More information can be found on the Import - Export Library page.

Note that when using a custom RegExp to match a custom file naming convention, add (.*) to the end of the RegExp so that the 3rd RegExp capture is found for the second episode.

TV Show specials

Special episodes are currently supported with TheTVDB.com scraper. In order for the XBMC scraper regular expressions to recognize them, they should be part of season 0. (Specials naming order can be observed in the Specials Season of the relevant TV show at TheTVDB.com).

Example: Black Adder's Christmas Carol should have a file name that matches season 0 episode 3 (e.g. contain s00e03).

TV Shows
   |----BlackAdder
   |       |----Season 0
   |            |--filename.s00e01.tittle.*
   |            |--BlackAdder.s00e03.Blackadder's Christmas Carol.*
   |            |--etc...

Tweaking matches

You can also use Add-on:XWMM to edit library entires from a web browser.

The scraper picks the wrong TV Show

You can influence the search by having nfo files alongside your media

You can also try appending the year to the TV Show folder-name. (Note the showname on the selected site to be scraped must then include the year). This might be needed for some TV Shows such as "Battlestar Galactica", "Doctor Who", "Jericho", and "Knight Rider" which will have multiple entries on a given TV metadata database because of remakes of the original show.

See the examples below:

\TV Shows\Battlestar Galactica\Season 1\Battlestar Galactica - S01E01.avi (TheTVDB omits the year from the original shows)
\TV Shows\Battlestar Galactica 2003\Season 1\Battlestar Galactica - S01E01.avi (Remakes will include year at theTVDB.com)
\TV Shows\Cupid 1998\Season 1\Cupid - S01E01.avi
\TV Shows\Cupid 2003\Season 1\Cupid - S01E01.avi
\TV Shows\Cupid 2009\Season 1\Cupid - S01E01.avi
\TV Shows\Doctor Who\Season 1\Doctor Who - S01E01.avi
\TV Shows\Doctor Who 2005\Season 1\Doctor Who - S01E01.avi
\TV Shows\Jericho 1995\Season 1\Jericho - S01E01.avi
\TV Shows\Jericho 2006\Season 1\Jericho - S01E01.avi
\TV Shows\Knight Rider 1982\Season 1\Knight Rider - S01E01.avi
\TV Shows\Knight Rider 2008\Season 1\Knight Rider - S01E01.avi

Note! "AVI" is just an example, as this applies to all video formats that XBMC supports.

Another good example is Merlin (which gets picked up as Mr Merlin series from 70's)and Merlin 2008 (which gets picked up as the current Merlin Series. A directory structure should look something like.

TV Shows
   |----Merlin 2008
   |       |----Season #
   |            |--Files

Settings can be changed to use s01e01 or 1x01 or 101 capitalizing the S or E depending on how you like it.

To further simplify scraping you can cleanup the files before adding them to XBMC with Supplemental tools An example of the settings for a popular tool Therenamer which should conform with the above naming conventions.

Custom directory structure and file names

You can make your own naming conventions / rules by adding or editing regular expressions in the advancedsettings.xml file, with the tvshowmatching tag. When enumerating episodes for a series, XBMC only cares about the season and episode, so when designing regexps you should only be concerned with these things.

Here are several common naming schemes and corresponding regexps and examples.

\Season #\## (Season# is at very end of directory name, and filename starts with episode name, neither have to be a specific number of digits) :

 <tvshowmatching>
     <regexp>Season[\._ ]([0-9]+)[\\/]([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>
 </tvshowmatching>

Example : \Battlestar Galactica\Season 3\01 - Occupation.avi (Season 3, Episode 1)

### ([season#][episode#] with nothing in between all in filename, assumes episode number is always 2 digits) :

 
 <tvshowmatching>
     <regexp>([0-9]+)([0-9][0-9])[^\\/]*</regexp>
 </tvshowmatching>

Example : \24\Season 6\601 - 6:00am to 7:00am.avi (Season 6, Episode 1)
Example 2 : \Lost\Season 1\Lost - 101.avi (Season 1, Episode 1)
Example 3 : \24\601 - 6:00am to 7:00am.avi (Season 6, Episode 1)

##x## ([season#]x[episode#] all in filename :

 <tvshowmatching>
   <regexp>([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>
 </tvshowmatching>

Example : \Scrubs\Season 1\1x01.Pilot.avi (Season 1, Episode 1)

If you use leading 0's (for example, \Scrubs\01x01 - Pilot.avi instead of 1x1), and are having difficulty getting the TV Show scraper to work, try

##x## ([season#]x[episode#] all in filename :

 <tvshowmatching>
   <regexp>[0]*([0-9]+)x[0]*([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>
 </tvshowmatching>

Example : \Scrubs\Season 1\01x01.Pilot.avi (Season 1, Episode 1) which simply strips leading 0's from the result.

s##e## (s[season#]e[episode#] at beginning of filename)

 <tvshowmatching>
   <regexp>[\\/]s([0-9]+)e([0-9]+)</regexp>
 </tvshowmatching>

Example : videos\mytv-comedy\Scrubs\season 1\s01e01 - Pilot (hdtv.xvid).avi

Season ## - Episode ## (Season [season#] - Episode [episode#] in the beginning or middle of filename)

 <tvshowmatching>
   <regexp>Season ([0-9]+) - Episode ([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp>
 </tvshowmatching>

Example : TV Shows\Scrubs\Season 1\Scrubs - Season 1 - Episode 01 - Pilot.avi

TV Shows in DVD Folders Using the same directory structures as above, you can name DVD folders by adding the following xml to advancedsettings.xml. This information was gleaned from this forum thread.

 <tvshowmatching append="no">
     <regexp>\[[Ss]([0-9]+)\]_\[[Ee]([0-9]+)\]?([^\\/]*)(?:(?:[\\/]video_ts)[\\/]video_ts.ifo)?</regexp>
     <regexp>[\._ \[\-\\/]([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)([^\\/]*)(?:(?:[\\/]video_ts)[\\/]video_ts.ifo)?</regexp>
     <regexp>[Ss]([0-9]+)[\.\-]?[Ee]([0-9]+)([^\\/]*)(?:(?:[\\/]video_ts)[\\/]video_ts.ifo)?</regexp>
     <regexp>[\._ \-\\/]([0-9]+)([0-9][0-9])([\._ \-][^\\/]*)(?:(?:[\\/]video_ts)[\\/]video_ts.ifo)?</regexp>
   </tvshowmatching>

Understanding Season Ordering Options

Please see the thetvdb scraper settings page for information on how to set season ordering correctly for each folder to match your naming.

Naming video files/TV shows

Contents

Directory structure and file names

Shows with seasons

Shows without seasons or only one season

DVD order

Multi-part episodes

TV Show specials

Tweaking matches

The scraper picks the wrong TV Show

Custom directory structure and file names

Understanding Season Ordering Options

Navigation menu

Naming video files/TV shows

Directory structure and file names

Shows with seasons

Shows without seasons or only one season

DVD order

Multi-part episodes

TV Show specials

Tweaking matches

The scraper picks the wrong TV Show

Custom directory structure and file names

Understanding Season Ordering Options

Navigation menu

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