Plex Media Server is an excellent tool that provides a clean interface for accessing local content on a wide range of devices. It can handle various audio and video file formats, and allows you to control who and how you access your content. Additionally, it can load backed-up versions of your favorite TV show seasons, complete with show and season posters, and episode summaries. However, if you don’t follow proper naming conventions for your video files, you won’t get the fancy posters and episode summaries.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of adding TV shows to Plex.
Step 1: Ensure that your video files are in a format supported by Plex Media Server. Acceptable video types include MKV, MP4, M4V, H.264, and more.
Step 2: Create a folder named “TV Shows” in the location where you’ll be storing the video files of your TV show.
Step 3: Within the TV Shows folder, create another folder with the name of your TV show.
Step 4: Within the folder named after the TV show, create folders for each season of the show that you will be adding to Plex. Make sure to have the “0” in front of a single-digit season.
Step 5: Ensure that the individual episodes use the following naming convention: TV Show – s01e01.mkv. The name of the show should be followed by a space, a hyphen, another space, the season, and the episode number. Alternatively, if the episode files you’re pulling from cover multiple episodes within a season, the naming convention you use will look like this: TV Show – s01e01-e04.mkv.
Step 6: Launch the Plex Media Server application on the computer where the application is located. Log in to Plex if prompted.
Step 7: Click the “+” button to the right of Libraries along the left side of the Plex home screen to create a new media library. The Add Library window appears on your screen.
Step 8: Choose “TV Shows” in the Select Type section. TV Shows will turn orange, and Name and Language fields will appear in the lower part of that section. Click the orange “Next” button.
Step 9: Click “Browse for Media Folder” to locate and start adding seasons of the TV show you want to add to Plex. The Add Folder window appears.
Step 10: Navigate to one of the seasons of the show you want to add, and then click the orange “Add” button. Make sure you select the season and not the show or the high-level TV Shows folder. You’ll return to the Add Library window, but the path to the season of your TV show that you want to add will be populated.
Step 11: Click “Add Library.” You’ll return to the Plex home screen, where the library you just created will be active, and the season of your TV show you opted to add will appear on the right side of the screen. The box associated with the season of your TV show may be black with a tag icon and spinning circle in it for a long time while metadata associated with your show and the season you added are loading.
After the show is added, you’ll see a poster for your TV show, a poster within that for any seasons you’ve added, and an overview screen for each episode. With this guide, you should be able to add TV shows to Plex with ease.