· Grand Media Station

How to Rename Files for Plex: The Complete Guide

Plex has strict naming requirements for TV shows and movies. Here's exactly what format it expects and how to get there.

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If you’ve ever added a folder of media to Plex and watched it misidentify half your library, you know the pain. Plex’s scanner is powerful, but it’s also opinionated. It expects files and folders to follow a specific naming convention, and when they don’t, things break silently. Episodes get merged, movies vanish, metadata pulls from the wrong entry entirely.

I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit fixing these issues across my own homelab. This guide covers exactly what Plex expects, why, and how to get your naming right the first time.

The Two Golden Rules

Before we get into specifics, understand two things:

  1. Separate your TV shows and movies into different root folders. Plex libraries are typed. A “TV Shows” library and a “Movies” library should never point at the same directory.
  2. Naming determines matching. Plex uses your filenames and folder names to look up metadata from TheTVDB, TMDb, and other sources. Bad names mean bad matches.

TV Show Naming

Plex expects TV files to follow this format:

Show Name - S01E01 - Episode Title.ext

The critical parts are the show name and the SxxExx season/episode identifier. The episode title is optional but helps with manual matching when things go wrong. The separator is - (space-dash-space).

Here’s what a properly structured TV library looks like on disk:

TV Shows/
  Breaking Bad/
    Season 01/
      Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.mkv
      Breaking Bad - S01E02 - Cat's in the Bag.mkv
      Breaking Bad - S01E03 - ...And the Bag's in the River.mkv
    Season 02/
      Breaking Bad - S02E01 - Seven Thirty-Seven.mkv
  The Office (US)/
    Season 01/
      The Office (US) - S01E01 - Pilot.mkv
    Season 02/
      The Office (US) - S02E01 - The Dundies.mkv

A few things to note:

  • The show folder name should match the series name on TheTVDB or TMDb. If there are multiple shows with the same name, add the year or country in parentheses: The Office (US), Ghosts (2021).
  • Season folders use Season 01 (zero-padded). Plex also accepts Season 1, but I keep it consistent with zero-padding.
  • The show name in the filename should match the folder name. Plex uses both during matching.

Multi-Episode Files

If a single file contains multiple episodes (common with two-parters), Plex supports two formats:

Show Name - S01E01-E02 - Episode Title.mkv
Show Name - S01E01E02 - Episode Title.mkv

Both work. I prefer the hyphenated version (E01-E02) since it’s more readable. For a range spanning more than two episodes:

Show Name - S01E01-E02-E03 - Episode Title.mkv

Specials

Specials go in Season 00:

Show Name/
  Season 00/
    Show Name - S00E01 - Behind the Scenes.mkv

The episode numbers for specials should match the numbering on TheTVDB.

Movie Naming

Movies are simpler. The required format is:

Movie Title (Year).ext

The year is technically optional, but in practice you should always include it. Without the year, Plex has to guess which “Dune” or “The Thing” you mean, and it guesses wrong often enough to matter.

A proper movie library structure:

Movies/
  Blade Runner (1982)/
    Blade Runner (1982).mkv
  Blade Runner 2049 (2017)/
    Blade Runner 2049 (2017).mkv
  The Thing (1982)/
    The Thing (1982).mkv

Each movie gets its own folder. This isn’t strictly required for basic matching, but it’s necessary if you want to store subtitles, extras, or other associated files alongside the movie.

Edition Tags

Plex supports edition tags for alternate cuts of a movie. The format uses curly braces:

Movie Title (Year) {edition-Director's Cut}.ext
Movie Title (Year) {edition-Theatrical}.ext
Movie Title (Year) {edition-Extended Edition}.ext
Movie Title (Year) {edition-Unrated}.ext

In your folder structure, this looks like:

Movies/
  Blade Runner (1982)/
    Blade Runner (1982) {edition-Final Cut}.mkv
    Blade Runner (1982) {edition-Theatrical}.mkv

Plex will display both editions on the same movie page and let you switch between them. The text after edition- becomes the label in the UI, so name it something humans can read.

Common Mistakes

I’ve debugged enough broken Plex libraries to spot patterns. Here are the ones I see most often:

Using dots or underscores as separators. Files like Breaking.Bad.S01E01.mkv or Breaking_Bad_S01E01.mkv sometimes work because Plex tries to be forgiving, but they cause intermittent matching failures. Use spaces and - separators.

Missing the year on movies. Dune.mkv might match to the 1984 film, the 2021 film, or nothing at all. Always use Dune (2021).mkv.

Nesting movies too deep. Plex scans one or two levels deep in a movie library. If your structure is Movies/Sci-Fi/Blade Runner (1982)/Blade Runner (1982).mkv, Plex may not find it depending on your scanner settings. Keep movies at Movies/MovieFolder/MovieFile.ext.

Special characters in filenames. Colons are the usual offender since they’re invalid on Windows/NTFS. Replace : with - in filenames. Star Trek: The Motion Picture becomes Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979).mkv. Similarly, strip or replace ?, *, <, >, and |.

Absolute episode numbering. If you’re numbering episodes across all seasons (e.g., episode 156 instead of S07E12), Plex won’t match them unless you’ve configured a specific agent for it. Stick with SxxExx.

Putting extras in the wrong place. Behind-the-scenes clips, trailers, and deleted scenes should go in subfolders named Behind The Scenes, Trailers, Deleted Scenes, etc., inside the movie or show folder. Don’t mix them in with episodes.

Automating the Rename

If you’re dealing with a handful of files, renaming by hand is fine. If you’re staring at hundreds or thousands of files with inconsistent naming from various sources, you need a tool.

Grand Media Station is a desktop app I built specifically for this. You point it at your files, it identifies them using TMDb, and renames them into the exact format Plex expects, including the folder structure. It handles TV shows, movies, multi-episode files, and edition tags. It runs locally, works offline after the initial metadata fetch, and doesn’t phone home with your library contents.

Other tools in this space include FileBot (paid, Java-based, very mature), Sonarr/Radarr (if you want automated downloading and organization in one package), and good old PowerShell or bash scripts if you want full control. The right tool depends on your setup and how much time you want to spend on it.

Quick Reference

Here’s a cheat sheet you can keep handy:

# TV Shows
TV Shows/Show Name/Season 01/Show Name - S01E01 - Episode Title.mkv

# Multi-episode
TV Shows/Show Name/Season 01/Show Name - S01E01-E02 - Episode Title.mkv

# Movies
Movies/Movie Title (Year)/Movie Title (Year).mkv

# Movie editions
Movies/Movie Title (Year)/Movie Title (Year) {edition-Director's Cut}.mkv

# Specials
TV Shows/Show Name/Season 00/Show Name - S00E01 - Special Title.mkv

Get the naming right once, and Plex handles the rest. Your library will match correctly, metadata will pull cleanly, and you’ll stop fighting the scanner. It’s the kind of unsexy infrastructure work that pays off every time you open the app.