Jellyfin Naming Conventions: TV Shows, Movies, and Edge Cases

If you’re setting up Jellyfin for the first time — or migrating from another media server — getting file naming right is the single most important thing you can do. Jellyfin’s metadata scrapers rely heavily on consistent directory structure and filename patterns. I’ve spent enough time debugging “why isn’t this show showing up” to write down everything I know.

This is the reference I wish I had when I started.

TV Shows

Jellyfin expects a three-level hierarchy: library root, series folder, season folder. The canonical format looks like this:

TV Shows/
  Series Name (Year)/
    Season 01/
      Series Name - S01E01 - Episode Title.mkv
      Series Name - S01E02 - Episode Title.mkv
    Season 02/
      Series Name - S02E01 - Episode Title.mkv

A concrete example:

TV Shows/
  Breaking Bad (2008)/
    Season 01/
      Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.mkv
      Breaking Bad - S01E02 - Cat's in the Bag.mkv
    Season 02/
      Breaking Bad - S02E01 - Seven Thirty-Seven.mkv

The year in parentheses after the series name is technically optional, but I strongly recommend including it. It disambiguates series that share names (there are multiple shows called “The Office”) and helps the metadata providers return the correct match on the first pass.

The episode title portion after the second hyphen is also optional. Jellyfin will pull episode titles from metadata. But including it makes your library navigable even without a running server, which matters if you ever need to find a file manually.

Movies

Movies are simpler. Each film gets its own folder:

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

The folder-per-movie structure isn’t strictly required — Jellyfin can pick up loose files — but it becomes essential once you add extras, subtitles, or multiple versions. Keep the year in both the folder name and the filename.

Multi-Episode Files

When a single file contains multiple episodes (common with two-parters), use the double-episode notation:

Series Name - S01E01-E02 - Episode Title.mkv

Or for non-consecutive episodes (rare, but it happens with some rips):

Series Name - S01E05-E06-E07.mkv

Jellyfin will create entries for each episode number and point them all at the same file. This is one area where Jellyfin handles things well — it splits multi-episode files into individual episode entries in the UI automatically.

Specials and Season 00

Specials, OVAs, behind-the-scenes content, and anything that doesn’t belong to a numbered season goes into Season 00:

Breaking Bad (2008)/
  Season 00/
    Breaking Bad - S00E01 - Good Cop Bad Cop.mkv
    Breaking Bad - S00E02 - Making of Breaking Bad.mkv

The episode numbers for specials come from the metadata provider (usually TVDB or TMDB). Look up the special on your provider’s site to find the correct S00Exx number before renaming. Getting these wrong means Jellyfin either won’t match the metadata or will show the wrong title and thumbnail.

Subtitle Files

External subtitles live alongside the video file with the same base name, plus a language tag:

Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.mkv
Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.srt          # default subtitle
Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.en.srt       # English
Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.es.srt       # Spanish
Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.en.forced.srt  # forced English (signs/translations only)
Breaking Bad - S01E01 - Pilot.en.sdh.srt   # English SDH (hearing impaired)

Jellyfin uses ISO 639-1 two-letter language codes. The .forced and .sdh flags are recognized and will show up correctly in the subtitle selector. This also works with .ass, .ssa, and .sub formats.

For movies, the same pattern applies:

Blade Runner 2049 (2017).mkv
Blade Runner 2049 (2017).en.srt
Blade Runner 2049 (2017).ja.srt

How Jellyfin Differs from Plex

If you’re coming from Plex, most of your existing naming will work in Jellyfin without changes. But there are some differences worth knowing:

• Flexibility with folder names: Jellyfin is more forgiving about folder names. It doesn’t require the season folder to be named exactly Season 01 — it also accepts S01 or Season1. That said, I recommend sticking with the full Season 01 format for maximum compatibility across servers.
• NFO files: Jellyfin natively reads .nfo metadata files (XML format) placed alongside media files. Plex ignores these entirely. If you maintain local metadata, this is a significant advantage.
• Edition tags: Jellyfin supports edition tags in movie filenames, like Movie Name (2020) - [Director's Cut].mkv. Plex added similar support but with different syntax ({edition-Director's Cut}).
• Extras folders: Both support behind the scenes/, featurettes/, extras/ subfolders inside a movie’s directory, but Jellyfin also recognizes trailers/ as a subfolder for local trailers.

In practice, if you name files for Plex’s stricter conventions, they’ll work in Jellyfin. The reverse isn’t always true.

Edge Cases

Anime

Anime libraries work best when you use TVDB ordering and the standard SxxExx format. Absolute episode numbering (just E001, E002) is supported via metadata provider settings, but I’ve had more consistent results sticking with season-based numbering:

Anime/
  Cowboy Bebop (1998)/
    Season 01/
      Cowboy Bebop - S01E01 - Asteroid Blues.mkv

If your anime uses absolute numbering and you don’t want to manually map episodes to seasons, configure the series in Jellyfin to use a metadata provider that supports absolute ordering. The filenames can then use single-number format, but you’ll need to set this per-series in the dashboard.

Daily Shows

Talk shows and other daily-format programs use air dates instead of episode numbers:

The Daily Show/
  Season 2024/
    The Daily Show - 2024-03-15 - Guest Name.mkv

Jellyfin recognizes the YYYY-MM-DD pattern and matches it to the correct episode.

Multi-Version Files

If you keep multiple versions of a movie (say, a 1080p and a 4K copy), put them in the same movie folder:

Dune Part Two (2024)/
  Dune Part Two (2024) - 1080p.mkv
  Dune Part Two (2024) - 2160p.mkv

Jellyfin will group them under a single entry and let users pick the version during playback. Make sure the base name matches exactly — only the suffix should differ.

Common Mistakes

These are the issues I see most often when people have metadata matching problems:

1. Missing year in series folders: Without the year, Jellyfin often matches the wrong show. “Battlestar Galactica” could be the 1978 or 2003 version.
2. Using dots instead of spaces: Breaking.Bad.S01E01.mkv technically works, but Jellyfin has to guess where the series name ends. Spaces are unambiguous.
3. Season folders inside the wrong directory: Make sure the season folders are direct children of the series folder. An extra nesting level will break detection.
4. Inconsistent series names: If one season says “Doctor Who” and another says “Dr. Who”, Jellyfin may treat them as different series.
5. Special characters in filenames: Colons, question marks, and other filesystem-unfriendly characters should be removed or replaced with hyphens.

Automating the Rename

Renaming a large library by hand is brutal. I use Grand Media Station (GMS) for this — it has Jellyfin naming presets built in, so you pick your target format and it handles the renaming in bulk. It’s particularly useful for anime libraries and large TV collections where manually constructing hundreds of filenames isn’t realistic.

Whatever tool you use, the key is consistency. Pick a naming convention, apply it everywhere, and your metadata matching problems will mostly disappear.