File naming conventions

To improve a program’s chances of correctly identifying your media whether it’s tagged or not, you need to adopt a certain file and folder naming convention.

For example, music files are traditionally stored with the folder structure Artist > Album > 01-track name.mp3. Things get more complicated when you start trying to organise your TV shows and films. Films are simpler; it’s more about the naming convention: film title (year).mp4.

TV shows require organising in the same way as music: Show title > Series 1 > show title – S01E01.mp4. The good news is that these conventions should fit for most music players and media servers; the bad news comes if you’ve not named them correctly. There are variations on the standards listed above, but it helps to be consistent.

For most people, bulk-renaming TV shows presents the greatest challenge due to the number of episodes involved. Head over to http://bit.ly/ lxf256rename1 where you can download and run the free RenameMyTVSeries tool; prerequisites for this include libssl-dev, sqlite3 and libsqlite3-dev. It’s simple to use: search for and select your TV show, then pick out the episodes and finally add in your misnamed files.