As the Synology Media Server bases its indexing, cover images and descriptions on the filename of your movies and TV shows, its critical to get the format correct. Below I’ve pulled together what I believe are acceptable formats for TV Shows, Movies and also a Useful Tips section.
Movies
Movies are by far the easiest filename to format because they are generally a single file. The following are acceptable file naming conventions, I have emboldened my recommended format:
Movie Title (1981).avi
Movie Title.avi
Movie Title 1981.avi
TV Shows
As TV shows have multiple seasons and some episodes are double bills, these can be a little more complicated. Personally I recommend a main folder per TV Show, a sub-folder for each season and individual episodes named via the emboldened format below (the login being that this structure can be browsed via a network or a search and still make sense):
TV Show Name/Season 1/TV Show Name – Episode Title – S01E01.avi
TV Show Name s01e01.avi
TV Show Name s01e01-e02.avi
TV Show Name 1×01.avi
TV Show Name Season 1 Episode 1.avi
TV Show Name Season 1 E01.avi
TV Show Name/Season 1/01.avi
TV Show Name/Season 1/s01e01.avi
TV Show Name/Season 1/1×01.avi
TV Show Name/Season 1/TV Show Name s01e01.avi
TV Show Name/Season 1/TV Show Name 1×01.avi
TV Show Name/Season 1/Episode 1.avi
TV Show Name/Season 1/Season 1 Episode 1.avi
TV Show Name Season 1/01.avi
TV Show Name Season 1/s01e01.avi
TV Show Name Season 1/1×01.avi
TV Show Name Season 1/TV Show Name s01e01.avi
TV Show Name Season 1/TV Show Name 1×01.avi
TV Show Name Season 1/Episode 1.avi
TV Show Name Season 1/Season 1 Episode 1.avi
Useful Tips
Rename Many Files at Once
If you need to rename many files at once, I highly recommend using the free tool called Bulk Rename Utility available to download from here: http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php. I’ve been using this for years and once you get used to it, its very powerful – you can even rename multiple folders full of filenames at once, trim white space, search/replace and if you’re really hardcore, use Regular Expressions.
How do I name multi-part movies?
I used to do it like “My Movie Title (year) CD1” and it works fine in Kodi and c. but not for DS Video.
Hi Carsten, I’m guessing you mean multi-file movies (e.g. a movie split across multiple files)? I would download one of the myriad movie merge applications available online and merge them, tidies things up a bit too.
I have been putting my Inspector Montalbano/Commissario Montalbano TV series in a /video/Italian TV/ folder identified in VS as Italian TV library with Italiano as the language.
The DVDs are Italian language with English subtitles. The DVD episode numbering and order is different from the series episodes broadcast as found on the internet.
I have not yet had success in retrieving metadata. I wonder if I should use the Italian names for the episodes and whether I should name the files in the style Commissario Montalbano S01E01 – The Snack Thief (or should I use the Italian title – Il ladro di merendine)
Should the folder be named in Italian or English?
I would recommend changing the recommendation a little:
1. put season and episode before the title of the episode. This allows sorting alphabetically into chronological order. I don’t know anyone that watches based on alphabetical order of the titles, however I would like to either start at the beginning of the series or watch the 5th episode.
2. use something other than space. Maybe a period or an underscore. it makes it difficult to deal with files when there are spaces in the directories and names.
3. with the above recommendations in place I would omit the sub-directories for season. an alphabetical sort will arrange all the files into seasons.
Hi Mitchell,
Thanks for this, all good suggestions. I’ll be honest though my recommendation isn’t to make the filenames good for people to view (e.g. point 1 and 3) not for other operations such as referencing via command line (point 2) but primarily a structure I know is interpreted well by Synology Videostation. Over the years I tried various ones and the parser would do a poor job of correctly identifying the episode but my recommendation worked. It could well be that the parser has improved/changed since I wrote that though so I still appreciate the post!
How do you Label episode extras and by that i mean there was an episode video but there was a interview video on the Episode. is there something like S01.EX##? i have this labeling issue with bunch of TV Shows. normal i would put it under specials S00E## but i have two problems with that there are extras for every season and the other issue is there where already Special for the TV show
Scroll down to Tips for naming video files.
https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/help/VideoStation/category
I wasn’t much happy with the available apps that rename the video according to the naming convention, so I personally developed a new app for Windows 10.
I hope you can use it and be happy with it!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/weemple-video-tools/9njrdv6jzn76
Have a nice day!
Your naming TV Show Name/Season 1/TV Show Name – Episode Title – S01E01.avi is not correctly identified anymore by syno.
You need to add the Episode Title by yourself.
Hi JB,
This works fine for me – have you enabled the video info plugin? In recent years you have to enable the video info plugin, go to the information provider and register an account, get an API key and then add that key to your MediaStation setup. Additional information can be found here: https://kb.synology.com/en-uk/DSM/tutorial/How_to_apply_for_a_personal_API_key_to_get_video_info
If you have any problems with the API, view this thread here:
https://www.themoviedb.org/talk/618ada421cfe3a002a4f89d1#619e4d03310325008f5c5d56
I’m a newbie to Synology Video Station and want to properly manage the movie titles before putting them into the default Movies folder. Please recommend movie naming convention that when alphabetized, all the movies whose titles include the definite article ‘The’, for example ‘The Bourne Identity’ are grouped together. I would rather search for ‘Bourne Identity, The’ instead of ‘The Bourne Identity’.
Another question – I have a group of animations in the default ‘Movies’ folder and the titles are NOT alphabetized. I can’t find a Settings entry to alphabetize the titles. Plex does this and provides an alphabetized column of the alphabet to facilitate searches for movie titles starting with a particular letter. I don’t see this in Synology Video Station. I that a default fault, or does the folder need to be reindexed?
I’m having issues with a movie called Doc West, it was released within 1 week of Doc West 2. How do I make the first Doc West movie have the correct information? It’s wanting to use Doc West 2 since they were released in the same year.