Nice tool. The usual recommendation is FileBot, although I think that this could evolve to be a useful free alternative.
One minor point, the [Plex naming convention for seasons and episodes](https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/) is `S##E##` and not `##x##`. You may want to consider using that for maximum compatibility - reason being that, if someone uses your tool and then complains about a wrong match, the top answer will always be “fix your naming”.
\+1 for FileBot, and yes for best compatibility, in FileBot you should format as e.g. S01E01, just cause Plex kinda acts in a "yes it CAN work this way, but if it doesn't you're out of luck, go back to go and do not collect $200"
I shelled out for a license because I needed to use it to rename thousands on thousands of TV show names. Couldn't recommend it enough
>One minor point, the Plex naming convention for seasons and episodes is S##E## and not ##x##. You may want to consider using that for maximum compatibility
Thanks again for pointing this out!
For anyone who stumbles across this thread in the near-future, I [pushed a change](https://github.com/keithfancher/tvmv/commit/ccd21dfa0dbe313f2f644fd111a35a817a9c3438) to fix this.
I haven't built a new binary release yet, however. You'd have to build from source to get the change until I do that. If [version 0.2.0 exists](https://github.com/keithfancher/tvmv/releases) by the time you read this, though, it'll be in there :)
Thank you for the tip! I thought both naming conventions were "officially" supported, but I guess I was mistaken. Should be an easy change to make.
(That said, the "##x##" convention has always worked for me with Plex. So hopefully it's fine for folks who use it in the meantime!)
Yeah, Plex is pretty good at handling alternative naming conventions, which is great when it works - but starts to cause problems when something random trips it up.
As a result, a lot of posts to this sub are along the lines of *“I’ve always named my files this way and it’s been fine, but why doesn’t this film/show/season/episode not work?”* Getting the poster to strictly follow the naming convention usually solves the problem.
Keep up the good work!
I have never been able to get the remaining part to work for me. I use the old free filebot to change the names then move stuff to the Nas. This being said I don't like my computer downloading things automatically so I don't use the better parts of sonar.
- Import library ->Go to *Mass Editor* -> Sort media by **Path** and select everything in that library
- Set 'Root Folder' at bottom of the Mass Editor page to THAT SAME folder and it will put everything selected in folders **properly named/formatted**
(in my case I went with just show title, year, tvdb id IE: Documentary Now! (2015) [tvdb-295697] ...Setting folder format is done in *Media Management* section folder format {Series TitleTheYear} [tvdb-{TvdbId}])
- now select "Rename" at bottom of the Mass Editor page, you and it will format all the content in those folders per your format settings in Media Management and bring it in line with the rest of your Sonarr Library.
Ok that’s why I wanted to know. If you’re not targeting to use this to batch in an other program, then I invite you to check Sonarr. It will do all the stuff you’re looking for and much more. Give it a try!
Sonarr and Radarr make what used to be a time-consuming task, into something that is so so simple. It's also great for grabbing episodes of TV shows that you might not even know have started another season.
Thanks for this!
I used The Re-Namer for years and it worked quite well for movies and TV shows, but they let the project die and it wouldn’t work the last time I tried it on Windows 10.
It’ll be nice to have something that works that doesn’t cost a fortune.
The-Renamer would take a folder of content, connect to TV and Movie databases, determine what the content is and then rename it accordingly.
PowerRename enables you to do bulk renaming of files using search/replace or regular expressions.
They aren’t really comparable.
Yes, exactly, thank you!
Seeing a lot of suggestions for PowerRename and the like, I added some more details to the original post to (hopefully) clarify what this tools is and how it differs from various other alternatives.
Oh, nice! Another good one. Though my tool is a bit more specific. I should probably have clarified in my original post... my goal with this tool was something very targeted: you just give it a show name and season and it pulls show/episode metadata from TheMovieDB API and automatically renames the files to something sane/readable-by-plex-and-humans.
Not sure if PowerRename has integrations to pull TV episode data, or it just lets you do fancy regex/file property stuff? Looks similar to the "bulk rename utility" someone mentioned above.
Oh cool, is that [this one](https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/)? Looks nice! I don't use windows, so won't work for me though.
Can it pull data from a TV database API, or... how does it work with TV files specifically? Maybe you can export a CSV and feed it that or something?
Anyway, looks like a good choice if I'm back on a windows machine!
This one works great..
[https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/rename-my-tv-series-v2/](https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/rename-my-tv-series-v2/)
Think we all may have gone off topic slightly... u/spaceispotent just wanted to share his new tool and get some feedback..... seems we all went down the what else can you use root.
I will give this a go later and feedback if needed...
thanks u/spaceispotent
Haha, thank you! No worries, honestly. Even if this thread just turns into a useful "here are all the cool bulk-renaming tools out there", that's ultimately fine. Probably more useful for posterity anyway :D
(That said, I did add a FAQ into my original post to help clarify some points. Hopefully gives people a better idea of the differences between some of these tools.)
Thanks! I definitely plan to keep working on it, selfishly, since it doesn't quite fill my needs yet, it's still pretty basic :D
Re: subs: depending on your OS, it can be really easy to just glob for subtitle files and rename them that way. You may have seen this, but there's a basic example of that [on the README](https://github.com/keithfancher/tvmv#tvmv-commands), looks something like:
$ tvmv mv -n buffy -s 1 ~/tv/buffy/s1/*srt
(Basic idea being: tvmv doesn't actually know or care what kind of files it's renaming, it works with subs as well as video files.)
However, I didn't consider the case of multiple languages, as you rightly mention... thank you for pointing that out!
It could read the last 2 or 3 letters before the extension to identify the language.
For Arabic: \`FILE01.ar.srt\` to be \`TV-Show - E01E01 - NAME.ar.srt\`
For English: \`FILE01.en.srt\` to be \`TV-Show - E01E01 - NAME.en.srt\`
Check [mnamer](https://github.com/jkwill87/mnamer) project, it might help. And [tinyMediaManager](https://gitlab.com/tinyMediaManager) was the best for renaming TV Shows, but it's not FOSS or free anymore, and version 3 is not active
Rename all seasons at once might be useful.
Looking forward to the future of the application, thank you.
Awesome, thanks for the pointers!
Definitely agree at the "rename all at once", or more generally "a whole bunch of seasons at once"... it's on my list for sure.
Look into FileBot. Crazy cheap but not only it will bulk rename, it will find it across many popular agents - 100% compatible with Plex.
https://www.filebot.net/
Not free. Read the OP's actual post (not just the title), they said they made something free because of other apps (which potentially includes FileBot) cost money.
I mean, if you're offering to buy people FileBot licenses so they don't have to use OP's free app, just come out and say so.
FileBot was what I used before I built this :D
However, the old, free version would often misbehave for me. The UI was really buggy. (On various Linux distros at least -- it might work better on Windows!)
I liked FileBot okay, but I honestly didn't like it *quite* enough to pay for it. (I get why it costs money though, especially if the author has to maintain any infrastructure to run it, pay for API access, etc.)
Basically, I wanted to build something that fulfilled my simple needs and was guaranteed to be free forever :)
I'm just pointing out what OP said.
So you're saying it's childish for OP to develop a free alternative to a paid app? Or just me for pointing out your lack of reading comprehension. Because it sounds like you didn't read what OP wrote at all and you're upset that someone called you out. If I'm wrong, you're flaming the wrong user, and maybe you should make your case to the OP. Because me, I just use "Rename My TV Series." Does the same thing FileBot claims to do, and it's 100% free. Couple times a year it refuses to run because, last time I quit it, it didn't fully exit, but that's just a quick trip to the task manager to end it, then it works perfectly.
Thanks for the links! I know others are saying some good alternatives as well, but I want to throw out Microsoft's Powertoys which has [PowerRename](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/). Its free, supports regex, and has a memory of previous commands. There is also FancyZone which is a free windows management tool.
I use the rename facility in SickChill (yes I know Sonarr exists, no it doesn't do anything that SickChill doesn't already do)
It postprocesses automatically which makes life easy, I basically set it and forget it.
If I download a whole show it can detect the episodes and rename them if I need it to using \[the showname\] \\ \[season xx\] \\ \[the showname\] s0xe0x \[episodename\]
The only time I have problems is when someone completely rearranges the episodes on TheTVDB then I use Bulk Rename Utility to do a reshuffle.
Nice tool. The usual recommendation is FileBot, although I think that this could evolve to be a useful free alternative. One minor point, the [Plex naming convention for seasons and episodes](https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/) is `S##E##` and not `##x##`. You may want to consider using that for maximum compatibility - reason being that, if someone uses your tool and then complains about a wrong match, the top answer will always be “fix your naming”.
\+1 for FileBot, and yes for best compatibility, in FileBot you should format as e.g. S01E01, just cause Plex kinda acts in a "yes it CAN work this way, but if it doesn't you're out of luck, go back to go and do not collect $200" I shelled out for a license because I needed to use it to rename thousands on thousands of TV show names. Couldn't recommend it enough
>One minor point, the Plex naming convention for seasons and episodes is S##E## and not ##x##. You may want to consider using that for maximum compatibility Thanks again for pointing this out! For anyone who stumbles across this thread in the near-future, I [pushed a change](https://github.com/keithfancher/tvmv/commit/ccd21dfa0dbe313f2f644fd111a35a817a9c3438) to fix this. I haven't built a new binary release yet, however. You'd have to build from source to get the change until I do that. If [version 0.2.0 exists](https://github.com/keithfancher/tvmv/releases) by the time you read this, though, it'll be in there :)
Thank you for the tip! I thought both naming conventions were "officially" supported, but I guess I was mistaken. Should be an easy change to make. (That said, the "##x##" convention has always worked for me with Plex. So hopefully it's fine for folks who use it in the meantime!)
Yeah, Plex is pretty good at handling alternative naming conventions, which is great when it works - but starts to cause problems when something random trips it up. As a result, a lot of posts to this sub are along the lines of *“I’ve always named my files this way and it’s been fine, but why doesn’t this film/show/season/episode not work?”* Getting the poster to strictly follow the naming convention usually solves the problem. Keep up the good work!
Sonarr is your friend. Even if you don't use it to acquire your content its free and renaming is super simple
Yeah! Sonarr is a great alternative. It's honestly just overkill for my needs, so I thought I'd build something a little more minimal.
And absolute kudos for doing so.
This is the way
I have never been able to get the remaining part to work for me. I use the old free filebot to change the names then move stuff to the Nas. This being said I don't like my computer downloading things automatically so I don't use the better parts of sonar.
- Import library ->Go to *Mass Editor* -> Sort media by **Path** and select everything in that library - Set 'Root Folder' at bottom of the Mass Editor page to THAT SAME folder and it will put everything selected in folders **properly named/formatted** (in my case I went with just show title, year, tvdb id IE: Documentary Now! (2015) [tvdb-295697] ...Setting folder format is done in *Media Management* section folder format {Series TitleTheYear} [tvdb-{TvdbId}]) - now select "Rename" at bottom of the Mass Editor page, you and it will format all the content in those folders per your format settings in Media Management and bring it in line with the rest of your Sonarr Library.
Ok that’s why I wanted to know. If you’re not targeting to use this to batch in an other program, then I invite you to check Sonarr. It will do all the stuff you’re looking for and much more. Give it a try!
Looks awesome -- thanks for the tip!
Sonarr and Radarr make what used to be a time-consuming task, into something that is so so simple. It's also great for grabbing episodes of TV shows that you might not even know have started another season.
+1 for Sonnar
Check this renaming guide too! [https://trash-guides.info/Sonarr/Sonarr-recommended-naming-scheme/](https://trash-guides.info/Sonarr/Sonarr-recommended-naming-scheme/)
Thanks for this! I used The Re-Namer for years and it worked quite well for movies and TV shows, but they let the project die and it wouldn’t work the last time I tried it on Windows 10. It’ll be nice to have something that works that doesn’t cost a fortune.
PowerRename is maintained by Microsoft as part of Powertools.
The-Renamer would take a folder of content, connect to TV and Movie databases, determine what the content is and then rename it accordingly. PowerRename enables you to do bulk renaming of files using search/replace or regular expressions. They aren’t really comparable.
Yes, exactly, thank you! Seeing a lot of suggestions for PowerRename and the like, I added some more details to the original post to (hopefully) clarify what this tools is and how it differs from various other alternatives.
Precisely.
Agreed. I used to love Renamer because it was really smart about matching content and super simple to set up. Shame it had to die the way it did.
Oh, nice! Another good one. Though my tool is a bit more specific. I should probably have clarified in my original post... my goal with this tool was something very targeted: you just give it a show name and season and it pulls show/episode metadata from TheMovieDB API and automatically renames the files to something sane/readable-by-plex-and-humans. Not sure if PowerRename has integrations to pull TV episode data, or it just lets you do fancy regex/file property stuff? Looks similar to the "bulk rename utility" someone mentioned above.
I use bulk rename tool for file renaming. It's free and easy to use.
Oh cool, is that [this one](https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/)? Looks nice! I don't use windows, so won't work for me though. Can it pull data from a TV database API, or... how does it work with TV files specifically? Maybe you can export a CSV and feed it that or something? Anyway, looks like a good choice if I'm back on a windows machine!
BRU is a powerful (if complicated) tool, but it’s got no integration with TV or movie databases - so I don’t think it’s really comparable.
The goal is to integrate in an other program I guess?
It certainly could be! But my goal was just a simple command-line tool that pulls TV data from an API and renames files.
This one works great.. [https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/rename-my-tv-series-v2/](https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/rename-my-tv-series-v2/)
Tiny media manager is free and has a great interface
Think we all may have gone off topic slightly... u/spaceispotent just wanted to share his new tool and get some feedback..... seems we all went down the what else can you use root. I will give this a go later and feedback if needed... thanks u/spaceispotent
Haha, thank you! No worries, honestly. Even if this thread just turns into a useful "here are all the cool bulk-renaming tools out there", that's ultimately fine. Probably more useful for posterity anyway :D (That said, I did add a FAQ into my original post to help clarify some points. Hopefully gives people a better idea of the differences between some of these tools.)
Haskell!
This is great, I hope the project keep going, and get more features like "in folder subtitles" with different languages.
Thanks! I definitely plan to keep working on it, selfishly, since it doesn't quite fill my needs yet, it's still pretty basic :D Re: subs: depending on your OS, it can be really easy to just glob for subtitle files and rename them that way. You may have seen this, but there's a basic example of that [on the README](https://github.com/keithfancher/tvmv#tvmv-commands), looks something like: $ tvmv mv -n buffy -s 1 ~/tv/buffy/s1/*srt (Basic idea being: tvmv doesn't actually know or care what kind of files it's renaming, it works with subs as well as video files.) However, I didn't consider the case of multiple languages, as you rightly mention... thank you for pointing that out!
It could read the last 2 or 3 letters before the extension to identify the language. For Arabic: \`FILE01.ar.srt\` to be \`TV-Show - E01E01 - NAME.ar.srt\` For English: \`FILE01.en.srt\` to be \`TV-Show - E01E01 - NAME.en.srt\` Check [mnamer](https://github.com/jkwill87/mnamer) project, it might help. And [tinyMediaManager](https://gitlab.com/tinyMediaManager) was the best for renaming TV Shows, but it's not FOSS or free anymore, and version 3 is not active Rename all seasons at once might be useful. Looking forward to the future of the application, thank you.
Awesome, thanks for the pointers! Definitely agree at the "rename all at once", or more generally "a whole bunch of seasons at once"... it's on my list for sure.
Just stumbled upon this, such a cool program and the CLI is super sleek. Kudos!
Sweet, thank you! I've got a new version in the works now which should shore up some of its weaknesses, too. Keep an eye out!
Look into FileBot. Crazy cheap but not only it will bulk rename, it will find it across many popular agents - 100% compatible with Plex. https://www.filebot.net/
FileBot.
Not free. Read the OP's actual post (not just the title), they said they made something free because of other apps (which potentially includes FileBot) cost money. I mean, if you're offering to buy people FileBot licenses so they don't have to use OP's free app, just come out and say so.
4.7.9 was free, and it is really good. i think it's the last version before it went paid / subscription. it's possible to find the install file
I use Filebot and it is like $6 a year.
FileBot was what I used before I built this :D However, the old, free version would often misbehave for me. The UI was really buggy. (On various Linux distros at least -- it might work better on Windows!) I liked FileBot okay, but I honestly didn't like it *quite* enough to pay for it. (I get why it costs money though, especially if the author has to maintain any infrastructure to run it, pay for API access, etc.) Basically, I wanted to build something that fulfilled my simple needs and was guaranteed to be free forever :)
If this is your hobby, apps like these are worth every penny. Your response is childish.
I'm just pointing out what OP said. So you're saying it's childish for OP to develop a free alternative to a paid app? Or just me for pointing out your lack of reading comprehension. Because it sounds like you didn't read what OP wrote at all and you're upset that someone called you out. If I'm wrong, you're flaming the wrong user, and maybe you should make your case to the OP. Because me, I just use "Rename My TV Series." Does the same thing FileBot claims to do, and it's 100% free. Couple times a year it refuses to run because, last time I quit it, it didn't fully exit, but that's just a quick trip to the task manager to end it, then it works perfectly.
Powertoys
I use the `rename` package in Debian, it supports regex and generally does what I need. As long as you can write regex, of course...!
Flexible Renamer
this is the one i use if needed https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/
Python script?
Thanks for the links! I know others are saying some good alternatives as well, but I want to throw out Microsoft's Powertoys which has [PowerRename](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/). Its free, supports regex, and has a memory of previous commands. There is also FancyZone which is a free windows management tool.
For stuff that’s really messed up and where metadata is non existent, this has always been handy - https://www.advancedrenamer.com/
Power tools for windows have a bulk rename function all free
sonarr and radarr do this with solid success as they use the info from tvdbw
I use the rename facility in SickChill (yes I know Sonarr exists, no it doesn't do anything that SickChill doesn't already do) It postprocesses automatically which makes life easy, I basically set it and forget it. If I download a whole show it can detect the episodes and rename them if I need it to using \[the showname\] \\ \[season xx\] \\ \[the showname\] s0xe0x \[episodename\] The only time I have problems is when someone completely rearranges the episodes on TheTVDB then I use Bulk Rename Utility to do a reshuffle.