How to organize your media files for perfect automatic matching
The key to matching movies is including the release year. This prevents confusion between remakes, reboots, and films with common titles. The year acts as a unique identifier alongside the title.
Without the year, 'Snow White' could match to any of dozens of films from 1916 to 2025. With the year, you get the exact version you have. This is especially critical for public domain films and theatrical shorts.
TV episodes need both season and episode numbers. The standard format ensures correct matching to the right episode in the right season.
Some shows use different numbering schemes. These formats are also supported for flexibility.
Classic cartoon shorts from studios like Fleischer, Terrytoons, and Warner Bros are cataloged as individual movies, not TV episodes. Name them like movies with the year.
For music, embedded metadata (ID3 tags) takes priority over filenames. But clean filenames help when tags are missing or incorrect.
Some characters cause problems on certain file systems or confuse parsers. Stick to safe characters for maximum compatibility.
These naming patterns cause matching failures. Avoid them for reliable automatic matching.
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