How To: Organizing Your TV Shows Using TV Rename

Last week I discussed how to use Media Companion to organize your TV Shows and Movies. The software works extremely well and is constantly being developed, with new features being added over time. The movies side of the program is very complete. However, Billy, the creator/developer is now really focusing on the TV Shows thread of the software. If you’ve not read my post on this software, it is a good place to start and get familiar with how you should organize your folder structure and file placement.

However, there are some features missing or “not yet developed” is a better way to describe it.

• It doesn’t tell you which shows are missing.
• It doesn’t tell you which shows names are incorrect – E.g Instead of 24 Season 7 Episode 17 … it should be….  24 – S07E17 – Episode Name
• It doesn’t look for the missing show online and automatically download it once available
• It doesn’t maintain your folder structure – which is essential for media centers to catch everything

This is where TV Rename steps in. Actually, TV Rename is what I start up first. Run my scans and organize the folders and files. Then Media Companion goes a scrapes the detailed information. Truthfully, TV Rename actually scrapes this info too and makes it available in media center compatible format. But TV Rename falls down here in terms of quality. Therefore, this is why I use two programs to accomplish one task. When you become familiar with both programs you’ll understand better.

The first thing you need to do is head to the setup section. You need to go to folder monitor and tell it where your TV Shows are kept. This can be on a local drive or a network share. It will scan the folder names and look up the name on theTVDB.com and return the result for you to review and accept. 90% of the time it gets this right, but just double check. For example, Brothers & Sisters is different to Brothers and Sisters, but only because there actually to different shows by that name. One from 1970 and the current one.

I recommend you create one TV Show folder and one show inside that and then add that to TV Rename. This will give you a chance to experience everything without mucking up your work already.

There are three tabs -My Shows, Scan and When To Watch

My Shows

Here you get a list of all the shows you want to watch and keep track of whats missing. Its fairly straight forward. Shows are in alphabetical order down the left. Expand each show to get the folder structure and on the right the information changes accordingly.

There are settings at the bottom of this page that allow fine tuning of the show details. Maybe someday I’ll write a post on this, but for now its a bit too technical.

Scan

This tab scans your list of shows and looks for what is missing. It then looks at whats available on the net and will start a download in uTorrent if you have it installed. Scan also then tells you which shows need renaming. And finally will ask you if you want to move any shows to their correct folders. Again this is fairly straight forward. Just hit scan and when its done hit do checked.

Here is a shot of a scan in progress:

TIP: Always scan once more after to perform the do checked function. It will check other things like the name after a file is downloaded.

TIP #2: Double click any missing show and your browser will open up with what ever torrent site you selected and automatically search for that show. I recommend BTJunkie for high success rate.

When To Watch

This lists what shows happened in the last seven days. Then what is on for the coming seven days. And finally, what shows you can look forward to in the future. Again,  Tip #2 works here also.

And that is pretty it… There are lots of options to play with and if you need further help, just say so in the comments and I’ll walk you through it.

There are forums availble over at TVRename.com to ask questions and a out dated guide is available also.

FINAL TIP: Make sure you always either hit File > Save or when exiting always say Yes to save.

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