The VideoLAN Forums

Hello everyone,
I noticed a change in my nomenclature for episodes in VLC...
I name my episodes as follows:
[episode name] - Ep.[value]
The problem is that VLC removes the "-" and the "." except on the 1st episode (I don't know why), but anyway, I want it to display them. How do I do it please?

Here is some information about my devices:
Brand and models:
- Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro 12.4
- Xiaomi Pad 6
Android versions:
- Android 15 / HyperOS 2.0.7.0 (on Pad 6S)
- Android 14 / HyperOS 1.0.16.0 (on Pad 6)
VLC (for Android) version 3.6.3

Screenshot: https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/9151f18 ... 1cb7e415e5

Could you please also share a screenshot of the folder in the "Browse" section of the app?

Thanks for the reply.
In the "Browse" section, the nomenclature is good.
Screenshot: https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/4df4a0f ... 68b3ee3044
(Sorry for using SwissTransfer, i don't know which image host to use...)

I just tried myself with files named that way and has no issue. Maybe the first file has the name with the dot in its metadata?

The same episodes on my OnePlus 12R have the "-" and the "." less, even the 1st. I don't understand...
(Same version of VLC as my tablets)

Is there a way to change metadata on VLC ? I think the application has trouble with it.

No, there is not. If you could somehow share those files, we could look into it.

Here are the first 2 episodes: https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/3891a3b ... cff66e483a
what surprises me remains that depending on the device, ep 1 is not named the same way...

I'm not able to reproduce it:


FFR, I tried mediainfo and here are the extracted metadata: One last request: could you please go to More > Settings > Advanced. Then hit the "Dump media database" and share the file that should be generated to /sdcard/vlc_media.db

Here is the file: https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/df8db5f ... 9ecbe873aa.

Thanks a lot for the file. The media indeed has the wrong title in the DB. I'll forward all the info the person that can look into it.

Can you confirm that the title is changed when you actually play the media ?
For instance, you could play episode 2, the title should change to the same pattern as episode 1.

I reset the library thinking that might fix the problem but now episode 1 has the same symptom as the other episodes ^^'
Even when playing the media, the names don't change...

We do sanitize the title in the medialibrary. It's usually regarded as a feature. You can see, in our test code, how it's useful for the common use case: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/medi ... =heads#L79

To be clear, would you like to diplay the original file name as a media title? Or are you unhappy with the way we sanitize titles, if so, do you have a suggestion for a satisfying title for this specific media?

Edit: Just re-read your post, you wrote a pattern that would work for you above, sorry.

The template I use is this one:
[name] - Ep.[value]
but it's still MY way of naming.
What I find weird is VLC's way of naming while my files are well named (see path).
Even the video folder (in "Video", "videos grouped by name") is named "[name] Ep"... does that mean that VLC correctly detects the episodes but still removes the characters "-" and ".", because they are special characters maybe?
Suggestions:
- be able to rename the episodes in "information" (in the video settings)
- be able to create a general template to store the episodes (preferred)
- be able to create a template from the video group settings to store the videos of a group independently of another

Let's sum up:
Your issue is in fact two different things.

1. In the video screen, different media have different name pattern while they are named using the same

This is probably an issue on the app (not the media library) side that we have to look into.

2. The global way the media are named in the Video screen.

The video screen displays exactly what is stored in the media library. The browser shows the file name.
Most people don't bother renaming their files and end up with media having a lot of garbage characters in it. So it's useful for them to let the media library clean them.

What we could do is have another display setting displaying the file name instead of the sanitized one for people like you.

We could also in fact let the user rename their media one by one, as we do for video groups.

- be able to create a general template to store the episodes (preferred)

IMHO it would be overly complicated and could lead to issues.