PlexF1MediaScanner

This is a custom scanner for Plex for parsing data for Formula 1 race weekends. It should be the scanner for a library that only contains F1 content, it wont match anything else.

Installation

• Copy the Formula1.py file to your Scanners directory, for Linux this is /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Scanners/Series/
• Add a new TV shows library called Formula 1 (or whatever), add the folder containing F1 broadcasts.
• Under Advanced, select Formula1 as the scanner and Personal Media Shows for the agent. Also set Seasons to Hide (we only ever have 1 season per session).

Folder Structure

The script supports "smcgill1969" and "egortech" file naming formats and will fall back to a default which just uses the filename.

Formula.1.2020x05.70th-Anniversary-GB.Race.SkyF1HD.1080p/02.Race.Session.mp4 (smcgill1969) 01.F1.2024.R24.Abu.Dhabi.Grand.Prix.Drivers.Press.Conference.Sky.Sports.F1.UHD.2160P.mkv (egortech)

F1
├── Formula.1.2020x05.70th-Anniversary-GB.Race.SkyF1HD.1080p
│   ├── 01.Pre-Race.Buildup.mp4
│   ├── 02.Race.Session.mp4
│   ├── 03.Post-Race.Analysis.mp4
└── Formula.1.2020x06.Spain.Qualifying.SkyF1HD.1080p
    ├── 01.Pre-Qualifying.Buildup.mp4
    ├── 02.Qualifying.Session.mp4
    ├── 03.Post-Qualifying.Analysis.mp4

Each F1 session will show as a TV Show in Plex, with each event (eg Qualifying, Race) showing as an episode inside that. Annoyingly you cannot have different sessions as different TV seasons without messing around with the folder structure. Here's what it looks like:

The scanner (since I havent bothered writing a metadata agent) will try to pull some artwork from thesportsdb.com and will drop them into files on the filesystem. You probably could do some renaming and get SportScanner to pull in all the metadata but since that's no longer maintained its less risky to just use thesportsdb.com directly and get plex to use local images.

Troubleshooting

To see what went wrong with detection, check out the log file (path found in LOG_FILE in the script).

To force plex to retry, first get the ID of the your F1 Library (/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Media\ Scanner --list) then force an update: /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Media\ Scanner --force --scan --refresh --section YOUR_SECTION_NUMBER.