Channels & viewing

[JLarson]

I've got a Roku Ultra & have used the USB slot to play videos using the Roku Media Player via a USB thumb drive. I want to use a portable external hard drive, but the indexing for the videos is all screwed up.

By this, I mean that the videos don't appear in the correct order in RMP but do when I pull them up on the computer. The file names are all in a sequential order. IE: S01E01 is before S01e02, S01e03, etc. What I get is a weird mix up of file order. 

The drive is NTFS, the video files are MKV, compatible with what RMP will play, as is the USB thumb drive. The primary differences are that on the thumb drive, the files are organized in sub-folders, IE Season 1, Season 2, etc, as well as file attributes of 'A' on the thumb drive vs 'AP' on the HD, & how each drive is listed as, IE 'USB Drive' vs 'Local Disk'.

I've checked everything I possibly can to figure out how to fix this, including looking for some sort of help file to no avail. Is there something I'm missing or is there nothing that can be done, due to some software flaw that isn't easily fixable for RMP? Should I try an alternative media player to try to play videos from the HD? 

[AvsGunnar]

@JLarson 

Looks pretty good to me and yours is similar to mine. (not sure if you have a typo in message or are using E and e in your files names, though.  These may be being seen by RMP as different naming schemes).

I organize everything into files and add a few extra digits in my file naming schemes.  In the below example, assume I have a show called "alpha" and 3 seasons.  For simplicity sake, 3 episodes per seasons.  I create 4 folders in all.

Folder 1 --> alpha

Folder 2 --> alpha_season001

                     S01E01.mkv

                     S01E02.mkv

                     S01E03.mkv

Folder 3 --> alpha_season002

                     S02E01.mkv

                     S02E02.mkv

                     S02E03.mkv

Folder 4 --> alpha_season003

                     S03E01.mkv

                     S03E02.mkv

                     S03E03.mkv

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I normally add the episode title so S03E03.mkv would actually be S03E03_episodetitle.mkv but you don't need the episodetitle as the S03E03 is the actual title.

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Now, what I have noticed with RMP is that any "metadata" you may have in the "Title" field will mess up RMP's ability to recognize your naming scheme.  It will instead use the file's metadata when organizing/listing the files. (ie. even though my file is named S03E03.mkv, the metadata Title tag may be showing "season3alphaepisode3" which is then throwing off my alphabetical order when in a list).

Try using a metadata editor (or tag editor) to view your mkv file's metadata and either Remove or Rename the Title Field to match the file name scheme you are using. (I usually just remove the title).  I use kid3 for Linux, so not familiar with the ones for Windows. (I think you can also use VLC under the Tools/Media Information to look at metadata as well, but not sure if you can actually Edit it.  There used to be a bug with the ability to Save changes to the metadata in VLC and not sure if ever addressed). 

I would start by checking the metadata and see if that may be your issue.