PROBLEM: Many (if not most) young kids TV show cartoons are both broadcast and put on DVDs with multiple ‘episodes’ per airing/file (eg: two episodes of PJ Masks in a half hour/on one DVD file). TheTVDB agent can’t handle this. For example, if, for a file containing episodes 01 and 02 of a cartoon season you might want to format like this:
S01E01-02
Sadly, if you do, TheTVDB provides two shows entries in the season for BOTH episodes pointing to the same underlying file. This ‘sort-of’ works for the first episode, but for the second, you’d have to know to skip half way through to watch the second (or more accurately, your preschooler would).
The more obvious approach would be to contain both episode titles and descriptions in one entry. This problem is discussed here and here.
[July 3, 2015 Update] Well, this solved it for some cartoons but not others. I note that my latest “Max and Ruby” DVDs have multiple episodes per file but the ‘The Movie Database’ has them all as individual files. So, until Plex permits some kind of file naming scheme that implies multiple episodes are contained in one file, it seems some cartoons will always be incorrect as each database has its limitations.
SOLUTION: Switch agents to The Movie Database!
I have my Kids TV Shows/cartoons separated out into a separate Plex Library. For that library I use “The Movie Database” Agent under the ‘Shows’ agent category instead of TheTVDB agent. Within that agent heading, I, of course, organized them so that 'The Movie Database" is the top most agent. With TheTVDB agent second. I have gone back through all my cartoon TV shows and this solves this long standing problem I have had!
Of course, make sure your episode combos are numbered as they are in The Movie Database and you are golden!
Whoot!
