There used to be an option in the match dialog to search by TVDB ID in case it couldn’t find the show by title. I would like to have this option back, as I recently encountered a situation that requires it:
Looking at the above TVDB search results, you can see that there are two shows with essentially the same title that came out in the same year (2020). In my library I have the second one, but no matter what I search in the match dialog the only result is the first one. In these cases where the built in search can’t find it but TVDB does, in fact, have it, there should be some way to manually specify which TVDB entry you want, preferably by ID as those are always unique.
For example, I would search for ID 370769 and the result would be guaranteed to be the anime, not the JDrama of the same name and year.
You can still do this. In the Match/Fix Match dialog box, click Search Options and then enter the TVDB series ID in the Title field. Clear the Year field, make sure Agent is set to “TheTVDB,” and then click Search:
Thanks for your prompt reply. Since all three of these are hour long TV specials that were never shown in movie theaters, I would consider them TV shows. Is there anyway to bypass this restriction short of seeing if TVDB will reclassify them?
A TV Show in Plex is characterised by its “episodic” nature.
One-off events are not episodic and therefore are “movies”.
The medium they were premiered on doesn’t matter for this classification. It could be Cinema, TV, online streaming, or other kinds of distributing and consuming media.
Instead of looking up the individual show, look up, “Rankin Bass Productions.” About the middle of the right side of the page, you’ll see links for the “seasons” (Rankin Bass Productions - Aired Order - Season 1 - TheTVDB.com). Name your file(s) accordingly and the agent will find them. This method also worked for me with Peanuts, Disney, and Warner Bros. TV specials.
Sorry for the double tap, here … just to be more specific, your Santa Claus show should be in a folder named Rankin Bass Productions (1964), in a subfolder named “Season 1”, and the filename should be, “Rankin Bass Productions (1964) s01e09”. You can optionally add the show title after the s01e09.
