Any idea why this isn't working? Two episodes in one file

General Discussions
1

I am ripping my MASH season 4 dvd and episodes 1 and 2 are in one file. I named it like this: M.A.S.H - s04e01-e02.mkv and it didn’t work. It listed episode 1 and 2 as different playable items in the library. I’ve also tried just using the name s04e01-e02.mkv and s04e01-s04e02.mkv and none of it works.

Any idea on how to do this?

2

As a folowup it messes up the remaining episodes. The ilbrary shows the second item as episode 2 but has the name and metadata of episode 3. The rest are that way too. Using GetInfo I see that the second item is pointing to the first fie (/data/television/M.A.S.H/Season 4/s04e01-e02.mkv) and shows itself as episode 2 but has the name and metadata of episode 3. And, like I said, every one after that is messed up in a similar way.

3

The naming you are using “M.A.S.H - s04e01-e02.mkv” is pretty much correct and would work fine. The fact is that with that naming Plex will show two separate entries and when either is played it will play the entire thing from the beginning. Also if you play e01 Plex will mark e01 as played and e02 will be netx up. If you then play e02 it will play both episodes from the beginning. That is with that construction you have two double episodes that are separate as far as Plex is concerned but are really exactly the same.

There are three ways to handle that as the people at Plex are uninterested in fixing the bug.

  1. Use a video tool to split the file into two files so they can be named separately.
  2. After you watch the first one mark the second as watched manually.
  3. Name the episode as just on of the episodes say “M.A.S.H - s04e01.mkv” and simply skip e02. Plex does not care at all if episodes are missing. If needed and if you want you can manually edit the metadata to reflect that it is really a two part episode.

3 is what I use 90% of the time.

This bug has pretty much been around since support for multiple episodes was added an Plex has been well aware of it but Plex is more interested in adding fluff than fixing long standing bugs.

Edit: Be sure the rest of the episodes are named starting with “M.A.S.H - s04e03.mkv” and then “M.A.S.H - s04e04.mkv” and so on.

4

Thanks for the reply. Method 3 does sound like the best approach. I have adopted that now but it still has trouble. My files are named s04e01.mkv, s04e03.mkv, etc, etc. The episodes are number 1, 3,4,5 (skipping 2 just like it should) but the metadata for every item after #1 is wrong. The second is listed as episode 3 (correct) and points to s04e03.mkv (also correct) but it shows the name and metadata for episode 4. I’ve tried moving the folder out, doing a file scan, and then moving it back in. So far it’s still wrong. Is there something I can do to dump cached metadata?

5

After you move the data and rescan you need to empty trash and remove bundles. (Click the three dots next to the word “library” to get to those two functions.

I do not know if that is all that is wrong but let’s start there and move on if needed.

6

@rykr said:
So far it’s still wrong.

Did you compare your files with how the season is listed at TheTVDB?
http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=70994&seasonid=1456&lid=7

Plex fetches the meta data from there.
Your files should follow this episode order.

7

@Elijah_Baley said:
After you move the data and rescan you need to empty trash and remove bundles. (Click the three dots next to the word “library” to get to those two functions.

I do not know if that is all that is wrong but let’s start there and move on if needed.

Thanks for the info. That will come in handy I’m sure! This time it looks like OttoKerner’s answer fixed by problem though.

8

@OttoKerner said:

@rykr said:
So far it’s still wrong.

Did you compare your files with how the season is listed at TheTVDB?
M*A*S*H - TheTVDB.com

Plex fetches the meta data from there.
Your files should follow this episode order.

You nailed it! I was stupidly going off a wikipedia article. Setting the names according to tvdb fixed it! Thanks!