Server Version#:
Player Version#:
the server correctly matches the program name (frontline) season and epsidodes but then gcets the cormplete wrong matadata (I think from thetvdb).
This has something to do with seasons being numbered in years on some metadata providers like TVDB. But the rest of the time, the seasons are numebred from 1 (begining in the 1980s).
Plex then retrieves the complete wrong metadata from thetvdb, generaly by incorectly misinterpreting the season number into a year. IT currently seems to match season 42 to season 2023.
WHAT I THINK IT IS DOING is counting down 42 lines on thetvdb list begining with specials and that brings it to season 2023.
https://thetvdb.com/series/frontline#seasons
A proposed fix in plex would be to be able to add a mathamatical correction factor for a series that would allow for correcting of an offset between season numbers and those shown on thetvdb.
For example, for the current season (season 42) S42E01 it retrieved:
Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus (1)
Season 42 Episode 1
January 3, 2023 26min TV-MA
Play
Investigating the powerful spyware Pegasus, sold to governments around the world by the Israeli company NSO Group. This two-part series from FRONTLINE and Forbidden Films examines how the hacking tool was used to spy on journalists, activists, the fiancée of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and others.
More
Versions
4.1 Mbps, 1080p, and more
Video
1080p (H.264)
Audio
English (AAC Stereo)
Subtitles
Off
It should have downloaded this metadata:
https://thetvdb.com/series/frontline/seasons/official/2024
this bug occurs in the etire library for all episodes and recent season for Frontline.
because that is what s42E01 is on the sites we get metadata from. Frontline: Season 42 (2023) — The Movie Database (TMDB) which afaict matches with https://thetvdb.com/series/frontline/seasons/official/2023
I’m not sure what you are basing yours off of but those are the only places we get the episode ordering from.
IMDB seems to be completely different where that Israel’s Second Front episode is S42E10
Frontlines own site seems to be different as well where Israel’s Second Front is S2024E08
that is even more interesting. It seems the season numbering is different on
https://thetvdb.com/series/frontline#seasons
(this shows two 2016 and 1987 seasons)
List of Frontline (American TV program) episodes - Wikipedia This shows production searons instead of calendar airing years.
The show ran from 1983 to present
2024-1983+1 = 42 seasons.
thetvdb.com shows 42 seasons numbered by year plus one row of specials
themoviedb.org shows 43 seasons plus one special. It skips one year and duplicates 1987 and 2016.
At some point the show went from being generally tracked by production season to being tracked by calendar air year. As far as I can tell, for all new episodes, the metadata is one season off of the clendar year tracking system. The ability to shift seasons to match this colud be a solution.
The DVR recordings directly off of PBS don’t even get matched correctly after being recorded.
wikipedia I think normally uses production codes for most shows but we don’t use that for metadata at all.
You can make a feature suggestion here to outline how you think that should work.
For right now the only option is to follow either TVDB or TMDB for file naming and set the episode ordering to whichever you used.
for DVR recordings it uses the metadata from the EPG rather than TVDB,TMDB since it can screw up recording schedules if not.
