Crossover Episodes - How to Skip to pt2, pt3, etc?

General Discussions
1

I have crossover episodes listed within each series so that they play back to back in order as one continuous show.

Crossover Example as follows:
FBI S04E01 (pt1), FBI: Most Wanted S03E01 (pt2), FBI: International S01E01 (pt3)

Files are named as follows (and they playback in order as intended):
FBI - S04E01 - All That Glitters-pt1 [1080p h265].mkv
FBI - S04E01 - All That Glitters-pt2 [1080p h265].mkv <= FBI: Most Wanted S03E01 (pt2)
FBI - S04E01 - All That Glitters-pt3 [1080p h265].mkv <= FBI: International S01E01 (pt3)
And then I have this same setup in each of the respective Series.

Here is my question:
If I am watching pt1, how do i skip to pt2 or pt3? The “Next” button takes me to S04E02.

2

Plex expects the multi-part suffix at the very end of your file names. That should result in the files being stacked.

3

They are stacked ad working as intended. 1 part plays after the other. that is not my question nor problem.

Here is my question:
If I am watching pt1, how do i skip to pt2 or pt3? The “Next” button takes me to S04E02.

Say i watch part 1 & 2, then go to bed. when i hit play to resume it starts at part 1, so i need to skip to part 3. How do I advance to part 3?

4

That is a sore point. (And it differs with the type of Plex client you are using.)
Because of this, personally, I avoid using multi-parts as much as possible.

You can solve the original problem like this:
Add the crossover episodes as special episodes (i.e. in Season 00).
Sometimes you will have to “invent” episode numbers for them because they are not listed in the episode lineups on TheTVDB or TheMovieDB.
But make sure they got the right “Originally Available” date assigned to them.

This date then enables you to watch the show just regularly. The specials will appear in Continue Watching at the right time, because Plex knows the release date of all episodes. If you’ve just watched a regular episode and then there is a special with a release date immediately afterwards, you will get offered it in Continue Watching.
(a con of this is that it will not work if you do a binge watching, where you flip immediately from one episode to another.)

The release date also enables you to do something like this: Watch crossover episodes of several series in-order

5

Interesting method of integrating cross-over episodes into a show’s lineup for Plex to work.

However, it is not possible with your setup. As far as I can tell, Plex uses the “pt1” and “pt2” text to combine a single episode that has been split up (for whatever reason). It tries to flawlessly flow from one file into the other so it replicates the original file. I haven’t used it myself (I’d rather combine split files myself using MKVTools), so I don’t know if all clients behave the same.

Either way, try alternates, such as Otto’s suggestion. Currently, the “Next” button behaves as it should, swapping from the “current” episode S04E01 to S04E02. Even if episode 01 is 3 files, Plex “knows” that they are one episode, and “next” goes to next episode, not next file.

6

Even -part2 and -part3 are considered as within the current episode.
So the only way to navigate within an episode is to use the playback progress bar and/or the seek/jump buttons.

7

Another possible solution would be to add those crossover episodes as specials instead of stacking them.

Create a “Season 00” folder in the FBI series; then add them with with names such as:
“FBI - S00E50 - FBI Most Wanted Crossover [S03E01].mkv”
“FBI - S00E51 - FBI International Crossover [S01E01].mkv”

After those are scanned in, edit their metadata to add (at least) correct originally available dates (or maybe one day after).

If you do this, when you consume episodes from say, Continue Watching, Plex will do the right thing and insert the episodes where appropriate. (If they all have the same originally available date you may need to fudge the originally available dates a bit to ensure they play in the correct order, for example, make these episodes available 1 day after the main episode.)

I just did a quick test of this and it works, at least in the web client.

Edit: I completely missed that @OttoKerner already suggest this above. Sorry for the duplicate!

8

I may try using MKVMerge to cut the credits off, merge and add chapters at each crossover start. Unfortunately this is more work than my current method, but maybe better overall.

I have not really tried navigating chapters in Plex. Does it handle them well, or does it even let you use them?

The other suggested option is to use Specials & verify the air dates. This is a good option as well, but as mentions it would not work for binge watching, but would show up “On Deck”

9

I tested and, at least for the web client, it worked with “Play Next” functionality. I didn’t test with any other clients unfortunately.

10

Chapters is the solution! pt1, pt2, pt3 are all listed as chapters for the episode, and selecting the chapter does work.

You can use the chapter editor in MKVMerge to add chapters to the beginning of each of the 3 parts, or you can also merge all 3 into 1 MKV file with 3 chapters. This way you can choose to watch all parts of the crossover or just the single episode.

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11

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