Different Versions of Series that have different number if episodes

General Discussions
1

Hello,

I have somewhat of a curiousity with an anime series Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World.
I have the original series in my Plex and it picks up the series and first season and all of its 25 episodes just fine.
However I now also have the director’s cut of the first season. This is different than usual because in the director’s cut they merged 2 episodes for each one. Leaving just 14 episodes.
It didn’t seem 100% accurate to put them together and let them sort themselves with the “Play Version” feature as they would technically be vastly different episodes. And they aren’t really specials either.

I was curious if there was a feature or method of organizing them that could handle this or if I should just set it aside as its own separate series.
Since no database seems to have a separate series for the director’s cut that would mean I couldn’t match it and would have to manually configure that series if I kept it separate.

Anyone have any thoughts?

2

That show looks like quite a mess on TheTVDb.com – apparently somebody tried to brute-force those mixed/overlapping episodes in a single show as an alternate order (resulting in individual episodes showing in each order but not the others).

Plex on the other hand does not support different orders beyond aired, absolute and DVD order. IF Plex will at some point allow selection of customer orders (like the “Director’s Cut” order of your show) you could handle the entries as 2 independent shows:

Keep in mind: this will not work at the moment!!

File Organization:

TV Shows
  Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World [original]
    Season 01
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e01 - The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End.ext
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e02 - Reunion with the Witch.ext
      ...
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e25 - That's All This Story Is About.ext

  Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World [Director's Cut]
    Season 01
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e01 - The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End.ext
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e02 - Reunion with the Witch, Starting Life from Zero in Another World.ext
      ...
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e13 - The Self-Proclaimed Knight and the Greatest Knight, That's All This Story Is About.ext

Where .ext is the respective file extension

  1. Scan Library Files in Plex will create a single entry for the Show
  2. Split the show on the show level – given the file organization is split across different top-level folders, this will create 2 independent show entries
  3. Double-check which tv-show entry in Plex refers to which folder
  4. Edit the show’s advanced settings to match it against the Director's Cut order and Refresh Metadata
    This final step is currently not supported – you can only select from Airing, DVD and Absolute order!!

Right now your best shot might be to name the files using the multi-episode naming, split the 2 releases as explained above and manually add a suffix to the director’s cut version.
e.g.

TV Shows
  Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World [original]
    Season 01
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e01 - The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End.ext
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e02 - Reunion with the Witch.ext
      ...
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e25 - That's All This Story Is About.ext

  Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World [Director's Cut]
    Season 01
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e01 - The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End.ext
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e02-e03 - Reunion with the Witch, Starting Life from Zero in Another World.ext
      ...
      Re Zero - Starting Life in Another World - s01e24-e25 - The Self-Proclaimed Knight and the Greatest Knight, That's All This Story Is About.ext

Execute steps 1-3 as described above.
4. Manually rename the director’s cut version to Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World (Director's Cut)

In any way… keep in mind that Plex might consider episodes as watched even if you only watched one of the versions.

3

Thank you for your explanation. I’ll keep that in mind for any other series that I see like this.
I ended up just manually building all the info for the director’s cut version.
But if I make it like a multi episode perhaps I can have it organized in a more logical manner.
Thank you!

4

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