Hello, this is not the first time I want to add a show with specials, but I have a problem this time.
I recently added a new show and included some specials for it, which are labeled as s00e144, s00e145, and s00e146 on TheTVDB. I organized these specials into a folder named “Specials.” However, once the show was detected, the extras were only labeled as “Episode 144,” “Episode 145,” and “Episode 146” instead of displaying their actual names. I tried to refresh the metadata and analyze the library, but the issue persisted.
Do you have any suggestions on what I can do to fix this?
Plex usually defaults to using the episode ordering from The Movie Database.
If you organize the episodes by a different order – especially if they’re ordered differently on that repository – you’ll need to tell Plex what order to apply.
You can override the episode ordering for individual shows in the Advanced tab when editing that show (e.g. setting the order to The TVDb (Aired)).
Alternatively you can lookup the order used on TMDb and name your episodes accordingly.
That can happen if TVDB is listing your specials as s00e145 etc. but the same specials are listed with significantly lower episode numbers on TMDb. If Plex applies the order from TMDb, there’s no episode 145 – hence it goes with a “blank” episode name (e.g. “Episode 145”)
This is the first time I’ve heard that we are using TMDb. I checked and found that my specials have different numbers. I changed numbers and everything was detected correctly.
This will require lots of work. TMDb and TheTVDb has different numbers for specials. Now I have to check and fix every show that I have. This is crazy.
All you should need to do is select the episode order naming you are using for that show not rename them. If you generally have them named like the TVDB order then select that for the library. If there are one off shows that use the DVD order for example then select that order for the individual show and leave your files the way they are.
There is certainly the possibility we have bad data as the real culprit of issue but would need to know what show to check that.
If there is just a single show that needs like the TVDB ordering you can change that in the individual show as @tom80H mentioned. Like FireFly needs theTVDB DVD ordering.
