Since dropping NextPVR and having Plex do all of my recordings, I’ve started to run into an issue that I’m not sure there’s an easy fix for - but I wanted to bring it up and see if I’m the only one having this pain.
I record a lot of children’s TV shows, having 3 kids in the house under 8. In a whole lot of cases, these shows have two “episodes” in a 30 minute block. Some current examples of this are Phineas and Ferb or Alvinnnnn! and the Chipmunks - but I could list a whole lot more. What ends up happening is that the episode numbers don’t match up to what the TVDB has, since it generally treats every episode as unique, not combined. Take the episode number in the recording’s resulting file, and multiply it by 2, and you’re usually close to what the TVDB has. I am assuming this is a disconnect from the EGP data vs what the TVDB stores.
In any case, what ends up happening is shows like that (dual episodes) almost always end up mislabeled in Plex. Often, they are attached to a single episode that doesn’t match either of the two episodes in the actual recording. This is problem #1 - The episode metadata is almost always wrong, after the files are scanned over. I’m assuming the TVDB scanner is doing this, but I haven’t checked to be sure.
At this point, I’m in the habit of breaking those episodes in half, manually. The names of the episodes are usually in the filename, and correct. I can find what their TVDB episode numbers are, and create two files - both following the “correct” Plex naming convention. The original file is then deleted.
Problem #2 is that Plex will often “re-record” those episodes later on. I generally have the option turned on the record re-runs, so that I can pick up past episodes. This results in Plex, not remembering that it already recorded this dual-episode, recording it again. I’m not really sure why it does this. I have to assume it is due to the metadata, which wasn’t correct the first time, still being a “missing” episode from my library and being re-recorded because of that.
Has anyone run into this and found a way to make it come out more accurately? The first problem is by far the more annoying one, but I’d rather not waste time and effort sorting through repeats that already were recorded as well.
