Server Version#: 1.40.4
Player Version#: Web 4.132.2
Have a plex question for y’all.
The original start trek was not aired in the order it was produced it. I have chosen to watch the show in the production (or absolute) order to watch the show improve with time.
In the most recent update of plex, 1.40.4, plex now supports something called dynamic alternate orders. As it stands currently on plex, if you want to watch a show in a different order then you must rename the files in that order, which I don’t want to do. I want the files labeled in the aired order, but to show in the Plex UI in absolute order. With this new patch I believe that is possible, but it seems to work the same way the previous version of plex did. In other words, it still plays and displays the episodes in aired order.
So it does seem to work, but it only works on the first season. I think this is because TheTVDB’s absolute ordering is only one season, thus plex is only matching content from inside the season 1 folder, and missing the rest of the show.
The way this new “feature” works requires the underlying files to be named in the order that you want. I am honestly not sure why they are calling this “Dynamic Alternate Order” as opposed to just “Alternate Order” which is what I feel like most people have referred to this as (pretty sure that is what the feature request called it).
Essentially, this feature exposes the alternate orders that TVDB would show on the site in the Plex interface. Part of the feature request I referred to above is also asking for Plex to expose the same thing from the TMDB.
Now, what you might be able to do is use https://support.plex.tv/articles/plexmatch/ the plextmatch file to for Plex to map the series to how you want it, but I am just guessing. I would suggest creating a test library or spinning up a test server and trying it out and see if it allows you to do that.
Pretty frustrating. I’ve been waiting for jellyfish or Plex to implement this specific feature for actual years at this point. So disappointing they named it this way.
The problem with what you are asking is that I really don’t think it is feasible to implement it.
What you need to remember is that the scanner is using the file info to parse out certain information (series, season, episode) and then it is using that information with the agent to determine what metadata to pull.
In order to do what you want, the scanner would have to know what order you used to name your files and what order you want the show to be displayed in. It would then essentially have to map the naming order to the display order. This will cause a “mismatch” with between what is on the file system and what is shown in Plex, so the admin would need to remember that when they look at the files.
The purpose of this feature and the reason whey people wanted it is for shows like Firefly or a lot of animated shows. Prior to this they had to either manually manipulate the show just rename the files to match whatever TVDB had even if that did not match how the actual files were (for instance a lot of animated shows where there are 2 segments but TVDB names them as individual episodes, so the file has to be named as having 2 episodes, i.e., s01e01-e02 as opposed to just being s01e01).
So, this is actually a useful implementation as they can name the files to the “combined” order and have it be represented as they want (Animaniacs is a good example of this). I do not really see either Plex or Jellyfin doing what you are looking for.
I do think you might be able to manipulate the system with the plexmatch file though (at least it is worth testing out).
It worked the same way previously. but we only ever got the standard Aired, DVD, and Absolute orders most shows had.
The new feature is that we can also pick up dynamically the custom orders that are available for individual shows. Like Iron Chef has a custom Netflix order that we can pick up for that show to get metadata and if some show gets a new order we can get that.
But the files need to match the order as it as always been. The setting descriptions is still “How the files are named on disk”
I do think what you are asking for would be cool if I understand it as dynamically rearranging the display order of the episodes in the player apps so you can play it that way.
