I’m currently in the process of adding Dr Who (new who) to my server. Dr Who generally does a Christmas special every year. For proper play order I want to add these in as the last episode of the prior season. However, TheTVDB has them all dumped in the “Specials” season. So of course when the media library attempts to fetch the meta data, it doesn’t find it.
For example, “The Christmas Invasion”, instead of making it s00e02, I’ve made it s01e14, so that it will play in sequence with all the other episodes. Of course by doing this, it breaks Plex’s ability to match the episode to an online source and pull in meta data.
Now, you can go in and manually update all the meta data, which works well enough.
But it would be nice if there were a spot, just like with posters, where you could enter a URL, so I could for example enter https://www.thetvdb.com/series/doctor-who-2005/episodes/311603 for “The Christmas Invasion”, and it would pull in all the meta data from the TVDB, even though it didn’t think it found a match. So you would essentially be able to force it to match to a specific episode from online sources.
Not sure it’s really the same thing. This is not about putting in your own custom stuff and building your own library or anything. It’s not even about reinventing anything. It’s really just about when Plex is unable to match a specific episode (or movie I guess to), giving it the information it needs to be able to properly match the info using the matching routines and algorithms that are already in the system.
I see your point but plex still relies on the sources online. To tell plex that episode xx should be at or between episodes x and z will require a “reinvention” of how plex handles episodes.
This should actually work just fine…
Plex will should automatically propose the next episode on deck or as play next – even if the “next thing” is actually a special in “season 00”.
I’ve been watching my own Doctor Who earlier last year and got to see all the x-mas / easter specials in the right sequence between seasons. All you need to do is locate the right episode number in season 00 for those specials
No. It doesn’t require adjusting that at all. You just name it where you want it, as I did naming the episode s01e14. It puts it in the proper place then and plays in order exactly how it should. There is no change at all to the ordering of the episodes either for playback or display. Everything shows up and plays exactly where it should with the current code base.
There would be extremely little changes to anything actually. This change would consist of the following…
One new database field on the “MEDIAITEM” table: OVERRIDEURL AS STRING, which the user would enter.
Use that URL first when attemping to find an online source.
So the code for “FindMatchingURL” in their metadata lookup routine would change as follows…
IF (OVERRIDEURL IS VALID) {
RETURN OVERRIDEURL
} ELSE {
RETURN [current online matching code]
}
Literally everything else about the process would stay the same. Fetching the metadata, parsing it, applying it. Nothing would change at all in the displaying of libraries or the playing of them.
There would be no new parsing routines, no new files, or configurations, nothing new to load or to read in.
@tom80H, are you saying you actually had them located in the “Specials” season, named s00eXX, and it still played them in between the seasons as expected when binging through? That’s interesting. The only issue I would see with this is if your manually playing through the episodes, you would need to know to go jump into the “Specials” when needed. You wouldn’t see them show up in the seasons as the next thing to play. So this would require having (and remembering) a bit more intimate knowledge of the show in question.
as for the playing individual episodes… tricky but possible. you could show the library by episodes, apply a custom filter for that specific show and sort it by air date. Now the specials will be showing between seasons as well.
Admittedly… that’s not super user friendly. Maybe if you store that filtered view as a smart playlist and access the show that way?!
Interesting. Didn’t think that would actually work that way. . That would only work for me though, who is probably the one with the best knowledge of the show. Any shared users who likely wouldn’t know the media as well wouldn’t be helped at all by that.
Granted that is playing in VLC, which is outside of Plex’s control, but this makes a good point. By not having the files named in sequential order, it does break continuity for system which go by file name. Granted that’s not really Plex’s problem, but the OP would allow them to be named chronologically while still easily getting the right meta data, so it would actually make both systems play more accurately.
(of course, not all “specials” require continuity, such as mini documentaries or such; the whole problem really only comes in with specials that are actually in-universe episodes.)
Heh. Was thinking in the shower this morning, as us coders are wont to do, and realized this potentially is an even smaller change to the code base than I originally thought. Maybe. When the current code goes out and searches for a match, it may already be storing the URL on the media record, to lessen future work loads on itself. If this is the case, this change request would basically just be making that URL field available on the Edit UI for a show/episode/movie, with no changes to the db, or maybe even the code. (Although, once it’s open to the user for editing, probably would still want to add a little validation code.)
. That would only work for me though, who is probably the one with the best knowledge of the show. Any shared users who likely wouldn’t know the media as well wouldn’t be helped at all by that.
