The 1971 one-season TV series Nichols did not air in production order. Episode 2 (The Siege) and 3 (The Indian Giver) aired in reverse order. The TVDB, the MovieDB, and the actual order on the DVDs all reflect the aired order, but there is a continuity gap between 2 and 3 that is clear when you watch them. I realize that re-ordering series has been discussed at length in this forum, and I have not found a solution to this issue other than just remembering the proper order the next time I watch. BUT … is there a solution out there that I might not have found or thought of?
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On TVDB, the Absolute Order has the episodes unassigned. You could contact TVDB and see if they will assign them in production, versus aired, order. You could then choose Absolute order in Plex to have them in the desired order.
You could also place them into a personal library. There is no matching, no pulling metadata, etc. They would be in any order you want. If the files are in MP4/M4V containers, Plex can read embedded metadata. That will help with some information. See Naming Home Series Media.
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Since it’s only a few episodes, couldn’t you manually edit those episodes and lock the edited fields to prevent changes?
Pretty sure that I had at least some episodes of Nichols recorded at some point but they’re gone now. GetTV apparently has the syndication rights but it’s not on their schedule for now. There’s always the DVD I guess. Can’t find it anywhere else to view.
Would changing the “Aired Date” in the metadata for the episode change which one Plex airs in order, or does it use the “EP01 comes before EP02” absolutely?
Yes, that sounds exactly what I’d like to do. How do I do that? The episode names are right, and they are listed in TVDB/MovieDB and the DVD in the order that they aired, but they aired in the wrong order. Am I overlooking an obvious way to manually change the order that they appear in my Plex queue?
I bought the DVD set several years ago when it was still under $30. The best price I can find now is $35.26 on DeepDiscount.
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Changing the aired date would not fix my issue since they originally aired in the wrong order, and that order is reflected on the DVDs and TVDB/MovieDB.
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Well let’s see. If the first three episodes are in reverse order, then rename the media files “Nichols - S01E01” to “Nichols - S01E03” and “Nichols - S01E03” to “Nichols - S01E01”. Those names aren’t exact of course but hopefully you get the idea. Then edit those entries changing the title, summary and anything else required to match the actual file content. I think that’s right…
Ah, I see where you’re going now. Upon further research, I have discovered another episode (Bertha) which is listed as #24 on TVDB and the DVD actually aired between #9 (Ketcham Power) and #10 (The One Eyed Mule…) Ugh. So rather than renumber all my MP4 files, I will take FordGuy61’s suggestion and experiment with putting them into a personal library. I will also contact TVDB and see if they might create a production order list. I’ll report my result back here. Thanks, all!
FYI they will have to do this with the Absolute order.
Plex supports only the Aired, DVD, and Absolute orders from TheTVDB.com.
If they create a list named “Production” (or anything other than Aired/DVD/Absolute), Plex will not use it.
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It might, if Plex ignores the numerical (S01E03 then S01E04) order in favor of the “Aired Date” metadata tag for the episode. Which is why I asked if anyone knew if Plex honors the “aired date” or the actual order numbering.
I believe Plex uses the “aired date” to determine when to play “Specials” episodes in between normal episodes.
Overall… a simple workaround could be to create an episode collection and then manually drag the episodes inside that collection into the order you like.
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I’ve got a couple questions about tv episode collections.
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Are collections supposed to continually play items in that collection? My playlists won’t do this anymore so I was looking for a work around.
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I’m trying to make an episode collection in PLEX, as you suggested above, for a show with 161 episodes (Doctor Who) that need moderate reordering. It is a bit difficult using the grid view. Is there a way to switch to list view in a collection?
I haven’t had much luck with the creation and use of Collections.
re/ 1: I don’t think so – collections are mainly about library organization, not playback (that’s playlists).
re/ 2: no
OK, thanks. You just saved me a bunch of time 
Or a playlist. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s easy to create a playlist and move the episode order around.
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