How can I "force" a show to take metadata from TVDB?

Server Version#: Latest beta
Player Version#: 4.87.2

Hey there guys,

So I have this Show that refuses to grab its metadata from tvdb. I manually assigned the tvdb ID via Plex Web but it still isn’t loading data from there (Matched the series by “tvdb-XXXYYY” via the match modal).

However, I still don’t see the metadata the tvdb has in its database, but completely different metadata (Actor photos, series description, background/poster art is all not from tvbd).

Is there any way I can tell Plex: “My beloved one, can you please take the metadata from tvdb and nothing else?”)

Any pointers would be much appreciated

I’ll try replying with the wrong answer which seems to get the right one pretty quickly :slight_smile:

Plex in their recent creation of the Plex TV Agent for reasons of usability and/or profit decided to move away from TVDB and over to TMDB for TV Series metadata. You can only force PMS to grab episode numbering data from TVDB, nothing else. PMS might search other places for additional metadata, just not TVDB.

So your only workarounds are

  • gather the metadata yourself, and add it to the TV Show locally so that it gets picked up by the scanner
  • get an account at TMDB, make friends, and after showing them you’re helpful, get their permission to modify the series of interest to you.

Have you tried editing the library? Open as an admin user. Go to the poster for the show. In the bottom left corner click on the pen icon.
In the window that opens, go to Advanced on the left menu.
On the right, scroll down until you see “Episode ordering” . You can usually pick Aired, DVD, and pick between TMDB or TVDB as the source…

…don’t forget to click save, then close the menu and refresh metadata…

1 Like

Thanks for chiming in.

Yeah, I tried that a few days ago and now again, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Sadly, setting this to ‘TheTVDB (Aired)’ doesn’t change any of the metadata :frowning: @toopy1964

Have you searched the three big meta sites to see if the meta is available?
The moviedb, thetvdb, IMDb.
If it’s available you can always add it manually or find if there is naming difference or difference in how the episodes are named, like maybe by year instead of season, or it’s listed as one season…

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