As the title describes i’m having probems with getting Plex to understand what I want…
For example I have:
Little Einseins (For my kids) rips that are season based but I also have some non season based movies. It is just Stand-Alone movies but they are with multibpe episodes.
I don’t want them to be recognised as one big movie with different parts (tpX.mkv or PartX.mkv) and not as a TV-Show.
I want them to show upp under one “Poster” but be able to choose witch one I/My kids want to watch.
Is this possible
Thanks!
If a good portion of them are season based episodes with a number of movies, even if multi-part movies, I would add the whole lot as a TV show with the movies under the specials (Season 00) season.
Unless specials have details that can be scraped they are a little light on for detail, though you can add your own metadata through the web interface. That said, if I’m looking at the same show there are specials on thetvdb.com so you might be ok. If your specials order is different to thetvdb then you can get away with putting them in the folder, renumbering so they appear above the documented specials, and order however you like.
For instance if you have “Our Big Adventure” (listed on thetvdb.com as Episode 1 of Season 00) but rather than 1 single file you have it split into 2 parts, rather than using the ‘expected’ naming them so the media scraper picks them up, you could add them as follows and manually add additional metadata to them:
\media\TV Shows\Little Einsteins\Season 00\Little Einsteins S00E51 Our Big Adventure Pt1.mkv
\media\TV Shows\Little Einsteins\Season 00\Little Einsteins S00E51 Our Big Adventure Pt2.mkv
Putting them at episode 51 pushes them well above the range of episodes so it wont auto match, if that makes sense.
or if you’re really into janking up your library… just join all your episodes together in one big orgy of pain and suffering and put 'em in an Other Videos Library:
@jungwirth said:
If a good portion of them are season based episodes with a number of movies, even if multi-part movies, I would add the whole lot as a TV show with the movies under the specials (Season 00) season.
Yes they are. 2 seasons, 113 episodes total + 4 movies, 4 episodes each.
Do thay show up like a TV-Show, Extra or movie?
What I want is to put them in my “Movies Library” but with multiple episodes. Not like extras or a new season…
Is there no way for Plex to do that nativly?
@nokdim said:
You might want to look into Collections you can add all of them as movies and add them to a collection called “Little Einsteins”
The I have to set them like 4 different movies. The dosen’t look very clean in the “movies” library
If you put them all under a TV show then the ‘movies’ (which are themselves split into 4 parts? so 16 pieces totally 4 movies?) would be available under a season called “Specials”.
Not that they watch them any more, but that’s how I handled Ben 10 back when my kids watched those. Also how Star Wars Rebels and Doctor Who currently get handled, as both of those tend to do movie-length episodes for instance.
I think the request to be able to have Film + TV in a collection comes up from time to time, generally the best solution is to use the Specials season work around. If it was a TV show that spawned the occasional full length film, then you will find thetvdb is likely to have those films already included in the Specials season. Coming across something where there was a full length, but it’s been split into 4 parts is probably a bit of a rarity and not something I think would be easy for it to handle natively.
I can’t comment on Collections, as anything with enough content I would break out into its own library (eg: Marvel Cinematic Universe, or James Bond), or simply modify the metadata so the sort-order put them all next to each other in the library (eg: the Fast and Furious franchise films I’ve manually added sort order meta data that runs them from “The Fast and The Furious 2001 01” … “The Fast and The Furious 2001 08”, same with any series that should run sequential but individual titles don’t do that naturally, plus I probably started doing that before Collections were a working thing).
edit: Oh, and if having the movies split into 4 parts is a matter of how they were ripped rather than how you want them, then re-joining those parts together to form a single movie again using something like AviMuxGUI or MKVToolNix would help simplify things.
You’re welcome. It does take some getting used to thinking of the television show related movie length episodes as ‘specials’ rather than ‘movies’, but once you adjust to it (if you can ) then it does make filing things easier.
That screen shot I included, I realise I should have shown another screen shot. When we click through into the “Specials” season, this is what we see, basically the ‘movies’ listed as episodes. In retrospect Ben 10 Ultimate Alien probably wasn’t the best example to choose
I did originally put the movies into the relevant movies library (Animated) but realised they got lost. And without a good collection function that will happily and easily combine TV + Film into a single viewable library/section I leaned into using TV libraries to achieve it.
A better example, if you’ll indulge me, is possible Babylon 5. Babylon 5 sits in my SciFi TV library, it has 5 regular seasons + the ‘Specials’ season which comprised 6 feature length broadcasts.
Theoretically the same kind of behaviour could be expected of, for example, Star Trek The Next Generation, however the key disctinction is that Babylon 5 were all broadcast feature length, whilst ST:TNG era feature length’s had theatrical releases.
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough
The trick in doing it as @jungwirth suggests - and a neat one - is you can put an ‘Aired Date’ in that’s coincides with whatever other episodes you want to match up with - so that when played from On Deck they’ll show up one after the other.
If you put them in a Movie Library - they won’t show On Deck at all - and you’ll have to find them one at a time, or fool around with a collection… I’d rather have my eyeballs gouged out with plastic sporks.
@juicewsa is correct! And I’d forgotten that cool little aspect of adding them into a specials season. I recall hunting around through my general SciFi movie library for the Babylon 5 feature lengths when I wanted to watch them, before I forced them into a tv library - painful!
(And now I want to watch Babylon 5. And more importantly I will gripe that I never got any more Crusade. Cest la vie)
I’m about halfway into Season 1 - ‘The Movies’ showing up on time from On Deck, right where they’re supposed to.
After a while you forget that it was Londo, and G’Kar that carried that show for 5 Seasons and their acting alone makes it worth the re-runs, with a little help from Bruce and Mira. Jerry Doyle is the worst actor I have EVER seen with the Christian/Biggs combo of pain coming in a close second and third.
B5 Trivia:
They saved a LOT of money by employing NewTek’s Video Toaster to do those scene cutaways and CGI the ‘Big Houses’ would have charged a bundle for. Unfortunately some Bozo didn’t back up those shots to film and/or most of them were lost when they were compromised in storage - as a result when they rebuilt these episodes much of it had to come from the Video Tape. Painful. An Understatement.
Part 2:
At the time B5 was in production I was using NewTek’s Video Toaster on an Amiga, working for a small Video Production Company as chief cook and bottle washer - Editor, Graphic Designer, Production Manager, Grip, Best Boy, Roadie, Janitor, etc…
I remember our ‘Renders’ taking days to complete and being ‘Seconds’ long - filling up HDDs, left right and center.
The B5 guys had bigger and better stuff, obviously, the base unit doing the work was the same. Those B5 graphics and textures are very familiar to me and B5 will always take up space in my Plexiverse.
Still, they should have called it:
Londo and G’Kar - A Space Love Story.
@JuiceWSA said:
The trick in doing it as @jungwirth suggests - and a neat one - is you can put an ‘Aired Date’ in that’s coincides with whatever other episodes you want to match up with - so that when played from On Deck they’ll show up one after the other.
If you put them in a Movie Library - they won’t show On Deck at all - and you’ll have to find them one at a time, or fool around with a collection… I’d rather have my eyeballs gouged out with plastic sporks.
That’s very interesting. So use the ‘Aired Date’ in the file name or edit the episode properties within Plex?
Much of what’s matched at TVDB will already have this info - and most of it will be correct - but when fiddling with material, slapping it around and making it do what you want, adding dates that will make it show up when you want it to are great.
When I’m watching B5 and that date comes along - that item is next On Deck, IF it’s in B5s Specials.
Make sure you lock that field - I’m pretty sure that’s where mine needs to be so I never bothered, but if you’re in a ‘fiddle situation’ - lock her down and hope for the best.