I've noticed that when you have multiple episodes from a TV show in one single file it will only mark the watched state for the one that you actually select to watch. I'm curious if a better implementation of this would be that it shows as 2 separate items in the interface, but they have the same watched state.
So for example, I watch 42 minutes of a 1 hour 24 minute show. It would be great if both episodes showed a partial watched state and clicking on either one would ask to resume at the 42 minute mark. If you complete one of the library items, they are both marked as watched due to being linked to the same file.
Since these library items are intrinsically linked to this one file, it seems like it would be better practice that the library items are linked as well.
great idea... I've noticed the same thing and thought watched states appearing on both would be good... an evolution of that could be marking the first episode as watched and the second not and selecting the second episode starts at the 42 min mark... suppose for that to work the plex devs would need to bring bookmarking of media files to PMS... then suppose an agent would need to pull that information regarding timing from somewhere... manually set would be cool too...
Since Plex doesn't know when the first episode end and the second one begin, multi-episode files are bit awkward to use in my opinion. I simply split them and it's more manageable. I think what Plex could do is use the matadata to guess. Plex could mark first episode watched and the second episode partial by comparing the metadata versus time watched.
Since Plex doesn't know when the first episode end and the second one begin, multi-episode files are bit awkward to use in my opinion. I simply split them and it's more manageable. I think what Plex could do is use the matadata to guess. Plex could mark first episode watched and the second episode partial by comparing the metadata versus time watched.
This would possibly work, I think my solution above would be a precursor to either what you state above or some type of bookmarking. This thread was an option for plex to do something about this that would work in the mean time at least.
Simple link the 2 library items based on having the same file, so if it has been watched partially clicking on either library item will bring up the resume and if it has been completed they are both marked complete. This leaves out any mucking about with metadata or checking times and just rely's on what plex already has in their database (the library items and the files they are linked to).
In the forum page posted above, a couple of different solutions are discussed but nothing "clear" has been described. Check it out and post any ideas! I've thought about the ability to merge the episodes, link them so they are both selected when one is selected, but it's all up in the air at the moment.
It’s so frustrating that this hasn’t been addressed in any meaningful way. “You can manually fix the watched status” is the equivalent of “Go away you pesky user. We don’t want to fix this obvious usability issue”.
I just poked around in the database and the ‘media_parts’ table contains the information about multiple episode entries linked to the same physical file, it would simple to do a check for other episode index entries that point to the same physical file as the one whose resume point/watched status is being updated and update all index items simultaneously.
That way, when you finish watching the item indexed as Episode 1 from the physical file Show.S01E01-E02 then the item indexed as Episode 2 which also points to the physical file Show.S01E01-E02 would get marked as watched at the same time. This would mean the On-Deck would reflect the item indexed as Episode 3 which points to the physical file Show.S01E03 as the next episode to watch… You know, like how everyone would expect the system to behave.
If I stop watching at 24min35sec into the double episode then resuming Episode 1 or Episode 2 would take me to the 24min35sec point in the physical file Show.S01E01-E02, again, exactly as anyone would expect.
So easy to say… but after years and years of user requests so hard to get PLEX to do…
