I’m trying to add a number of Top Gear specials. I used themoviedb.org’s list of specials to get the correct episode numbers. Sadly, the Plex Series Agent has assigned totally different titles to those episodes. I checked thetvdb.com’s list of Top Gear specials, and many of those I have are not even listed, at least, not by the titles I know (and all matched themoviedb.org’s titles) – but they have yet a third title for the specials at the episode numbers I’ve used!
All I want is a way to get a simple, compact list of episode numbers and titles (and maybe runtimes and/or original air dates). I have found that I can go to watch.plex.tv and search for the show and, supposedly, that will be the list of episode numbers/titles that the Plex Series Agent is using. Unfortunately, that is a TERRIBLE interface for simply searching through long lists of episodes. Maybe some web genius can create a site that scrapes the information and presents it in a form that is more useful … hint … hint.
Also, I keep finding threads like this one Looking manually on Plex Series Agent?, but they keep saying (incorrectly) that you can use thetvdb.com or themoviedb.org or imdb.com (they don’t list a “specials” season at all). I wish that, at least here, those could be updated with something more useful for others that have similar issues.
It can be very, VERY difficult to guess what the Plex Series Agent is going to do with one’s correctly numbered and titled episode media files – at least, correctly according to one of the referenced sources – since the Plex Series Scanner’s database seems to be quite unique.
Well… I just got home and checked, only to find out that the titles being assigned to my Top Gear specials don’t match the episode number/titles found when I search for Top Gear at watch.plex.tv and review the Specials!
So this is a total mash up of essentially random titles assigned to random episode numbers. Sigh.
For Specials, I could actually care less, but I’m not having fun changing the episode number of a single episode from 01 to XX and refreshing meta data until I accidentally land on the correct title. The “Gods of Plex” simply MUST provide some way for Plex Librarians/Curators to access the database being used by the Plex Series Agent. Read Only access is fine, especially if we have a method for submitting suggested corrections.)
But really, maybe they should give us access to whatever they are using for watch.plex.tv, since it seems to be somewhat more accurate than the Plex Series Agent!
Once you match a show, the episode numbering comes either from TMDB (default for libraries) or TVDB. Ignore what Plex has on their watch.plex.tv site, and number your show based on the numbers from tmdb or tvdb, and then set either the library (applies to all shows within) or the show itself to use one of those two numbering systems.
Series: Top Gear (2002)
S00E32 - Apocalypse
S00E34 - Middle East Special
S00E37 - At the Movies
S00E38 - India Special
S00E44 - The Worst Car in the World
I think there were others, too, but as I’ve manually corrected them, I forget exactly which. Please note that the list above comes from themoviedb.org (aka tmdb.org) and does not match the list from thetvdb.com, so knowing which of these is used is quite important, but since neither is being used, I guess that wouldn’t really help this time.
And, as I said, watch.plex.tv shows a third version of the specials list!
Once you match a show, the episode numbering comes either from TMDB (default for libraries) or TVDB
Is there a way to change where the numbering comes from, for a specific series? It looks like Plex is actually using TVDB for Top Gear, but TVDB doesn’t list all of the specials that TMDB lists, I quite a few that I have appear only in TMDB’s list.
You can fix this yourself but editing the external ids at tmdb and linking them to the correct episodes at tvdb. Then in 48/72 hours after those edits are done refresh the metadata in plex and it should fix your problem.
