Lots of children’s shows have two or three episodes per 30-minute broadcast. When I record these, the episode sequence numbers generated by the DVR do not align with the episode numbers at TheTVDB.com. As a result, I end up with incorrect titles and descriptions.
I can workaround the problem by manually looking up the episodes and renaming the files (fortunately, the episode titles in the DVR-generated file name are usually correct). So, for example:
Curious George (2006) - S06E06 - Wind Symphony; George and Allie’s Automated Car Wash.mkv
becomes
Curious George (2006) - S06E11-E12 - Wind Symphony; George and Allie’s Automated Car Wash.mkv
But I worry that, when I do this, it will confuse the DVR and I’ll end up with multiple recordings of the same episode (because it looks like S06E06 is gone) and/or missed recordings (because it looks like S06E11 is already recorded). I haven’t carefully tested this yet, so I’ll see what happens…
A related problem—again, haven’t tested—is if a regular series happens to record one or two episodes with the wrong episode number, correcting that problem may lead to duplicate/missed recordings.
So, two requests:
- Can we teach the DVR about multi-episode shows and make sure it uses the right episode numbers?
- Can we somehow detect when a particular recording is renamed and remember what Program Guide entry it came from? Or can we allow episodes to be reassigned without renaming the file?
It’s not kid shows…I have about 15 PBS Nova shows and they are all wrong…
I agree on the kids shows. Would be nice if the broadcast showed 15 minute blocks for each Episode instead of lumping 2 episodes into the 3 minute time. I have started just adding the season/episode before the second eipisode in the title. One day I might actually take the time to use VLC or some other tool to split these episodes.
On PBS Nova unfortunately there are several different sources for what season/episode a show is, TheTVDB has one set of data, IMDB I think has something different, WikiPedia has a third option, none of which match what PBS has as the actual season/episode for a show.
Confirmed with some testing: if I rename a file to make it match TheTVDB’s episode numbers:
- Next time the same episode airs, I’ll get a duplicate recording using the old (wrong) episode number
- When an episode airs that uses the new (correct) episode number, that recording will be skipped (even though the newly-aired episode isn’t actually in my library)
Since neither of those are okay for me (especially the second), I’ve set up a separate library which acts as a staging area. I’ll manually update the episode numbers and move the files into the “real” library from time to time.
@dansmith21 said:
Since neither of those are okay for me (especially the second), I’ve set up a separate library which acts as a staging area. I’ll manually update the episode numbers and move the files into the “real” library from time to time.
I’m frustrated by this problem as well. Can you explain what you mean by set up a separate staging area?
Edit: Nevermind. I couldn’t find where you told Plex which library to record to, but just located the drop-down menu.
A second library for TV Shows that is selected when setting up the recording. This will keep the recordings separate and allow the manual renaming and moving of the files to the main library.
I know this thread is stale, but I would love to hear any updates on this. This problem plagues my setup, as I mostly use Plex DVR to record kids shows. Doc McStuffins and Phines and Ferb are two titles that I can confirm are always wrong. I can’t imagine why this is considering that TVDB is supposedly Plex’s source. I have to manually go to TVDB and change all the names myself to avoid episodes not appearing in the correct season and with the correct name.
This should really be captured as a bug. Can anyone from Plex comment?
