Right now, if TV shows are named properly and some files have multiple episodes in one file, the second episode will not be marked as watched or partially watched. For example, the boxsets of friends usually have a season finale that is an extra long episode. TVDB lists this as two episodes even though it is one long file. Multiple cartoons (adventure time, spongebob, etc) also have multiple episodes in one “show.” This can be very confusing to family/friends that have no understanding how the PMS handles these files.
My suggestion is to make multi-episode files mark all the episodes it includes as partially watched and finally watched so that people do not try to play the next episode only to find that it is the “same as the previous episode.”
To expand upon that...if there were a way for Plex to know where in the media file the individual episodes start and maybe even stop, then it could keep track of the watched status, and even start and stop the episodes at the right times. Automatically detecting the episodes would be awesome, but I would expect there to be user intervention to specify the start/stop times.
Not just Plex that has this issue...XBMC has it as well...
I usually just change the filename to reflect it as only the first episode (SxxE01) and then the second episode should not show up at all in the listing.
So your episode listing will jump from 1 to 3 but that should not matter to you as long as you know the series is actually complete.
In most cases when you get the second episode displayed but not watched if you do watch it it will set the watched flag. You will however see the full episode again.
You could also mark it as watched which is what I do in XBMC...I don't pay attention to the Watched tags in Plex merely because other people may have watched the movies so it's not a good indicator in my situation.
I could mark them as watched manually, but if my wife is watching her TV shows when I am not home she can still get confused by it. The renaming to one episode is a good idea, but then you are unable to view episode details/metadata for the second episode since it will be missing. Not a huge problem but could still be annoying to OCD folks like me.
I could mark them as watched manually, but if my wife is watching her TV shows when I am not home she can still get confused by it. The renaming to one episode is a good idea, but then you are unable to view episode details/metadata for the second episode since it will be missing. Not a huge problem but could still be annoying to OCD folks like me.
Take a look at those episode details on E02 and 99 times out of 100 they are no different than they are for the first episode.
I have had the argument over at TVDB a few times (They are a stubborn bunch over there) as there is really NO REASON to create a second episode for those Two Hour Specials since the second episode is not ever really a separate episode until it goes into syndication.
Episodic numbering should be based on how it originally aired and the airdate. Not how it got listed contractually as an episode.
In the contract with the Networks they count towards the contract as TWO Episodes so they get listed as such.
But they really are one episode when aired and only get re-edited and split for syndication purposes.
Me I just rename it to E01 and be done with it.
I would like to see Plex, when it scans the file name and sees S01E01-02 that it would create 1 item in Plex and list it as Episode 1-2. Or give a way to merge the individual listed episodes as 1 episode. But the first option is best as it is automatic.
I agree with GaryM. I would love if Plex could display a file named SomeTVShow.S03E03-E04.mkv as SomeTVShow Episode 3-4 and have it be marked as watched at the same time. This is really confusing a lot of people who I introduce to Plex when the "same episode" is shown twice.
I would like to see Plex, when it scans the file name and sees S01E01-02 that it would create 1 item in Plex and list it as Episode 1-2. Or give a way to merge the individual listed episodes as 1 episode. But the first option is best as it is automatic.
Best for you perhaps.
What about children's shows that really do have two episodes in each show on the DVD, that's quite common.
The watched status handling is poor and doesn't seem to be getting any attention for even simple improvements in an attempt to make it a little more usable. Surely a show entry that consists of multiple items should be treated as one item in the case of the watched status. Perhaps someone can give a good reason not to do this but I can't think of one.
It's not even worth talking about having more than two shows in a video file since the multiple episode handling is poor.
It appears, and I'm still testing to find out for sure, that two-part episodes cannot be synced to a mobile device (on iOS for example) and if one is present in the sync list it prevents syncing of any other content.
It can be quite difficult to divide shows, for example, chapter markers and subtitles present a problem for me so suggesting that as a solution is lame.
And, off topic, there's the issue of not being able to set synced content marked as watched to not be removed at sync, which is pretty much essential for the sync facility with devices used by children.
Ian
The watched status handling is poor and doesn't seem to be getting any attention for even simple improvements in an attempt to make it a little more usable. Surely a show entry that consists of multiple items should be treated as one item in the case of the watched status. Perhaps someone can give a good reason not to do this but I can't think of one.
Except in the case that GaryM describes, which obviously needs an option to merge the episodes.
Or the reverse, treat two part episodes as described by GaryM and provide an option to separate them.
IMHO either would be a big improvement over what we have now.
Luckily it's not even worth talking about shows with more than two parts, ;(
Ian
It appears, and I'm still testing to find out for sure, that two-part episodes cannot be synced to a mobile device (on iOS for example) and if one is present in the sync list it prevents syncing of any other content.
Looks like this is not correct, the sync info must have become corrupt somehow as clearing the synced contents and starting over resolved this problem.
But that just makes resolving the potential for confusion with the watched status even more important to me.
I thought about making a new topic, but I still have not heard any comment or workaround for this feature. When the family watches kid cartoons with two episodes in one file it will only mark the first episode as played. This becomes a problem when they go to play the second episode and it is the exact same episode. Any way I can do a workaround?
I actually hadn't seen this topic before, glad to see I'm not the only one with this idea: [Link](https://forums.plex.tv/topic/129456-feature-request-watched-state-for-single-filemultiple-episodes/)
Mine certainly didn't get much love, hopefully this will get more.
I made a suggestion in this thread: https://forums.plex.tv/topic/113013-concatenated-episodes-and-watch-status/
That when you finish watching a file, all the episodes within that file are marked as watched. Tracking episode watched status inside the file is not possible without further metadata.
I agree with troycarpenter's expansion. It seems that Plex already has the ability to mark "where you left off" on a video for playback at a later time. If the ability was added to mark multiple episode segments at the timeline where each new episode starts and ends from the single source file, it would allow the player to skip ahead or drop back to the correct timeline in the file for the selected episode.
Example: Under season 01 of a TV Show I have a file that contains Episodes 1-6. If I could set markers in the file for where each individual episode starts and stops in that file, then I could easily have the player act as though these items are separate. Let's say episode 2 starts @ 22:11 of the file and ends @ 44:23, then it should be easy when selecting to watch episode 2 for the player to jump to the marker @ 22:11 and conclude the episode @ 44:23, if desired.
This feature would be really helpful, I would think.
how would you suggest that these markers be placed or used? What would hold the data about the episode break that would initially tell plex where it is?
Sorry, haven't checked the forum in a while.
I don't want to put in the exact time a new episode is watched, I would just like the episodes to be marked as watched and partly watched properly. It gets too confusing for family members trying to watch episodes. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know what is feasible. The two Ideas I have of how to implement it would be:
1) Mark all episodes in the file as partly watched until the episode is finished. Then Plex would mark both episodes as watched. Plex then would easily recognize that both episodes have been played and move on the next set of episodes.
2) Mark the first episode as complete halfway through the file, or 1/3 through if it is a 3 episode file, 1/4 if it is a 4 episode file and so on. This to me seems like it would be difficult to implement and I think would be cumbersome.
Any other ideas of how to implement this would be appreciated. And thank you guys for making such an awesome program.
Also with this, when you add, let's just say, a whole season to your queue. Multi episodes within that should be counted as one item in the queue (but display both in one block ie s02e01-03), that way when it plays thru it doesn't play the same episode twice.
Telling us to rename the episode to the episode number of the first of the multiple is just silly, with that we don't get the nice episode synopsis or artwork and it appears that there is a missing episode.
As I am a programmer, this should be trivial. At the point in the code in which episode markers and watched status is updated to just check to see if it is a multi-episode and apply the same status and marker positions to those subsequent episodes, easy peasy.
Agree with many of the comments here - there are workarounds, but fundamentally, if I have watched the entire “file” that includes 2+ episodes, all of those episodes should be marked as watched. And if I have continuous play set, the next episode selected / played should be the next one past the ones I have just watched. Cosmetic goals like seeing all of the episodes separately so you know none are missing should not trump functional needs like being able to actually watch things with minimal fuss.
I thought the watched status issue had been fixed. I often watch double episodes (2 episodes in the same file) and on completion both episodes get marked as watched and the next in my currently playing queue is the following episode (the one after the two episodes just watched).
I can’t comment on continuous play as I don’t use that for TV Series.
+1 and liked
Please mark all episodes in multi-episode files as watched when the file is completed.
Marking all episodes as ‘in progress’ with the resume timestamp set whereever it was also makes sense and would be nice to have.
Trying to automatically work out where one episode ends and another begins to have that set correctly seems like it would be difficult to implement in a way that meets every edge case.
