Hey guys! I’m extremely new to Plex and I am loving it - I’ve been using FileBot to rename all of my series and it’s working great.
I’m up to an Anime called Mai Hime and I’m having some trouble. This series has a special for each episode, a few minutes long and designed to be watched after each episode. For example, I watch episode 1 and them special 1, episode 2 then special 2 etc. I am wondering how I should handle these specials… FileBot renamed all of the episodes but didn’t know what to do with the specials, I would love some help from you guys!
Also, there are two versions of the last episode (episode 26) - the regular version and a director’s cut. I guess I want the director’s cut in the same folder, as well as the specials. I’m thinking I want to be able to click the series in plex and then have it show all the episodes, with the director’s cut right next to the regular version of the episode. I also want it to display the specials, but I don’t know how… the best way would be for it to display each special right next to the episode, so when I’m watching it goes ep 1, sp 1, ep 2, sp 2, ep 3, sp 3 etc.
If that is not possible, then I guess the second best option would be for it to have a specials folder - so it’s displaying “season 1” and “season specials” or “season 0” or something like that.
To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing, but hopefully, someone understands me.
Sadly Plex does not yet support extras for tv shows in the same way it does for movies. This leaves you with a number of workarounds…
If it’s important to you to watch the episode and extras in the precise sequence they’re intended to be watched you could treat them as multi-file episodes, e.g. Mai Hime ... Season 01 ... ... Mai Hime - s01e01-pt1.ext <- the actual episode ... ... Mai Hime - s01e01-pt2.ext <- the episode extra
Downsize: you cannot distinguish between the episode and the extra… they’ll show up as one item in Plex. Alternatively you can stick with the structure given by TheTVDB.com and keep those extras in the specials folder, e.g. Mai Hime ... Season 00 ... ... Mai Hime - s00e01.ext <- the extra related to episode 1 ... ... etc. ... Season 01 ... ... Mai Hime - s01e01.ext <- the actual episode ... ... etc.
The director‘s cut is a little trickier. Here it comes down to your personal preferences.
Option 1: treat it as another edition of that episode Mai Hime ... Season 01 ... ... ... ... ... Mai Hime - s01e26 - Original.ext ... ... Mai Hime - s01e26 - Director‘s Cut.ext
Plex will display both episodes as „duplicates“ of the same item (1 episode, 1 item in Plex with a blue square in its top-left corner showing the number 2 to identify there’s 2 versions).
Pro: this keeps the episode neatly together
Con: there’s no way to distinguish the 2 versions within Plex
Option 2: treat it as an actual special. Since there’s no actual reference in TheTVDB.com you can achieve this by numbering the special outside the used numbers of available specials Mai Hime ... Season 00 ... ... ... ... ... Mai Hime - s00e126.ext <- director’s cut… episode number outside the used numbers; 100 for „season 1“, 26 for „episode 26“ ... Season 01 ... ... ... ... ... Mai Hime - s01e26.ext <- original version
You can of course als switch the 2 versions and make the director‘s cut your default episode 26. Keep in mind you’ll need to manually enter the metadata for the „made-up special“!
@tom80H said:
Sadly Plex does not yet support extras for tv shows in the same way it does for movies. This leaves you with a number of workarounds…
Thanks heaps! Exactly what I needed. While I’m here I may as well ask you another question instead of making a full post. I’m trying to add Dragon Ball/Kai and it only registers up to 100 episodes. Using FileBot, it got season/episode data for Dragon Ball from TVDB and split it into 6 seasons, so now they’re all detected. The trouble is with DB Kai - it’s split into two releases. The first 98 episodes from the first release were all detected and renames by filebot but when trying to rename the second half, it doesn’t work. Even when I use AniDB and manually select Dragon Ball Kai (2014), it doesn’t work. I’ll add a screenshot of what actually happens - if anyone has some ideas that would be great…
@JuiceWSA: hey Mr FileBot… can you provide some guidance to @bradmachell?
Brad has a list of Anime Episodes with ongoing numbering across seasons (001 to 159). He successfully renamed season 1 (001-098) but fails to get FileBot to accept 99-159 as season 2. Any way to achieve this without manually renaming them all?
