For these two episodes, I have one file. I tried following the naming guide and I have it as:
The Office (2005) - S04E01-E02 - Fun Run - 1080p
I Scanned the Libary Files and Refreshed All Metadata. It shows up in the UI as Fun Run (1), Fun Run (2), which is fine, but if I click on Fun Run (2), it starts playing at the very beginning of the episode with Michael eating cereal which is where Fun Run (1) starts.
Plex doesn’t know where in your file episode 1 ends and epidemiology 2 begins. Plex simply reflects all the episodes contained in your file as individual episode entries. If you watched episode 1, the player should automatically mark episodes 1+2 as watched and progress to episode 3.
There’s a handful of feature suggestions asking for a different handling.
One suggestion is asking for multi-episode files to be reflected with a single library item (e.g. labelled “Episodes 1-2” and “Fun Run (1) & Fun Run (2)” – with some intelligence it might even figure out to show that only as “Fun Run” – plus the combined descriptions of the individual episodes).
Another suggestion is asking for a way to include timestamps/chapter references when each episode ends in the file name (though I suppose that’s not a super user friendly approach).
Yet another suggestion is asking to guess the cut by assuming each episode has the same length and at least indicate the watch progress based on that
Yeah, it’s odd that Plex has a naming convention for one file, multiple episodes. Someone realized how important it was to be able to account for it, but then just seemed to drop the ball on displaying it.
The simplest solution, imo, would just be to show one slot like in the first suggestion’s mock up. No need to try and guess where one ep stops and one begins.
I do that, but I do so by leaving out the second “E”. For example, the above file would be labeled The Office (2005) - S04E01-02 - Fun Run - 1080p. Plex fails to see that it is a two part-er, and then I modify the metadata in Plex to reflect that this episode is a two part-er. This does have the downside of me appearing to be missing an episode (Ep01, EP03, EP04, etc), but it works for what I want, and retains the important info that the file has two episodes (and the numbers of them) within it. I had too many problems with Plex playing a double-episode file multiple times.
One show I have, Phineas and Ferb, the episode numbers are all over the place. Most likely because the files were sourced from a DVD, while I am using “Aired” sort method (I’ll fix it some day). So an episode might be S01E04-02 - The Fast and The Phineas - Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror!. Since the file is EP04 then EP02, Plex kind of freaks out about the order, and plays EP02 after E01, which plays 04 and 02. But it doesn’t seem to remember that 04 was played, so it plays AGAIN 2 video files later.
