Plex finding TheTVDB "extended version" vs airing version of same show?

General Discussions
1

A single show in TheTVDB has two different versions, but I can’t find a way to get Plex to match the “other” version.

I’m trying to set the “match” for a show called “Long Way Round Special Edition” – in TheTVDB it shows either “airing” or “extended version” for SEASONS. It’s not a different airing order, it’s actually a different number of episodes!

For the “airing”, it’s seven of S01 and one S00 while the Special Edition DVD had TEN episodes of S01. (thetvdb shows “Long Way Round Special Edition” as an alias for “Long Way Round”, and Plex only matches to Long Way Round AIRING season).

Help… How can I get Plex to match to TheTVDB’s “Extended Version” to have Plex show correct info on all ten episodes of the “extended version”???

Thanks

2

Plex only supports the following orders provided by TheTVDb.com:

  1. Airing order
  2. DVD order
  3. Absolute order

Since the recent(?) update, TheTVDb.com supports basically every possible order naming. In this particular case it’s quite messed up and might be taken down or re-done by the mods over over there (they’re not particularly fond of that kind of loose ends).

There’s nothing you can do from within Plex at the moment while using TheTVDb.com as your agent. You might however try to manually match that show using The Movie Database. It appears, the “missing” episodes are listed as “specials” in their listing.
https://www.thetvdb.com/series/long-way-round
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/2899-long-way-round/seasons

PS: as you opted to go for a dedicated thread of your own I’ve deleted the similar post you had added to a different thread.

3

thanks. I didn’t see any responses, so I figured that a very very old thread was the wrong place to put this query.

Trying The Movie Database didn’t really help. The special edition inserted their own episode two renumbering the rest.

I guess the only other choice is to raise this over at TheTVDB that they should be separated into two different shows…

Thanks

4

btw, the Movie Database’s SPECIALS do NOT match the Special Edition episodes. So TMD won’t work at all.

5

You might try combining some of the episodes from the Special Edition so they match the Aired Version. Then use the aired order naming & organization when you put the files into Plex.

Aired Episode 1 = Special Edition Episodes 1 + 2
Aired Episode 2 = Special Edition Episode 3
etc.
Aired Episode 6 = Special Edition Episode 7
Aired Episode 7 = Special Edition Episodes 8 + 9

Special Edition episode 10, One Year Later, is listed as a Season 00 special in the Aired Order in TheTVDB.com.

See [HowTo]: joining multi-part movies files with MKVtoolnix GUI for info on joining media files together.

From Wikipedia:
Aired Order:
Episode 1: Preparation
Episode 2: London to Volgograd
Episode 3: Kazakhstan
Episode 4: Barnaul to Western Mongolia
Episode 5: Western Mongolia to Yakutsk
Episode 6: Yakutsk to Magadan (the Road of Bones)
Episode 7: Anchorage to New York

Special Edition
Episode 1: Preparation, part 1
Episode 2: Shoving Off
Episode 3: London to Volgograd
Episode 4: Kazakhstan
Episode 5: Barnaul to Western Mongolia
Episode 6: Western Mongolia to Yakutsk
Episode 7: Yakutsk to Magadan (The Road of Bones)
Episode 8: Anchorage to Calgary
Episode 9: Calgary to New York
Episode 10: One Year Later

2 Likes
6

Thanks - that’s what I’m doing now… had hoped to not have to bother with it.

7

This is really too bad, there are 2 of these series, Long way Round and Long Way Down, both have the same 6-7 episodes for airing and then 10 episodes on the extended edition, which was really just the DVD edition.

Is it worth trying to get plex to add the option of extended from the TVDB, or is there any hope of asking the TVDB to order them correctly?

8

The series is locked on TheTVDB, so no user editing allowed.

You could ask the mods at TheTVDB to rename Extended Version to DVD Order or to duplicate Extended Version as DVD Order. That should let Plex pull the DVD order from TheTVDB.

9

Considering that the extended editions actually did get released on DVD, this really seems like a reasonable request. But you never know with TheTVDB…

(I’m running into this problem with the same show, too)

10

I created a support account and requested both Long Way Round and Long Way Down have the Extended Version changed to DVD order or at minimum add the same 10 episodes to a DVD Order listing.

Hopefully we get results.

11

Tried about 10 years ago to get TheTVDB people to be reasonable about this. They wouldn’t have a bar of it.

Hopefully they’ve lightened up a little since then and are open to having an order that will match the DVD’s and thus what 99% of us have in our collections.

12

I had a conversation with a guy and he said that the extended is the same as dvd as far as they are concerned, even on the backend. It is technically the DVD order (check the urls I posted) , but I explained the issue is plex doesn’t see it as DVD and he said once the new api is released from TheTVDB it’ll fix this.

When that is who knows, but he showed me that going to this address brings up the extended listing, which is what he meant by the extended truly is the DVD order, just need to new api to translate it to plex.

13

Awesome news.

14

Looking at those links does show the DVD episode titles, but… I’ve not been able to get PLEX to match that way. I’ve set the advanced setting to use “DVD” episode naming, but it still doesn’t show the right episode names.

How’d ya get Plex to do it?

Thanks

15

“…once the new api is released from TheTVDB it’ll fix this.”

DVD order doesn’t work today. You’ll need to re-arrange to match the aired order.

16

Exactly what Ford Guy said, they specifically told me there is no workaround until the new api is released, which is annoying but at least we know the problem and eventual solution.

17

BTW, thanks for tracking things down with TheTVDB.

18

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