Hello,
I have a question about series sorting. I know that Plex using thetvdb.com for metadata and other stuff. But I would like to sort and tag some stuff manually. Here is the thing for example:
TV series Doctor Who (2005) have lots of special episodes and shorts that are important to story but are marked as special so you will not look at this episodes by chronological order with srandard episodes.
I know that you can name them with S##E## and they will appiear at Plex but there is an issue with that especially with this Doctor Who series. Some special episodes are at the middle of normal series episodes so for example:
There is special episode at begining like S07E00 that is fine but there is also special episode that should be between episode S0705 and S07E06 but what to do now? If I rename this special episode S07E06 and every other shifts by one so S07E06 will be S07E07 and S07E07 will be S07E08 etc then all are missplaced and taged by Plex and thetvdb.com incorrectly.
Does Plex have some a solution to this series mess or there is a manual tagging thing?
You can manually set the episode order of the library or individual shows.
If you want to see Doctor Who specials inline with the show, you might want to go with TheTVDB (DVD) episode order.
It would run through you continue watching row like this S07E05 → S00E33 -->S07E06
That’s not a real special I’m just trying to illustrate what happens
I’ve already done this and I highly suggest you use this unless you have another renamer you use
It gives you the list of episodes with the titles straight from TVDB. It’s much easier to line up the episodes and drop them in the correct order then try to look them up and type the correct s00e01 name
Are you sure about that? So if there is some special that is critical to the story and named correctly by TVDB as special and moved to Scpeacials folder then this speacial will be played as it should by the story? For example the Doctor Who episode S07E05 then S00E66 and then S07E06. This is how it should play in story order.
In the other hand even if it is true then this ordering is very confusing because if you open regular series then there will be no specials listed and also if you dont use continue watching (that is not working 100% and is unreliable) then you can forget to watch this specials.
So for me there will be perfect solution:
Download metadata from TVDB but list specials like normal episodes in correct order same as normal episodes because for me it is not really specials if it is critical to the story and then it should be placed same as regular episodes.
If it will be nessesarly then I will tag these specials manually but I would like to have them where it should be and that is side by side with regular episodes. because like I said your solution (if it even work) is unreliable
OK and how to change that manual order? Is there any manual how it should be done? Also can you get correct metadata from TVDB or you have to do it manually?
Onother question is what is episode collection thing?
My goal is to have correct metadata (automatically from TVDB) to all episodes and have all specials listed at correct order side by side with regular episodes so you see them at Plex at regular session not at specials. The thing where are physically these specials stored and how they are namen outside the Plex is not importanto to me.
Yes, episodes WILL play in the order they were released, even though these specials are in the specials folder. You must be using the “Continue Watching” feature in the library’s recommended section OR click the “Next Episode” button at the main menu of the show itself. When “resuming” a show, Plex will automatically pick the next (unplayed) episode to play based on the air-date in the “Aired Date” metadata for all episodes. If you select a specific episode to play out of order, this may result in odd behavior, so trust in the Plex “next episode” buttons to pick the order for you.
If you wish to change the TVDB order to DVD, you can do so for this show only by doing the following:
Go to the show’s top level. If you don’t know how to get to that, go to any episode, then click the title of the show to go to the show level.
Click the pencil icon.
Go to advanced.
Click the dropdown next to “Episode Ordering” and change it to “TheTVDB (DVD)”.
— Make sure you number all your episodes according to the DVD order on TheTVDB’s site though. —
I don’t have this show myself, so I’m surprised to hear the specials are numbered in the regular season like this. Coming from anime that has a lot of specials, I had to overhaul these numbers when I started using Plex. It bugged me a bit to not see specials in-line with the rest, but since Plex displays them correctly in the auto-play and continue watching features, it’s not an issue any more.
Well I thought that there could be some way how to “redirect” TVDB metadata to specific file. So I can create episode order like I want but still get TVDB metadata. Like you said that this show is kind of a problem in general and there is lots of shorts and specials that are not listed even in DVD order. Mostly this episodes are not really critical to story but not insignificant either.
Plex actually provides an episode sorting feature, which in theory should allow the episodes to be sorted by air date, which may be similar to what you’re asking for in a way, but unfortunately this feature doesn’t work for specials.
