At the moment when you add a double episode to plex (e.g. s01e03e04), plex media server creates two separate episode entries (one for episode 3 and one for episode 4) that both point to the same video file.
When you have watched one of the episodes from plex, the other one is not automatically marked as watched even though both have been played since its a single video file.
Is it possible to add a feature that can handle this?
or instead
Create just a single entry in plex for the double episode and combine the episode metadata.
At the moment when you add a double episode to plex (e.g. s01e03e04), plex media server creates two separate episode entries (one for episode 3 and one for episode 4) that both point to the same video file.
When you have watched one of the episodes from plex, the other one is not automatically marked as watched even though both have been played since its a single video file.
I agree with you that the current way of doing this is completely wrong and misleading.
Is it possible to add a feature that can handle this?
I'm sure it's possible to check that all episode entries in the database which are linked to the same episode file can be marked identically (watched or not watched) whenever the flag of one of those episode entries is modified, either as a result of playback or by direct command in the context menu of some client. Since each such episode entry represents the same physical file their watch status should be kept identical. It will require adding an extra routine to check for duplicate entries of an episode file for such cases, that's all.
Create just a single entry in plex for the double episode and combine the episode metadata.
That would also be logical, since only one physical file exists for those episodes, but I see it as less useful when it comes to presenting episode titles and plot descriptions. The text fields reserved for that purpose in the clients are not dimensioned to handle multiple episodes, and trying to change that would probably require much more new coding than the first alternative above.
This would be very beneficial, lots of shows (e.g. Battlestar Galactica) have a season premiere or finale that spans the first or last few episodes. Often those episodes are contained in a single file. When you watch the first of those episodes, you play the entire file with all the episodes, but only the first one is marked as watched when you finish. Next up is the second episode, which points to the file you just played containing both. This also happens frequently with some cartoons (e.g. Animaniacs), where it's not uncommon to air two, three, or even four episodes in one 30-minute air slot. Those episodes usually get grouped together in a single file, but remain as separate entries in Plex. It's annoying to have to skip forward an episode, especially a few minutes in once you've realized that you've seen this all before. Plex should be smart enough to know that when multiple episodes point to a single file, all those episodes should be marked watched when the file has finished playing. I'm sure reality may be quite different, but in my mind this does not seem like a difficult feature to implement.
Something with this would be great. Many of the kids tv shows do double episode 30 minute blocks. Sometimes if its few enough I will attempt to split the episodes properly but other shows that have a ton of episodes I just give up and deal with the duplicate playing in Plex.
While I can see it might get messy with more then a double episode, could there be some method of either file naming or within plex stored data to mark the stop/start point of the episode splits?
I handle this issue at the file naming level. That is if I have an episode that is named s03e04-e05 so that it would show as two episodes in Plex I rename it to s02e04 and Plex just shows one episode. It then skips from e04 to e06 in Plex’s guide.
If I need to have both descriptions in Plex I edit the metadata to show both synopsis.
I do agree however that if an episode is numbered so that it shows two or more episodes in one file all those episodes should be marked watched if any of the episodes so labeled are watched. Plex is quite smart in many things but this is one place where it is simply stupid. Clearly Plex detects this and it should be quite simple to correctly handle the watched status for shows stacked in this way.
@Elijah_Baley said:
I handle this issue at the file naming level. That is if I have an episode that is named s03e04-e05 so that it would show as two episodes in Plex I rename it to s02e04 and Plex just shows one episode. It then skips from e04 to e06 in Plex’s guide.
If I need to have both descriptions in Plex I edit the metadata to show both synopsis.
I do agree however that if an episode is numbered so that it shows two or more episodes in one file all those episodes should be marked watched if any of the episodes so labeled are watched. Plex is quite smart in many things but this is one place where it is simply stupid. Clearly Plex detects this and it should be quite simple to correctly handle the watched status for shows stacked in this way.
This is, of course, the answer currently.
Plex is for all intents and purposes a ‘work-around’ in progress and this is just the current ‘work-around’ that actually works.
I would really like this feature. It is really annoying having to manually mark the second episode in a dual episode watched all of the time. Also, since there’s no easy way to tell when a file has 2 episodes while watching them it often required starting the next episode, getting about 30 seconds(or up to 2 minutes in for shows that start with an opening sequence that is exactly the same) in before you realize it’s the same episode you just watched then stopping, marking it as unwatched then marking it as watched again.
@Zamrod said:
I would really like this feature. It is really annoying having to manually mark the second episode in a dual episode watched all of the time. Also, since there’s no easy way to tell when a file has 2 episodes while watching them it often required starting the next episode, getting about 30 seconds(or up to 2 minutes in for shows that start with an opening sequence that is exactly the same) in before you realize it’s the same episode you just watched then stopping, marking it as unwatched then marking it as watched again.
That’s why most of us just do this:
@Elijah_Baley said:
I handle this issue at the file naming level. That is if I have an episode that is named s03e04-e05 so that it would show as two episodes in Plex I rename it to s02e04 and Plex just shows one episode. It then skips from e04 to e06 in Plex’s guide.
If I need to have both descriptions in Plex I edit the metadata to show both synopsis.
I do agree however that if an episode is numbered so that it shows two or more episodes in one file all those episodes should be marked watched if any of the episodes so labeled are watched. Plex is quite smart in many things but this is one place where it is simply stupid. Clearly Plex detects this and it should be quite simple to correctly handle the watched status for shows stacked in this way.
Yea, it’s broken. It’s been broken for a long time and will probably stay broken. Hope not, but there you go.
This is causing an issue with many children’s cartoons now. My kids watch Chowder and Clarence which show two episodes at a time. I had to tell them to skip even episodes or they would be watching the same thing twice. I tried the naming convention to only show the odd episodes, but then they thought they were missing shows. This needs to be looked at.
