Request TVDB episode sorting to get episode data directly from TVDB

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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The current metadata scraping system of Plex TV Series is a bit confusing and messy when using TVDB episode sorting.

From my experience, the primary data source used by Plex TV Series is TMDB, The agent will get the data on TMDB first by default, except for the specials, the data for all other seasons and the entire series are from TMDB, However, the data for the Specials are from TVDB.

The information for the whole series is from TMDB. The episode order and episode data for the Specials are from TVDB, Other seasons are sorted from TVDB, with the episode information coming from TMDB, and if an episode is missing from TMDB it will be replaced with data from TVDB. So complicated.

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Take the TV series Monogatari as an example, The episode order is TVDB’s DVD order, But the episode information, title and overview are in Japanese, all seasons are translated in Chinese at TVDB, with Chinese titles and overview, my metadata language is set to Chinese, but it’s pulling Japanese data for me, TMDB also has a Chinese translation, but this time Plex TV Series did not pull data from TMDB, It’s odd.

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This is really confusing to me, I think the best approach is that if you choose TVDB sorting, all episode data should be pulled from TVDB, including episode titles and overviews, there is no need to pull data from TMDB anymore, it’s really confusing to mix them together.

And I wonder if the database of TVDB is not updated in time, many new translations are not added to the Plex TV Series agent, so there are many TV series with Chinese translations in TVDB, but still cannot get displayed in Plex in Chinese.

Request TVDB episode sorting to get episode data directly from TVDB, also, since TVDB’s three types of episode sorting are supported, why not support TMDB’s other sorting options?

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No response?

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Plex’s original TV series agent used to use the TVDB for episode information. They changed off of it to the new agent (that mixed TVDB and TMDB both for certain things) and only uses TMDB for the series/episode information. From my understanding of it, this is because TVDB has been talking for awhile now about making their API paid-access. Plex could not come to an agreement with them for bulk access to data, so they have come up with this new agent that uses TMDB for that info. The alternative would be users needing to set up an account with TVDB and paying a fee to them to get an API key to enter into their Plex servers in some way.

I have yet to see the theTVDB actually enact this “paid access” idea at this point, though. I can still get information from the theTVDB plugin on my Jellyfin server. I think the series and episode summaries are overall better on theTVDB, but I ended up changing all my libraries over to the new agent mostly to fix the cast list picture issues.

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I see, but the current Plex TV Series agent is not completely unable to get data from TVDB, at least the episode order is available, and the Special Season title is also available, because for some series TVDB and TMDB have different episode titles, after choosing TVDB episode order, It is possible to display the TVDB episode titles, most of the time it is only for specials, other seasons are still displayed according to the TMDB titles, so I find it strange that if plex can get the TVDB titles, why don’t use the TVDB titles for all seasons?

Even if it is not a special episode, if an episode in a season is only available in TVDB but not in TMDB, it is still possible to use TVDB’s episode (season) data. This means that the Plex TV Series agent is able to get data from TVDB, but maybe the data needs to be paid for, so the default is to use TMDB, IDK.

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Could you give me examples of which translations are not working and exactly which language you have configured for your library (there are three Chinese variants).

There is a known issue where we don’t currently have translations for TVDB season titles, but shows and episodes should all have them - I would need to know exactly where you’re not getting the translations.

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Thanks for the reply, the language of my library is Chinese (ZH/CN).

So currently Plex does not support TVDB’s season title translation, that explains it. Will it be supported in the future?

I have this show Monogatari in my library, The Episode ordering I chose is TheTVDB (DVD) and the library language is Chinese (ZH/CN).

The data of the show is from TMDB, which supports Chinese translation. The season titles are displayed in Japanese, it could be the original title of the show from TVDB, Season overview are empty. The episode titles and overviews are confusing, it seems some are from TMDB (DVD) and some are from TVDB (DVD), both in Chinese.

I also have the show Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba in my library, The Episode ordering I chose is TheTVDB (Aired) and the library language is Chinese (ZH/CN).

I got the show title and overview from TMDB in Chinese. I got no title for Season 1, it shows Season 1 in Chinese for me, I got Season 2 and 3’s titles in Japanese, could be the original title, no overviews for all Seasons, I got S00E02’s title and overview from TVDB in Chinese, I got S00E07/E10/E11’s title and overview from TVDB in English, other episodes title and overview are from TMDB in Chinese. (The episodes title other than Specials is definitely from TMDB, the episodes overview is the same and cannot be verified.)

When TVDB is selected as Episode ordering, I’m guessing that the show data is mainly from TMDB, IMDB, the season data is mainly from TVDB, and the episode data is mainly from TMDB, but also some TVDB data, even though the ordering is TVDB.

My question is why not set all sources to TVDB, when selecting TVDB Episode ordering, since shows and episodes can get data from TVDB, and the translation is supported.

For the contents without translation on TVDB, why do some of them show the original language and some in English?

The data of the episodes are from both TVDB and TMDB. Although they are translated into Chinese, it is not a good experience to mix the two sets of translations together, because they might have different contents, why mix them? What are the Rules?

I have another question, the Discover Credits data should come from TMDB, right? Why does the cast data have Chinese translation on TMDB, but the Plex still shows English? Can we support the translation of Discover Credits?

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