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Player Version#: 4.66.1
After converting my TV series library to the new version I’ve begun adding extras to TV series rather than using the “Specials” folder. Thank you SO MUCH for that new functionality! It has been working great!
Today I encountered a strange problem. I’ve started converting series where I had some “extras” in the Specials folder. For specials that weren’t in TheTVDB it was always clunky because those extras would have to be given a fake episode # and then after importing into PLEX I’d have to go in and type in the name. Putting them in a “Featurettes” folder works exactly as I’d wanted.
So, I was converting the “Specials” in the series “The 4400 (2004)” moving out all the items, including an extended episode from Season 4. All except the extended episode went into the Featurettes folder but for the extended episode I wanted to see if it would show up as a “version” if I put it into Season 04 with the regular episode. I named them both like this:
\TV Shows\0\The 4400 (2004)\The 4400 (2004) - s04e13 - The Great Leap Forward.mkv
\TV Shows\0\The 4400 (2004)\The 4400 (2004) - s04e13 - The Great Leap Forward - Director’s Cut.mkv
and rescanned the library. Unfortunately, the episode didn’t show up as having 2 versions when I looked at it with multiple players. So, I moved just that episode back into the specials folder (and used “- s00e19 -” in then name and rescanned the library. Now Plex server doesn’t recognize I have a specials folder. I’ve tried moving that whole folder out, scanning the library, then moving it back in. No luck. I tried renaming “Specials” to “Season 00” and no luck. I’d rather not move the whole series out of the library and then back in as I’d loose watched episodes information.
Any thoughts as to why it won’t add the Specials season back in for this series?
It’s actually a feature to protect files from getting lost if you tweak its names. Plex knows the file as a special and when it found it in season 4 it remembered that it’s supposed to be a special.
You’ll need to do a Plex Dance for this file to make Plex forget it for good and recognize it as the file you want it to be.
Ah! So I missed one step, cleaning bundles. I’ll do that. It sounds from what you said that if I clean bundles I can also put it back in season 4, named as above, and have it show as an alternate version of the episode?
I don’t know if I did something to my library or need to reconfigure it. (It uses the same settings prior to the update that added extras functionality)
The Plex Dance doesn’t seem to be working for me. On “The 4400 (2004)” I:
pulled out the specials folder
rescanned
emptied trash
cleaned bundles
put the specials folder back in
rescanned the library again
The special did not show show up in the library. I think pulled the whole series out of the TV Shows Folder:
P:\TV Shows\0\The 4400 (2004)
ran through the dance above. The series dissappeared from my library, but doesn’t show up at all after adding it back in.
I was also working on another series for which the episode numbering had changed in TheTVDB.com and after fixing the episode numbers for that season all the episodes except episode 1 dissappeared. So, I removed and readded that whole series as well using the Plex Dance and it no longer shows up in my library at all.
I’ve also tried variations to the Plex Dance such as emptying trash at the home level in addtion to the library level, stopping and restarting PLEX, waiting overnight for any other cleanup tools…
I’m worried I might have to delete the whole library and re-add it brand new, losing all tracking of episodes watched. That’s not a terrible thing as I haven’t taken much time to watch PLEX the last few years… Been spending all my evenings adding to the libraries…
Really? That’s surprising. Originally I had all shows at the top level:
P:\TV Shows<showname (startdate)>
For Movies I have always been set it up like this:
P:\Movies\0\20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
P:\Movies\A\Annie
P:\Movies\A\The Astronaut Farmer
etc.
But in the library I only have one folder, P:\Movies, defined. Movies have always been found fine. I knew TV Shows didn’t work that way so had them all in one folder. However, when updating the libraries I thought I’d TRY it again and when I moved a couple of series into their own sub-folder it re-linked to the episode properly… I thought I was golden… Guess I’ll move them all back up a level (rather than add 27 library paths…)
With movies, might I run into a problem someday if I leave them all in subfolders like they are now?
I moved all my TV shows from the index folders I placed them into back to the parent folder and waited 36 hours for it to re-analyze everything for intros and the problems I was having were fixed. Thank you for the insight about index folders and how that would keep the system from processing the folders properly. I know I could have added each index folder to the library separately but opted instead to just consolodate back to just one folder. It’s not that unmanageable.
