Should be possible to configure if specials episodes (from season 0/specials) are played in between.
It could be implemented as dropdown with the following options:
Seasons with specials
Seasons without specials
Seasons only
Option 1 is the current behavior, it plays episodes based on configured ordering.
Option 2 prevent special episodes from being played in between season episodes - special episodes (likes movies) between seasons are still played
Option 3 prevent any special episodes from being played. Only season episodes are played
These options should handle all different types of shows, wether there are a lot of “behind the scene” specials, re-cap specials/movies or other type of specials that you don’t want to watch when binging the show
The current option of “episode sorting” and “episode ordering” are for different purpose and can’t represent this (ordering might change the season structure itself)
Local extras are permanent and can’t be configured locally. Some users want to watch all behind the scenes specials right after the episodes and other users don’t - same with movies between seasons (or holiday specials and so on).
The options 2 difference is that only specials that would be played in between the season episodes are skipped.
Episodes are played by airing date. Let’s say season 1 aired 10. to 14. and season 2 from 16. to 20. with a movie aired on 15. - the disk released included specials for each episode (which are dated usually to the original episode airing date).
Normally the autoplay would start with season 1 episode 1, then play the disk special for this episode before continuing with episode 2. after season 1 it would play the movie before continuing with season 2.
With option 2, all disk specials would be skipped/ignored but the movie between the seasons would still be played.
With option 3, only the seasons episodes are played - so after the last episode of season 1 the first episode of season 2 would start.
I mean restructuring the media files is not user specific - these changes are permanent and for all users. It’s not practical to change the media files each time a user wants a different watch order
i strictly follow the thetvdb ordering/sorting of episodes - otherwise the meta data would not match automatically - so there is no real option to change the file naming/ordering anyway
Understood… though, just because TMDb and TheTVDb users have started adding every online/DVD extra they could find as a “special”, doesn’t mean you have to treat it as such too.
That’s got nothing (or little) to do with the sequence in which you want to watch a show.
As an example:
Some users have added episode previews of Doctor Who as specials – e.g. s00e42 to s00e46
Choosing to list that as a trailer for the respective episode isn’t messing with a watch order. It’s just showing it as what it is and leaves the user a choice to watch it as such.
TheTVDb even started structuring specials by different categories to compensate for the mess of different types of specials added to shows – distinguishing episodic specials, movies, OVAs and all kind of what Plex considers extras.
Yea there are a lot of different things listed under specials in thtvdb.
But my goal is to have a “watch strategy” to prevent manually select every single episode. Because that’s the current status for many shows with extras - you can’t use the auto continue except you want to watch everything. that annoys me and a lot of friends for years…
these “watch strategies” - that are listed as options in the initial post - should cover almost every way people might want to watch a show and should be fairly easy to implement (with no uncertainty).
