Some Guidance - attempting to switch from TMDB episode ordering to TVDB (Aired)

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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1

Looking for a little guidance from the community.

Some Context:
Those of you how many know me from this forum most likely suspect I’m a huge fan of TMDB, which I still am. However, every now and again they do very strange stuff with regard to how they structure their episode ordering and when they reorder stuff it messes up the watched status within plex. Because of changes at TMDB I’m constantly fighting with episodes going from played to unplayed due to → Plex Episodes changing from played to unplayed due to online metadata source change.

Just this week I’ve had Fear the Walking Dead, Friends, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Wars: Forces of Destiny and Duck Dodgers all mess up previous watched status due to changes made over at TMDB. If your interested see the following links to what changes where made but needless to say each change resulted in episodes going from played to unplayed once the metadata refreshes for the shows.

https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/62286-fear-the-walking-dead/discuss/64301a9895c0af00b621a791
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/1668-friends/discuss/64510a5593bd6901746abf15
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/314-star-trek-enterprise/discuss/645bde2bfe077a5caeda948b
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/71412-star-wars-forces-of-destiny/discuss/6460e884ef8b32015554f12c
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/216-duck-dodgers/discuss/6460c6bd8c44b901364ba1c0

My Question:
I want to now switch my TV Libraries default episode order from TMDB to TVDB (Aired). Their ordering change far less frequently. I FULLY understand plex uses a consolidated metadata approach and all I’m hoping to do here is isolate myself away from episode ordering changing resulting in played status changes.

My plan is as follows:

  1. Backup entire plex server before starting :slight_smile:
  2. Disable all automatic library scan settings including empty trash.
  3. Change the main manage → libraries → tv library setting for episode order from The Movie Database to The TVDB.
  4. Let plex re-scan everything and once complete then use FileBot to fixup the actual episode names on disk matching TVDB ordering.
  5. Scan again including a force metadata refresh and hope the manual fixup is not major!

I’m not expecting this to be perfect and there will be some glitches along the way however I’m looking for advice if this is the best approach to accomplish this change or if I have overlooked something. Thanks!

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Why do you want to switch it globally for the entire library?
Why not just change it for those shows which actually have issues?

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Good question. Its future proofing really. I could continue to firefight fixing as stuff change at TMDB but to be honest its becoming a major headache. This problem just keeps happening with at least a couple of shows every month having episode switch from played to unplayed.

Its very obvious for folks with large’ish libraries, I’ve over 700 shows with over 34,000 episodes.

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Have decided to take your suggestion and just change shows which become really problematic.

In addition I’m going use filebot to scan my media every few weeks to attempt to detect changes. I include the episode title in the filename so I might be able to get ahead of changes making it to plex. At worst, I’ll at lease be able to detect problems…

Thanks.

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Do you have more examples of shows? I’m looking into Friends now for myself (don’t have the other ones you mentioned) but I do wonder what stuff I might be missing.

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Why would one want Plex to constantly refresh the metadata for the entire library automatically? I can see doing it on an individual show if there’s an ordering problem, but why do it regularly for existing content?

Not trying to be rude. I don’t let Plex do anything automatically, even regular safe library scans for new content, so I realize I’m a weird case. I’m just curious. :slight_smile:

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Friends is going to be a mess for anyone who use tmdb as their episode ordering, see Double episodes - Discuss Friends — The Movie Database (TMDB) for more details. The folks at tmdb have been combining some multi-part episodes which aired BACK to BACK into single aired episodes based on newspaper articles at the time.

The list of shows these ongoing changes effect in plex is too large to account for and is a constant battle.

I’m now using filebot as a kinda validation tool to detect changes. My files are all renamed using { ~plex.unix * {" ($y) {tmdb-$id}"} } so if I re-load my entire library in filebot (after nuking the filebot cache) and it picks up changes then I know its something I need to investigate before refreshing my library.

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I don’t do it automatically, I do it myself at set intervals. I like having the latest and greatest metadata and it actually changes more than you would think, especially cast credits for shows and episodes.

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I never thought of it that way…

I’m usually annoyed enough when I have to manually fix things like cartoon series (Hello, Animaniacs…) that once it’s done, I’m ultra paranoid of ever refreshing metadata because of the various reports of locked fields not REALLY being locked.

Thanks for the new perspective!

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I totally get it. I’m annoyed by this too. At the same time, you have to admire that they have their rules and they follow them so strictly. In theory, this is probably the only way to go about things like this.

In any case, would you mind sharing the names of the shows that come to your mind that has issues like this, besides Friends and the other ones you already mentioned? It would be super useful for me and others.

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Agreed, overall the way tmdb do things is far better than tvdb but some decisions they make do have me scratching my head!

This is not a total list of changes but the ones that come to mind are as follows …

  • 7SEEDS (s02 deleted and merged into s01)
  • Archer (specials reorder)
  • Duck Dodgers - (s02 was incorrectly altered and then reverted)
  • Fear the Walking Dead / Fear the Walking Dead: Dead in the Water (split specials into own show)
  • Friends - (combined double back to back episodes into one - various seasons)
  • Samurai Jack (combined double episodes in various seasons)
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power (1985) - (s02 was incorrectly altered and then reverted)
  • South Park (s01 episode reorder)
  • Star Trek: Enterprise (combined double back to back episodes into one and s01 reorder)
  • Star Trek: Voyager (combined double back to back episodes into one - s07 endgame)
  • Star Wars: Forces of Destiny - (s02 was incorrectly altered and then reverted)

I also think there was stuff with Adventure Time, Regular Show and Tokyo Ghoul but cannot remember the details. Good luck.

1 Like
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This is incredibly helpful. Thanks a lot!

1 Like
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No problem. More of an FYI than anything else. I currently have 836 shows in my plex tv library and I use tmdb ordering for everything bar the following…

TVDB DVD Order:

  • Firefly
  • Star Wars: Clone Wars
  • Star Wars Rebels

TVDB Aired Order:

  • Dragon Ball Super
  • Friends
  • Pokémon
  • Samurai Jack
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power
  • Star Wars: Droids
  • Superman: The Animated Series
  • Voltron: Defender of the Universe - Lion Force
  • Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man

Those are just to complicated to get renamed well, bad decisions on episode ordering and/or are in a state of constant flux that its just unmanageable. Otherwise tmdb is just perfect for me.

1 Like
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Just an fyi back to you, in case it can be useful for you or for someone else reading this. I’ve noticed a few shows myself that has changed recently:

Sliders - Merged episode, reordering in s01.

Ren and stimpy - not sure yet, but some episodes became unmatched.

Naruto Shippuden - not sure yet, but some episodes became unmatched.

I’m currently working through a lot of shows so if I find something, I’ll report here.

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The list between what is different on TVDB vrs TMDB would be large and not something really I’m that worried about as once I’ve named the stuff right I’m good. Example, sliders has not had any recent episode ordering changes so it’s all good (at least for me).

The problem I’ve issue with is when TMDB change something from the ordering they had (like my examples in the original post) plex DOES not handle the change well with played/unplayed status getting messed up.

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@d2freak FYI… See Reported Problem for Broken Bow (1x1) - Discuss Star Trek: Enterprise — The Movie Database (TMDB)

Star Trek Enterprise has had yet another episodes order/numbering update to season one over at tmdb.

While I support what they have done with this update it’ll likely mess up the played status & play history of this season once this change replicates it way to plex. Plex does not handle changes like this well.

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