I have a number of one off BBC dramas in my Plex TV library that I cannot get to match but have no problem if I move them to the Movie library. I search using the The Movie Database Agent but there is no match.
Here is an example
An Adventure in Space and Time (2013)
IMDB tt2663812
However I search no match is found. I know that it’s recommended not to mix Movies & TV Shows but these shows have never been run in cinemas so to my mind they are TV & I don’t want to mix TV Movies up with the Hollywood blockbusters.
If I move the folder from the TV library to the Movie library then the show is automatically scanned & found correctly & metadata downloaded. If I go in & Fix Incorrect Match then I can enter the IMDB tt number or search on the show title or even a part title ‘An Adventure’ or ‘Space and Time’ will find the show. The same searches when the show is in the TV library do not find a match.
TV in the Plex world means always ‘tv serials’
One-Off movies made for tv are treated as regular Movies and belong into a movie library.
@OttoKerner said:
TV in the Plex world means always ‘tv serials’
One-Off movies made for tv are treated as regular Movies and belong into a movie library.
That shouldn’t prevent the searching & matching working though. Why provide the option to search The Movie Database or use the IMDB tt number if it’s going to be ignored? Why an artificial distinction between a TV drama shown in 2 parts versus one shown in a single session? If it’s first shown on TV to my mind in belongs in the TV library. In any case why should Plex force me to put TV shows in the Movie library?
@nigelbb said:
In any case why should Plex force me to put TV shows in the Movie library?
A one off Movie (which happens to be made for tv, but is a movie by all means) is not a ‘tv show’ in the Plex sense.
For Plex, TV Shows are ‘series’ which consist of more than one episode, which share a common tv show title and are organised in ‘seasons’ when they run longer.
As such, these series require quite a different logic when it comes to fetching metadata and tracking the watch progress by the end user.
Therefore series and movies are strictly separated within Plex.
TheTVDB (which is used primarily as metadata source in plex), only carries data for ‘series’. One-off movies are not to be found on there (unless they somehow belong into a ‘series’).
TheMovieDB has data for both movies and series.
It will deliver ‘movie’ data when used with a movie plex library and ‘series’ data when used with a plex tv show library.
So you are saying that this is not a bug in the scraping & matching but is by design?
I see the logic when applied to TV series of 20+ episodes & several seasons as with US TV series. I don’t see the same logic when it comes to shorter dramas as are quite common on UK TV.
As I said it’s quite arbitrary for if a drama is shown in two parts perhaps on successive evenings or weeks then it’s a series but if shown in one episode then it’s a Movie & doesn’t belong in TV any more. It makes more sense for Plex to allow the inclusion of a one off drama as a single episode ‘series’ within the TV library.
@nigelpb said:
So you are saying that this is not a bug in the scraping & matching but is by design?
It is.
I see the logic when applied to TV series of 20+ episodes & several seasons as with US TV series. I don’t see the same logic when it comes to shorter dramas as are quite common on UK TV.
Technically it is the same. Plex has to scrape a preview picture for the episode and has to track how many episodes the user has already watched. Whether the number of episodes is 2 or 200 is technically irrelevant.
If you want, you can treat a 2-parter as one whole movie by naming it as a stacked movie.
Whether Plex will be able to find suitable metadata when you treat a “mini series” as a normal movie is a different question, though.
As I said it’s quite arbitrary for if a drama is shown in two parts perhaps on successive evenings or weeks then it’s a series but if shown in one episode then it’s a Movie & doesn’t belong in TV any more. It makes more sense for Plex to allow the inclusion of a one off drama as a single episode ‘series’ within the TV library.
Plex is more or less bound by the rules which are valid for the metadata websites. If TheTVDB admins say “we don’t allow one-episode-series”, then you won’t find metadata for these @TheTVDB.
But Plex isn’t bound by TVDB rules as it already allows you to use The Movie Database for metadata. I’m not suggesting that this needs to be automatic just that if the file is in the TV Library why shouldn’t Plex allow a manual matching & download of metadata from The Movie Database? At present Plex positively prevents you doing this for no good reason. Perhaps this is a US-centric thing? Are there more one-off dramas in the UK.
@nigelpb said:
But Plex isn’t bound by TVDB rules as it already allows you to use The Movie Database for metadata. I’m not suggesting that this needs to be automatic just that if the file is in the TV Library why shouldn’t Plex allow a manual matching & download of metadata from The Movie Database? At present Plex positively prevents you doing this for no good reason.
You can change the metadata source per item. Just perform a Fix Incorrect Match and change the metadata agent under ‘Search Options’.
But it won’t help you when trying to shoehorn movies into a tv show library. As I already 2 times explained above: movies are a different thing than tv shows for Plex.
Movies use a different naming schema than tv shows.
A tv show library will not recognise movies and vice versa.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201543057-Why-is-some-of-my-content-not-found-
I already tried changing the metadata source per item attempting to perform a 'Fix Incorrect Match. The content is found when placed in the TV library but Plex doesn’t allow the Movie Databse metadata to be used. Plex uses the same scheme for both Movies & TV Shows i.e.description then images for poster background etc
If TV shows are placed in the Movie library with a name containing S01E01 then they will be ignored but Movies placed in TV library are found even without S01E01. If they are found it would be nice to point to the correct metadata & have it applied. I reiterate it’s illogical to have a one off drama shown on TV in a single part appear only in Movies library whereas the same drama shown in two parts will appear in TV library. A one off drama is NOT a Movie it’s a TV Show. You can have the situation where a one off drama will appear only in Movies unless a sequel is made as another one off drama when it suddenly becomes a series & then only appears in TV library not Movie library.
@nigelpb said:
A one off drama is NOT a Movie it’s a TV Show. You can have the situation where a one off drama will appear only in Movies unless a sequel is made as another one off drama when it suddenly becomes a series & then only appears in TV library not Movie library.
I just found the perfect example of this. ‘Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death’ was first broadcast on 2014-12-26. At the time this one off drama was broadcast a series was announced.but until this week the one-off drama was not found on TVDB only in The Movie Database & thus it was only possible in Plex to place it in Movies not TV. Now eighteen months later the series started broadcasting on 2016-06-07 & suddenly the original one-off drama has appeared on TVDB as a Special so now I can move it from Movies to TV where it belonged all along. Plex will pick up the metadata automatically of course but it would have been far better to allow me to file the show in TV to start with & manually scrape the metadata from The Movie database.
http://thetvdb.com/index.php?tab=series&id=312206&lid=7
