How do you handle TV episodes that had 2 versions, one that was aired ( and in TVDB) and an alternate unaired version (not in TVDB) that was included on a TV series Blu-ray?
Should throw it in Season 00 or perhaps make it an “Extra”?
On the same blu-ray, the one pilot episode is in both original and remastered formats. That one is in TVDB so I put both episodes in Season 00 . I’m curious what Plex does when it sees 2 files for the same season and episode. Will I be able to select either of them from the Plex client? Or will Plex Media Server pick one and whichever one that is , is the only one I’ll be able to play?
Thanks in advance. This isn’t a huge issue. I’m looking for a “best practice” or “what most people do” type of solution for 1 and 2.
Depending on the show, you can sometimes choose the DVD Order for disc releases (you’ll see the option for that on TheTVDB page of the show on the right side by the season listings) and that can be changed in Plex via the advanced settings of edit screen for the show under Episode Sorting. That might fix your matching and sorting.
You might also try matching the show to TheMovieDB if they do have the listings you want by doing “fix match” and selecting TheMovieDB as the source. I did that to fix some Animaniacs matching.
As far as #2 … generally two episodes\movies with the same name\reference\match will be presented as one poster\card but with two versions and you get prompted on which version you want to play when you click on it. It should have a little number in the corner. You can also use the menu option “split” on that item to break them out into 2 separate episode listings (though sometimes they’ll merge back if you rescan your library).
Plex will treat them as a single Episode with 2 versions. Most clients can handle playing the versions, though I know some used to not.
As far as I know none of the clients will prompt you, it will select the highest resolution & the highest bitrate of that resolution when you click ▶Play but you can select the hamburger menu 3 dots & select Play Version to choose the version to play, but be aware you will see the resolution & bitrate not file names to distinguish which is which. There’s a feature request for that to be better.
There IS a 3rd Party extension in development to allow you to add extras to shows, seasons, & even episodes, but I can’t vouch for how well it works unfortunately. I’ll try to find a link to it but just a warning, it’s in development, so it may stop working or have issues because it’s not a full release just yet
No problem. One thing I forgot, the reason for the multiple versions in the 1st place, it will choose the highest resolution & bitrate that are within your playback setting parameters so if you are remote streaming & your settings are set to allow up to 1mbps, & you have a version that is 2mbps & 1 that’s 800kbps it automatically selects the lower bitrate one instead of transcoding
I read another post that split on show(same as title) where they had DVD and Blu-ray versions of each episode. Then they could pick between the DVD version or Blu-ray version of the show.
The disadvantage was that watch status and progress would not be in sync between versions. So you could not watch part of the DVD episode and then automatically continue where you left off on the Blu-ray version.
Funny thing, a common complaint with movies is that when they match as different versions & are split usually the watch status will sync between the two. I’m sure that a similar thing might happen if they were merged & then split
