TV Series presented in the UI like a film

[scb99 187]

Mixed Content Library; Create a folder; Add one video to the folder in SnnEnn Name format; Identify as a TV series

The UI will present it as a film, even though it "knows" it's a TV series

Add a second episode, and the presentation changes to a TV series

Example:

Mixed Content Library

Create Folder "Booker"

Add video S01E22 Father's Day.mkv

Identify the folder as the TV series Booker (IMDB id tt0096550)

The database identifies it correctly as the TV series Booker but the UI presents it like a film (see image). Just adding a second video into the library, S01E23 xxx.mkv, will change the presentation to the "correct" TV series presentation, with Season blocks and so on.

 

 

[ebr 14898]

Hi.  The identification of the item with a metadata provider doesn't infer any type. That is derived from file structure and/or the library settings.  So, with a mixed content library type, I'm not sure how (unless there is something in the metadata to tell us) we could do this as a single video file within a folder is the definition of a movie in that library type.

[scb99 187]

Once I’ve identified the item, the metadata does indeed identify it as a TV series.

Another approach: the file name being in the format SnnEnn could be used to define it as a series not a film.

There are quite a few old TV series where only a single episode has survived, which is mainly why I notice, e.g.

Miss Adventure only S01E01, Quick Before They Catch Us only S01E13, Codename, The Spies, etc etc. Also many where I only managed to get hold of one episode though more exist.

It would be nice and I think a simple change to get this to work.

 

[pwhodges 1520]

Doesn't an intermediate "Season 01" folder do the job?

Paul

[scb99 187]

3 hours ago, pwhodges said:

Doesn't an intermediate "Season 01" folder do the job?

Paul

There are workarounds, I don't create subfolders other than Extras because it screws my naming / backup schema. Putting a dummy S99E99.mkv in works better for me, and it IS Ok as a workaround, it's not disastrous or anything. But I'd rather have the whole thing "just work" and I don't think it's that big a deal to implement actually.  

Edited July 30, 2022 by scb99

[pwhodges 1520]

Well, it's not exactly a workaround - it's Emby's officially preferred layout for a series.  And the point is that while there are a lot of liberties that we can get away with in specific Movies or Series type libraries, in a Mixed library Emby needs more clues to determine the type of an item.

But whatever works for you is fine, for sure; the only danger is that it might not work quite the same in a future version (I've hit that myself, so I'm not just pontificating).

Paul

[scb99 187]

12 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

Well, it's not exactly a workaround - it's Emby's officially preferred layout for a series.  And the point is that while there are a lot of liberties that we can get away with in specific Movies or Series type libraries, in a Mixed library Emby needs more clues to determine the type of an item.

But whatever works for you is fine, for sure; the only danger is that it might not work quite the same in a future version (I've hit that myself, so I'm not just pontificating).

Paul

It has all the clues it needs, it's just a question of using them

[pwhodges 1520]

Sure - but any program is finite, depending on the time the developer has spent on each of the many competing features over the years.

Paul

[scb99 187]

Hi Paul, I reckon I could do it myself it 5 minutes to be honest. (In fact, now I thought of it, maybe I will, as a one-off hack).  That's why I thought I'd mention it, because it came to the front of my mind yesterday and I've been living with it for years, and I thought, well if I don't make the effort to do something, it'll never get better!

But that's the problem with these things, one you start discussing them, you already spent more time than they're worth...

Cheers and thanks 

[ebr 14898]

19 hours ago, scb99 said:

I reckon I could do it myself it 5 minutes to be honest

Unfortunately, it is a little more complex than that.  We can take a look but the determination of a type of an item comes well before its identification with a metadata provider.  In fact, the type determination is an input into exactly which metadata providers will be used.  Also, doing what you want here is very likely to have undesirable side effects in other situations (perhaps changing types of items when they shouldn't just because of a similar match from a provider). So, changing the type of the item based on the result from a provider isn't a completely straightforward thing. 

As I said, we can take a look but using mixed content libraries does introduce some of these trade-offs.

[scb99 187]

Hi @ebr Got you on the order of events. How about, just after finding that the item count is 1, looking to see if it matches an S[0-9]*E[0-9]* format though? That would fully fix it for me and probably 90% of similar situations. I can't see it really doing the "wrong" thing, and would be (I hope!!!) an easy change. If I'm wrong about that, please don't worry, it's obviously not worth the effort. Thanks for looking.

Cheers, Steve