TV Shows - having different Versions of an Episode

[CChris 58]

Hi,

 

right now, I am just playing around with the option to have different edits of TV Show Episodes, like "Original" and "Remastered".
Like for movies with different cuts, I have added the Version behind the Episode Title

 

e.g.

Star Trek - The Original Series / Season 1 / S01E01 - The Man Trap - Original.mkv

and

Star Trek - The Original Series / Season 1 / S01E01 - The Man Trap - Remastered.mkv

First, I have used brackets like (Original) and (Remastered)
when I've noticed, that the Version dropDown box does not handle the closing bracket correctly



There isn't any issue if I remove the brackets from the name, but I think, this could be improved in one of the next versions


Another thing is, that it is not very Handy to navigate to the version selection:

1. Go to your TV Show
2. Select your Season
 

You do not have any selection of the version directly within the episode selection:

 

You need to click on "Info" to get the selection - which is OK, but if you do not know, that there are multiple versions available, probably, you will never notice.
Also, this could be something, if you have downloaded episodes to your mobile device.
Then, you also need to navigate to info to select the offline version.
 

Maybe, there's a chance to get the selection one level up, where we have the episode list?

Or would you recommend to create two TV Show folders - one for "remastered" and one for "original" instead of using the version option?

 

Thanks and with best regards,
Christoph

[Luke 37161]

The way multi-version episodes are displayed is that all common starting characters between the file names are stripped off from the beginning until they start to differ. @@cayars will be adding this to the tv naming wiki.

 

So that is how you can control their presentation in the version selection box.

[Luke 37161]

Maybe, there's a chance to get the selection one level up, where we have the episode list?

 

At that point you might as well just make them different episodes.

[Carlo 4330]

@@CChris have you tried the format in the wiki which would be like this:

• show name - S01E01 - Episode Name 1.ext
• show name - S01E01 - Episode Name 2.ext

In the drop down list box you would end up with:

Episode Name 1

Episode Name 2

 

BTW I do agree with you that accessing the multi-part episodes is hard in the view you listed in message one. You can't access any of the extended info there like Subs or Audio track either.  It's a toss up of ease of use and getting full access to the extended selections.

[CChris 58]

Hi @@cayars,
I am using the file names in the following format:

 

TV-Shows / Star Trek - The Original Series (1966 - 1969) / season.01 / S01E01 - Episode Name.ext
or
TV-Shows / Star Trek - The Original Series (1966 - 1969) / season.01 / S01E01-E02 - Episode Name

if it is a two part episode in one file.

 

This is working perfectly, with identifying the titles throught the Meta-Providers.
I don't want to have the different Episodes in the Drop Down - what I want is to have the different versions of the same Episode in the Drop Down selection.
This is also working, if I remove the brackets, as mentioned in my post below.

The Reason as explained by @@Luke is clear - anyway, it could be improved by just stripping characters like (, ), [, ], {, }

But this is up to the Devs, if they will implement this kind of feature or not - sure, it can cause other issues... maybe...

 

The second point I've mentioned was, that I need to open the Episode Information to be able to select the correct "version" of the episode.
This would not be different, if I just change the Name of the Episodes.

The Current "Workaround" as mentioned by Luke, with just creating a new Episode could work.... with the following limitations:

AutoPlay:
This will probably play both Episode Versions after each other:

 

e.g.

S01E01 - blabla (original)
S01E01 - blabla (remastered)

S01E02 - bablablubb (original)
S01E02 - blablablubb (remastered)

 

Will start with S01E01 Original, then, the next episode will be S01E01 (again), but this time the remastered version.

 

Also, the Episode Counter will be an issue (in fact, it is even with the way it is officially supported).
Because, the counter just counts the movie files.

e.g. A Season of a TV Show contains 13 Episodes, the counter will show these 13 Episodes.
Creating a new Version of each Episode, will cause, that the counter will be increased to 26.

In fact, the Season still has just 13 Episodes.
If I watch all episodes of one version (e.g. only the remastered ones), the counter will still show 13 episodes as unwatched.

Currently, the best way seems to be:
Create a new TV Show folder and seperate the different Versions from each other.

 

This would mean, that I should end up with a configuration like this:

 

TV-Shows / Star Trek - The Original Series (1966 - 1969) - Original / season.01 / S01E01 - Episode Name
TV-Shows / Star Trek - The Original Series (1966 - 1969) - Remastered / season.01 / S01E01 - Episode Name

[Luke 37161]

Thanks for the feedback !

[CChris 58]

Hi all, just a short update on this:

 

I have now created two TV Shows.

One for the original version, and one for the digital remastered version.

 

Since both Shows are basically the same TV Show, Emby does not show them as Different TV Shows in the Library.

 

I've just copied the "Specials" which I already had into both of them, to see, what happened in Emby...
Now, Emby does show two "special" folders within the TV Show, both with 4 Titles in it.


BUT: In each Special Folder, only the two specials are listed:


Finally, also my Idea with having two TV Shows for the different versions isn't working as I thought... so right now, there isn't a way that I would recommend for having multiple versions of the same TV Show.
 

As I mentioned above:
- Having the different versions of the same Epsiode in the same folders will increase the counter of the "available TV Shows" - and to select which version you want to see, you need to navigate into the episode information.
- Creating New Episodes (e.g. S01E01.01 / S01E01.02) will probably also not work, since the identification will probably not work

- Having a seperate TV show does not work as shown above.

I think, the Devs should think, if this part could be reworked in one of the future releases.
I know, that it isn't a common case to have different versions of the same tv show...

[Luke 37161]

Have you explored your settings for that tv library?

[CChris 58]

what settings do you mean exactly?

[Luke 37161]

You can control if series folders are grouped together or not.

[CChris 58]

Thanks, Indeed, this option was set in the library settings
Now, I have both TV shows listed as expected.

 

But one more thing:
Is it somehow possible, to add a line break into the Title?

[Happy2Play 8325]

Won't apply to anything but the local web client but I use custom css.  Emby doesn't do this to keep the cards uniformed, as now you have staggered cardfooter.

/*---- wrap card text - long movie names etc ----*/
div.cardText {white-space: pre-wrap;}

[Luke 37161]

You can also just mouse hover over the title to see the full name.

[rmich 2]

You do not have any selection of the version directly within the episode selection:

 

You need to click on "Info" to get the selection - which is OK, but if you do not know, that there are multiple versions available, probably, you will never notice.

 

I agree it would be great to have any kind of indication in this view that there are alternative versions available for an episode. Does not need to be fancy, a simple text "(alternative versions available)" after the episode title, ideally as a link to the details page where you can select the versions would do the trick.

[Happy2Play 8325]

I agree it would be great to have any kind of indication in this view that there are alternative versions available for an episode. Does not need to be fancy, a simple text "(alternative versions available)" after the episode title, ideally as a link to the details page where you can select the versions would do the trick.

 

When there are multiple versions the details page does allow you to choose.  That page above is a Seasons list, not itemdetails.

[rmich 2]

Exactly - the episode list in the season overview page is where a per episode indication about the availability of alternative versions would be helpful.

[Happy2Play 8325]

Exactly - the episode list in the season overview page is where a per episode indication about the availability of alternative versions would be helpful.

But from a UI standpoint there is only one, all metadata and other item information is exactly the same.  So you have to enter the item to know there are more then one version.

 

I would not want multiple same items in list even if they were Alternates.  That is the how point of multiversion grouping.  But I may actually create them as specials if they were truly different then the original.

[rmich 2]

I'm talking purely from a usability standpoint, and I do not want multiple items in the list. From this list, there are basically two options to continue:

 

1. Proceed to the detail screen of an episode

2. Directly start watching an episode

 

The latter being suggested by the UI by the big play button. If I play an episode directly, I won't be prompted to choose a version of multiple versions are available, but the default version will be played so I might never know there was an alternative version I might have preferred to watch instead.

 

That's why the original poster implied a visual clue about the availability of an alternative version would be helpful here, and I agree.

[mbguy 38]

Is my understanding correct? To have multiple versions of TV shows, I should:

 

1. Put each version in its own TV folders, eg.

 

TV \ Star Trek (mkv) \ Season 1

TV \ Star Trek (blu-ray) \ Season 1

 

2. Select one of the folders above for specials, eg.

 

TV \ Star Trek (mkv) \ Season 0

 

3. Then use the "grouping" feature on Emby to make sure they show up as one show but I can choose to play different versions

[ebr 14947]

Is my understanding correct? To have multiple versions of TV shows, I should:

 

1. Put each version in its own TV folders, eg.

 

TV \ Star Trek (mkv) \ Season 1

TV \ Star Trek (blu-ray) \ Season 1

 

2. Select one of the folders above for specials, eg.

 

TV \ Star Trek (mkv) \ Season 0

 

3. Then use the "grouping" feature on Emby to make sure they show up as one show but I can choose to play different versions

 

Hi, no that would not be the standard way to do it.

 

To use our auto system you would do something like:

 

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\s01e01 - blah blah - 480

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\s01e01 - blah blah - 1080

[mbguy 38]

To use our auto system you would do something like:

 

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\s01e01 - blah blah - 480

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\s01e01 - blah blah - 1080

Because I have blu-rays with multiple episodes on separate discs, is the following correct based on your feedback?

 

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\S01E01-10 - Star Trek - Disc 1\BDMV

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\S01E011-20 - Star Trek - Disc 2\BDMV

 

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\S01E01 - Star Trek - 1080p.mkv

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\S01E02 - Star Trek - 1080p.mkv

TV\Star Trek\Season 1\...

Edited December 5, 2019 by mbguy

[ebr 14947]

Honestly, I don't know if it will work with folder rips...  You may just have to try it out.

[Luke 37161]

I don't believe there will be any automatic grouping with folder rips. For the best experience possible I would suggest converting those to mkv.

[mbguy 38]

@@ebr and @@Luke, both of you are right, the automatic grouping does not work with folder rips.

 

What a shame, I would like to keep bluray version along with mkv for the times I want to use menu to read about and navigate to the extras, especially I have an Android box that can play bluray menus.

 

I am not asking for Emby to play bluray menus but at least to recognize these rip folder structures so my Android TV box app could take over when playback is required. Is it really a lot of work to add the capability of recognizing these folder structure to Emby? I am really curious.

[Luke 37161]

Believe it or not, yes. We're doing our best to keep folder rips part of the system, but it's unrealistic at this point to say that they're going to be able to receive all features. Ultimately it comes down to where should we be allocating our developer time. Nowdays folder rips have a very limited audience compared to years ago. That means there will pretty much always be other things prioritized ahead of them now, unless there's some type of critical problem preventing basic playback.