2 Separate Series Status' Intertwined

[nuentes 41]

I have this issue with essentially 2 shows. On my server, I have the following 4 shows that are affected:

• The Office
• The Office Superfan Episodes
• Mythbusters
• Mythbusters Streamlined

For each of the non-standard versions, I essentially removed The Office from my scan folder, scanned the new folder as The Office, and then made minor edits to the tvshow.nfo, and then moved The Office back into my scan folder. However, whenever I watch any episodes of the above series, the progress for both shows is updated. So if I start an episode of The Office and stop it, then Continue watching will show my progress for The Office AND The Office Superfan Episodes. It's a tad annoying. I would like to know exactly what I need to do to separate these two series.

This happens when I stream from Emby on the web, Emby Android app, and Emby Next Gen for Kodi, so this is some server side issue.

Edited November 16, 2021 by nuentes
clarification of areas affected

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  They would need to have different global IDs (tvdb).

[nuentes 41]

I removed the theTVDB id field from the series and tested, and they are still linked. Are they linked via the tvdb Episode ids? How would I even go about removing that field from all of my nfo files for these two series?

[ebr 16169]

Just now, nuentes said:

I removed the theTVDB id field from the series and tested

Were there any other global IDs?

The status is tracked by series/season/episode.

[nuentes 41]

Yes, there were imdb and themoviedb as well, and I wiped those fields as well.

Again, I wiped them at the series level. Not season or episode. It would take me hours to modify all season and episode metadata for these two series.

[Luke 42077]

2 hours ago, nuentes said:

Yes, there were imdb and themoviedb as well, and I wiped those fields as well.

Again, I wiped them at the series level. Not season or episode. It would take me hours to modify all season and episode metadata for these two series.

Once you've done that, try running a library scan.

[nuentes 41]

I did a library scan and this is still occurring.

[pwhodges 2012]

Do the online databases have separate IDs for the different versions?  If not, Emby will have no way to distinguish them properly;  you'll need to add one, get the metadata the way you want then lock it - and then do the same with the other.

Paul

[Luke 42077]

34 minutes ago, nuentes said:

I did a library scan and this is still occurring.

What exactly did you do?

[Luke 42077]

11 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

Do the online databases have separate IDs for the different versions?  If not, Emby will have no way to distinguish them properly;  you'll need to add one, get the metadata the way you want then lock it - and then do the same with the other.

Paul

Whether they're locked or not won't impact whether they get grouped together or not.

[Happy2Play 9780]

May have to remove these series to clear them from the database then readd them, as I don't believe editing metadata along will unmerge them.

[nuentes 41]

21 minutes ago, Luke said:

What exactly did you do?

I removed all ID's in the metadata for The Office Superfan Episodes. I then went to Emby home, selected my Top Level TV library, clicked the Three Dots menu, and selected Scan Library Files. When the scan completed, I played an Office Superfan Episode and checked the Continue Watching, and found both series in the list.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Do to all the linking that has happened in the database, I don't believe this merge can be completely broken by editing providerids.  I would see maybe fixing new items but not existing items.

But have no idea what "Mythbusters Streamlined" or "The Office Superfan Episodes" are.  But if any provider id from "Mythbusters" or "The Office" you will have this issue.

Do you have providerid links to these?

Sounds like they may need to be manually added as misc specials ie Season 0 items

 

[ebr 16169]

2 hours ago, nuentes said:

clicked the Three Dots menu, and selected Scan Library Files

Try starting the Library Scan scheduled task instead.

[nuentes 41]

2 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Do to all the linking that has happened in the database, I don't believe this merge can be completely broken by editing providerids.  I would see maybe fixing new items but not existing items.

But have no idea what "Mythbusters Streamlined" or "The Office Superfan Episodes" are.  But if any provider id from "Mythbusters" or "The Office" you will have this issue.

Do you have providerid links to these?

Sounds like they may need to be manually added as misc specials ie Season 0 items

 

I absolutely will not add them as season 0 items. Sorry, but no. Mythbusters Streamlined is the entire mythbusters series re-edited by fans to cut out the filler. The Office Superfan Episodes are The Office, just with bonus scenes spliced in. They are being released officially on NBCs Peacock service.

Since these are basically duplicates of the entire series, I need to maintain the season format.

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 minute ago, nuentes said:

I absolutely will not add them as season 0 items. Sorry, but no. Mythbusters Streamlined is the entire mythbusters series re-edited by fans to cut out the filler. The Office Superfan Episodes are The Office, just with bonus scenes spliced in. They are being released officially on NBCs Peacock service.

Since these are basically duplicates of the entire series, I need to maintain the season format.

If they are truly their own thing do they exist on IMDB, TMDB or TVDB?

Remove these series from Emby, scan, disable the "Automatically merge series that are spread across multiple folders", make sure these are unique Series and readd.

 

[Carlo 4560]

I don't believe this is going to show up as it's the same show just condensed versions of the same show from my understanding but maybe I'm wrong.

We need more definitive info on what this actually is.

[nuentes 41]

14 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

If they are truly their own thing do they exist on IMDB, TMDB or TVDB?

Remove these series from Emby, scan, disable the "Automatically merge series that are spread across multiple folders", make sure these are unique Series and readd.

 

They are kind of their own thing. However, there isn't really a point in these being added to IMDB, TMDB or TVDB. The Office ones are official, however all the episode descriptions and everything would be identical to The Office. The only difference would be the episode duration. I actually saw that tvdb has The Office Superfan Episodes as an alias for The Office.

Basically, you can think of these as like a films Director's cuts. I could, in theory, just add them as alternate versions of the same series/episodes, but this is not really how I want to manage them, as this gets very messy when I try to play them in Kodi.

Here are the exact steps I just performed:

1. Confirmed "Automatically merge series that are spread across multiple folders" is already disabled for this library
2. Moved The Office and The Office Superfan Episodes outside of my library folder
3. Scanned Library Files for the affected Library and waited for it to complete
4. Confirmed both series were removed from Emby
5. Confirmed that The Office Superfan Episodes had no TV Id's in the nfo file
6. Added them back to the folder
7. Scanned Library Files for the affected Library and waited for it to complete

The issue persists. In fact, Emby even edited the metadata for The Office Superfan Episodes to add the ID's back to the NFO file. This gave me a thought - I removed the ID's from the Superfan Episodes and then locked the metadata file. I then repeated the above process, and this had no effect. Emby simply re-adds the IDs when I scan this back into the library.

[rbjtech 5284]

.. maybe change the External ID's to fake ID's (add an extra 999 on the end etc), as by deleting them altogether, emby likely thinks they are missing and tries (successfully) to get them again based on the naming.

[nuentes 41]

Apologies for the delay. Was dealing with unrelated server issues. That appears to have worked. Procedure below:

1. Move Series and Series Clone folders outside of your scanned library folder
2. Scan Library Files for the affected Library and wait for it to complete
3. Confirm both Series and Series Clone were removed from Emby
4. Edit the tvshow.nfo file for the Series Clone. Find any id fields (at the series level only - you don't have to edit actor id fields), and append a bunch of 9's to the end (I chose 6), and save the tvshow.nfo file
5. Add both series back to the scanned library folder
6. Scan Library Files for the affected Library

After this, Emby finally sees the two series as unique.

[rbjtech 5284]

I also believe you can also use the GUI / metadata editor to do point #4 above.

ie

Edit these, lock and save.

[nuentes 41]

49 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

I also believe you can also use the GUI / metadata editor to do point #4 above.

You can, but there are additional ID's in the nfo that do not appear in the gui, including <id>, tvrage, and a few others. I decided to simply edit every single one of them, rather than test to determine exactly which one(s) I need to edit.

[rbjtech 5284]

2 minutes ago, nuentes said:

You can, but there are additional ID's in the nfo that do not appear in the gui, including <id>, tvrage, and a few others. I decided to simply edit every single one of them, rather than test to determine exactly which one(s) I need to edit.

Ah fair enough.  Thanks for confirming.