Mark an item watched when another item is watched

[crusher11 1101]

I have films with short films as special features, as well as things like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me which is both a movie and a special episode of Twin Peaks.

One day, Emby will allow me to have films as extras, and clicking on the extra will take me to the page for the film, and it'll all work just fine. But today is not that day.

So is there any way to set something up so when I watch the extra, which I'm guessing is best off as a .strm file, it also marks the actual film as watched?

[Luke 42080]

HI, why can't you set it up as an extra now?

[crusher11 1101]

Because extras can't be other library items? 

[Luke 42080]

OK I see what you mean. No, there's currently no automated way to do this.

[pwhodges 2012]

39 minutes ago, crusher11 said:

Because extras can't be other library items? 

But maybe could be a strm file pointing to it.

Paul

[roaku 842]

28 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

But maybe could be a strm file pointing to it.

Paul

This works for playback and saving storage space, but it doesn't solve the problem of two separate items and only one of them being counted as watched by Emby.

[GrimReaper 4740]

10 hours ago, crusher11 said:

So is there any way to set something up so when I watch the extra, which I'm guessing is best off as a .strm file, it also marks the actual film as watched?

You can for the moment (until rectified) use an exploit inadvertently found by some users, which happens very seldom but it does occur every now and then and needs troubleshooting: if an item has same id from different providers (example: Item1 TVDB ID=xxxxx, Item2 TMDB ID=xxxxx), if one item was marked Favorite, the other item would be marked also. Maybe that extends to Watched status as well, try it: manually assign one item's TVDB ID as original of that item's TMDB ID (or vice-versa) and mark Watched, see what happens. 

Edit: Scratch that, tested myself, no joy.

 

Edited December 29, 2022 by GrimReaper
Testing

[crusher11 1101]

6 hours ago, pwhodges said:

But maybe could be a strm file pointing to it.

Paul

Yes, that's what I'm saying, I could have a strm file, and then I would want the watched status of the strm and the actual movie to be linked.

Could something be done with ScripterX? 

[Happy2Play 9781]

I don't see this ever working as it will not have an item providerid or possibly different providerid depending on the scenario across content types.

[crusher11 1101]

49 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

I don't see this ever working as it will not have an item providerid or possibly different providerid depending on the scenario across content types.

Not sure what you mean. 

[Happy2Play 9781]

15 minutes ago, crusher11 said:

Not sure what you mean. 

Just because the strm links to same media a tv special will have a different providerid then a movie providerid.  Or that link could have no providerid at all while the movie does.

So Special FireFly S00E01 Serenity and the movie Serenity (2005) cannot have the same watched status as they have separate providerids.

[crusher11 1101]

1 minute ago, Happy2Play said:

Just because the strm links to same media a tv special will have a different providerid then a movie providerid.  Or that link could have no providerid at all while the movie does.

So Special FireFly S00E01 Serenity and the movie Serenity (2005) cannot have the same watched status as they have separate providerids.

There are only two potential watched statuses (watched or unwatched), so unless you only have two media items then by definition media items with different IDs can have the same watched status.

Extras aren't allowed a provider ID, as far as I can tell. So yeah, it'd have no providerid. But I was wondering if I could use something like ScripterX to say "when the file at this path is marked watched, mark the item with this providerid as watched" - and potentially even also for unwatched. I'd be setting up the strm file manually, so having to manually say "this relates to that" to something like Scripter isn't a massive extra step.

And TBH I'm not even super fussed if watching the movie doesn't mark the extra as watched, although I'd prefer that to be the case. The extra marking the movie would be super helpful though.

This would all be a nonissue if it was just possible to have a library item as an extra...

[pwhodges 2012]

2 hours ago, crusher11 said:

Extras aren't allowed a provider ID, as far as I can tell.

Depends.  If TVDB has a "Specials" entry for it - which is where the s00e01 in Happy2Play's example came from, then Emby will track its play status just fine.  Movies that are clearly associated with a series often have (in TVDB itself) both an entry as a movie and an entry as a special in the series.

Well, that's true with anime - I have loads of examples - but maybe less so with live shows?

Paul

[crusher11 1101]

TV specials are the minority though, most of them are movies as extras to movies (like the Tarkovsky version of The Killers being on Criterion's disc of the Siodmak/Siegel versions, or the Three Stooges shorts included as extras on the Indicator Columbia Noir sets).

[pwhodges 2012]

The databases don't identify movie extras as far as know.  Could you just identify them separately and combine them in a collection?

Paul

[crusher11 1101]

30 minutes ago, pwhodges said:

Could you just identify them separately and combine them in a collection?

Paul

What? 

[pwhodges 2012]

I think I'm trying to solve the wrong problem...

Paul

[crusher11 1101]

I tried copying a video and NFO file from a movie into the Extras folder for a different movie. The NFO thus has all the same IMDB IDs and such. But it doesn't tie them together. Balls.

Surely one of the scripting people knows a way to do this? Even if I have to manually link each short to its corresponding extra.

[Happy2Play 9781]

3 hours ago, crusher11 said:

I tried copying a video and NFO file from a movie into the Extras folder for a different movie. The NFO thus has all the same IMDB IDs and such

But per the UI there is no externalid for the Extra.  You can put whatever you like in a nfo but does not mean everything it will be read and used.  I would assume it is ignored as there is no such thing as a providerid for Extras.

[crusher11 1101]

Sure, but just because it's not designed to work that way doesn't mean it won't work that way. So I gave it a try. 

[DabhidhUaghd 0]

I too would like the ability to watch a Movie and for the Series Specials Episode to be marked as watched.
I like the idea of the Movie being accessible from the TV Series too.

I have used both Symbolic Links and .STRM files to make a single video file appear in two separate Libraries.
I'm not involved in the development of Emby nor am I familiar with it's inner workings.

In principle, a server-side solution would be able to follow the path of an .STRM file and identify that a media filesystem object is represented by two Emby media assets.
I wish I could offer a working solution. Perhaps this needs to be a feature request.
I appreciate that this is not a major game-changer but would make the experience more coherent.

Other topics which have touched on this:

• Special episode from a tv show like a movie
• Link Movie Extras to TV Season 0 / Specials Folder
• How to config TV Series includes Movies?
• Identify TV Specials as Movies if added to movies Library
• Link movie to TvShow special