Correct format where single episode in TVDB, IMDB, but really >1

[scb99 245]

So for instance for the TV series "Taggart", the very first story

In TV DB it's S01E01 Killer

In ImdB it's S01E00 Killer

But in reality this story had 3 50 minute episodes, Killer Part 1, Killer Part 2, Killer Part 3 (and was only later shown in the omnibus version that these sources refer to)

How to name these 3 files? Couldn't find it in knowledge base sorry, though I'm sure it's a common situation

Thanks! 

Edited April 15, 2023 by scb99

[pwhodges 2012]

Unless I've missed something, multi-part episodes are not supported by Emby, whereas multi-part movies are.

You have two options.  The first is to join the files into one, using MKVToolNix or a similar program.  The other is to name them as specials (using numbers not recognised by TVDB, such as s00e11, s00e12, s00e13) which will place them before any other episodes, which by coincidence is where you want them; you'd have to populate the metadata yourself in this case.

Paul

[scb99 245]

@Emby Support is there really no better solution than this???

[snozinho 1]

1 hour ago, scb99 said:

@Emby Support is there really no better solution than this???

I think Emby supports multi-episodes ; for instance the pilot episode of Stargate SG-1 is a two-part episode, and I renamed the file "Stargate SG-1 (1997)_S01E01E02.mkv"

On emby its displayed like this : 

[Happy2Play 9781]

Current options mentioned above by Paul as all providers have it as one episode not three.

[GrimReaper 4740]

24 minutes ago, snozinho said:

I think Emby supports multi-episodes ; for instance the pilot episode of Stargate SG-1 is a two-part episode, and I renamed the file "Stargate SG-1 (1997)_S01E01E02.mkv"

On emby its displayed like this : 

OP is not about multi-episode files but multi-part episodes - split video files/file stacking. That is currently not supported at episode level, the only options at present time are mentioned above. 

[scb99 245]

Thanks for the answers. I find it more than a bit ridiculous that Emby can't cope with this situation as it's not uncommon and I have numerous such episodes in my collection.

Going back to Taggart, TVDB has the vast majority of episodes incorrect as each story is shown as a single episode and in reality they were nearly all multi-part. IMDB on the other hand seems broadly correct and shows the episodic versions except for that pilot series, but IMDB is unavailable to Emby. (Wikipedia shows the full correct info) I did try changing to OMDB but that also seems wrong, are there any data sources out there accessible to Emby with the correct Taggart info for the remaining stories does anyone know? Thanks.

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by scb99

[GrimReaper 4740]

There's TVMaze which also lists single episode - so your options remain as stated.

[Happy2Play 9781]

2 minutes ago, scb99 said:

IMDB on the other hand seems broadly correct and shows the episodic versions except for that pilot series, but IMDB is unavailable to Emby.

True as the information is not worth $150,000 a year plus a per api call fee if you are not running your own server mirrors.

Emby can only be as good as the available providers it has access to.

[scb99 245]

2 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

True as the information is not worth $150,000 a year plus a per api call fee if you are not running your own server mirrors.

Emby can only be as good as the available providers it has access to.

No I completely understand that, I just wondered if any of Emby's other providers has better info for Taggart than the TVDB, because there are 100 stories and probably 80 of them are wrong in TVDB.

[Happy2Play 9781]

1 minute ago, scb99 said:

No I completely understand that, I just wondered if any of Emby's other providers has better info for Taggart than the TVDB, because there are 100 stories and probably 80 of them are wrong in TVDB.

You have TVDB, TMDB, OMDB, and TVMaze.  All you can do is check to see which has the best info for your media.  Otherwise you have to compromise and potentially change your media to match the provider.

[scb99 245]

Yes tvmaze is also wrong throughout, also fernsehserien.de.

If Emby had a way to handle this it wouldn't matter, but 80 stories and all of them wrong! And that's just Taggart, it's not an isolated case... 

[scb99 245]

Just now, Happy2Play said:

You have TVDB, TMDB, OMDB, and TVMaze.  All you can do is check to see which has the best info for your media.  Otherwise you have to compromise and potentially change your media to match the provider.

I don't think that's possible as such, where multi part stories are registered as single parts - As @pwhodges said originally. I just didn't want to believe it could be true!

[Happy2Play 9781]

True since no one shows it as split files in any order, it has to exist as one.

Otherwise, you would end up doing a lot of manual metadata manipulation and creating your episode numbers and Locking the Series.

Or someone creating a new order on Provider sites to accommodate this version, but currently wouldn't help as Emby is still limited to only Aired, DVD, Absolute order from only TVDB.

[GregMo 24]

23 minutes ago, scb99 said:

Thanks for the answers. I find it more than a bit ridiculous that Emby can't cope with this situation as it's not uncommon and I have numerous such episodes in my collection.

Going back to Taggart, TVDB has the vast majority of episodes incorrect as each story is shown as a single episode and in reality they were nearly all multi-part. IMDB on the other hand seems broadly correct and shows the episodic versions except for that pilot series, but IMDB is unavailable to Emby. (Wikipedia shows the full correct info) I did try changing to OMDB but that also seems wrong, are there any data sources out there accessible to Emby with the correct Taggart info for the remaining stories does anyone know? Thanks.

 

Yeah, ran into this same issue with Agatha Christie's Periot.  The first episode in season 2 is listed on the metadata sites as one item where it was shown in two different pieces.  I'm going to look into just combining them as it's not something you run into every day.

[scb99 245]

5 minutes ago, GregMo said:

Yeah, ran into this same issue with Agatha Christie's Periot.  The first episode in season 2 is listed on the metadata sites as one item where it was shown in two different pieces.  I'm going to look into just combining them as it's not something you run into every day.

I know the episode you're speaking about I think (Peril at End House). It's not that uncommon a situation and Emby should be able to handle it. In the case of Taggart, it's a disaster.

Of the various clunky options available, I think perhaps the best is to make the episodes into versions, so they appear in the drop down menu. I don't want to combine them, and the other idea, to use dummy season / episode numbers, is hazardous at best for Taggart because of the way the numbers progress..

Edited April 15, 2023 by scb99

[GregMo 24]

4 minutes ago, scb99 said:

I know the episode you're speaking about I think (Peril at End House).

Yup, that's the one.

[pwhodges 2012]

2 hours ago, scb99 said:

Of the various clunky options available, I think perhaps the best is to make the episodes into versions, so they appear in the drop down menu.

I thought of that possibility later...

But --  be aware that you cannot control the order in which Emby lists the "versions" in the drop-down, and it may even vary on different clients; at present the default is chosen to be the one that Emby considers will give the best quality where you wish to play it.

I'm pretty sure there's a feature request for controlling this - for use with director's cuts and the like.

Paul

[scb99 245]

19 hours ago, pwhodges said:

I thought of that possibility later...

But --  be aware that you cannot control the order in which Emby lists the "versions" in the drop-down, and it may even vary on different clients; at present the default is chosen to be the one that Emby considers will give the best quality where you wish to play it.

I'm pretty sure there's a feature request for controlling this - for use with director's cuts and the like.

Paul

It looks like it just brings them up in Database Id order, which is just the order they were dropped into Emby

19 hours ago, pwhodges said:

...The other is to name them as specials (using numbers not recognised by TVDB, such as s00e11, s00e12, s00e13)...

Paul

I think this no longer works in .29, as such episodes may start to be identified as versions

Anyway...

I tried changing IndexNumber to the correct episode number, OK I can move things up and down the list like this, but they remain shown as versions

That leaves two fields I can see that might be controlling if something is versioned, one is ProviderIds the other and more likely is UserDataKeyId

Just out of interest I did

SELECT A.Path, A.ProviderIds, A.UserDataKeyId, B.UserDataKeyId
FROM MediaItems As A INNER JOIN MediaItems As B on A.ProviderIds = B.ProviderIds AND A.UserDataKeyId <> B.UserDataKeyId

And apart from Emby's own items and the stuff generated by softworkz ZDF add in, there are just a dozen of these which I suspect are glitches.

I need to stop messing round and go back to work, I will look again at this one day, but to get back to the main point:

*****

THERE ARE MANY UK SERIES WHICH WERE BROADCAST EPISODICALLY BUT EXPORTED IN OMNIBUS FORMATS

THE TV DATABASES TEND TO INCLUDE ONLY THE OMNIBUS VERSIONS

EMBY REALLY SHOULD BE ABLE TO COPE WITH  ASSIGNING MULTIPLE TV EPISODES AS PARTS 1-n OF A SINGLE TV DATABASE EPISODE

*****

For the moment I'm going to give up as Emby can't cope with it, it's a time consuming nightmare and I'm just wasting my time 

Edited April 16, 2023 by scb99

[GregMo 24]

On 4/16/2023 at 12:54 PM, scb99 said:

For the moment I'm going to give up as Emby can't cope with it, it's a time consuming nightmare and I'm just wasting my time 

Yeah, I feel your frustration.  I finally just combined the one I was dealing with:

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i files.txt -strict -2 -c copy output.mp4

...where files.txt contained "file '/path/to/file'" for each file.  If you attempt this, pay particular attention to the single quotes around the file.  That was a major headache to debug.

[scb99 245]

Hi Greg, I keep all my files as mkv so concatenating them is easy with the mivtoolnix, without the travails of ffmpeg  (ffmpeg seems also to sometimes make occasional broken frames for reasons i dont understand)

I have hundreds of these multi-part episodes though and I’m not running through them joining them all up into 3 hour monsters just because what should be basic functionality (imo anyway) is missing from Emby.It never had occurred to me Emby wouldn’t be able to do this.

i might have another try to hack the database when I have an hour or two to spare. I think it must be possible.

[scb99 245]

OK UserDataID except for versioned items is unique, but does not need to have children in the UserDatas table.

There seem to be quite a few orphaned records in UserDatas by the way.

I'm not quite sure how Emby will handle UserDatas when watching multiple versions.

That's another hour gone and enough for today.

 

 

 

[GregMo 24]

1 hour ago, scb99 said:

That's another hour gone and enough for today.

Oh how many times I have said this, lol.  I'm currently in the process of working on 3 series, with well over 100 episodes each, where I'm naming a file to get it to scrape, then editing the NFO to reflect correct information, and then renaming the file to the correct name.  Mind you, I'm doing a lot of this through a different database utility that wasn't really designed for this kind of work but there's reasons why I want it to remain in that database.  I do 5-10 episodes while I'm watching other stuff, lol.