Automatic "versioning" of TV episodes causing chaos

[grim 1]

Hiya, long time user here running emby server 4.7.14.0. Awhile ago I noticed many of my TV shows have started showing different versions when they shouldn't as they're actually episodes from other seasons. For example:

Here you see I should be on season 2 episode 8. That episode is titled "And here's to you". Season 1 episode 8 is "Rupture", season 3 episode 8 is "The Sands of Ares", and season 4 episode 8 is "Legacy".

On disk the files are laid out like so (I omitted everything except episode 8 for each season, but every episode has this problem).

For.All.Mankind/season.1/For.All.Mankind.S01E08.720p.x265-ZMNT.mkv
For.All.Mankind/season.2/For.All.Mankind.S02E08.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/season.3/For.All.Mankind.S03E08.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/season.4/For.All.Mankind.S04E08.720p.x265-T0PAZ.mkv

As you can see, the naming _should_ be fine, or at least _used_ to be fine.

I also went into the library settings and disabled "Automatically merge series that are spread across multiple folders" and re-scaned the library but that didn't do anything either.

The biggest problem with this issue is that it real messes up resuming. For example, I just now wanted to pick up on S02E08 of For All Mankind and I got S01E08 instead as Emby decided that was the version that it should play. It's always messing up watch counts and causing "fake' episodes in other seasons. For example, Ancient Aliens season 1 only has 5 episodes, but my Emby thinks there are 22 and if you look at the full episode info, you'll see that the file for S01E22 is actually season.14/Ancent.Aliens.S14E22.720p.mkv.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

[Neminem 1519]

Can you try without . in your season folders

For.All.Mankind/season.1/For.All.Mankind.S01E08.720p.x265-ZMNT.mkv

[grim 1]

Wow, that seems to have fixed it after running a library scan...

For.All.Mankind/season 1/For.All.Mankind.S01E08.720p.x265-ZMNT.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E08.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/4/For.All.Mankind.S04E08.720p.x265-T0PAZ.mkv
For.All.Mankind/season2/For.All.Mankind.S02E08.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv

Any chance I can avoid renaming all this stuff?

[Neminem 1519]

TV Naming following this guide, will ensure the best result.

If you want to avoid this from happening.

 

I use this naming for my tv shows.

Series folder:

{Series TitleYear} [TvdbId={TvdbId}]

Season folder :

Season {season:00}

Episodes :

{Series Title} - S{season:00}E{episode:00} - {Episode Title}

 

Here is an example of For all Mankind

Series folder : 

For All Mankind (2019) [TvdbId=356202]

Season folder :

Season 01

Episodes:

For All Mankind - S01E01 - Red Moon.mkv

[grim 1]

This wasn't a problem until a few months ago so not sure why I should have to rename an unreasonably large amount of files because of a bug in a newer feature..

 

[Neminem 1519]

Tbh the TV Naming  has always been the right way to do it.

I guess you until now has gotten lucky.

[grim 1]

I have files right now in the `season.1` format and their just fine and have been since at least 2020... So, something changed, and stuff got broken.

[Neminem 1519]

Guess some of the dev's need to chat with you.

I can't help you beyond advice.

And with advice given, I will leve it as that.

[grim 1]

Well, advice to rename 45K files isn't what I'd call useful advice. It's appreciated, but yeah...

[grim 1]

For additional reference, the following is fine across the entire series and doesn't show a version for each episode.
 

Marvels.Agents.Of.SHIELD/season.2/Marvels.Agents.Of.Shield.S02E01.1080p.mkv

Other ideas with episodes that have release groups in them are also no producing the issue.

Call.The.Midwife/season.13/Call.The.Midwife.S13E02.1080p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv

And again for reference the follow is still exhibiting the issue when I rename the season folder back to `season.#`. Using `s2` like it is in the example below fixes the issue. There appears to be no easily recognizable pattern for the issue to hit. Maybe it's something in the TVDB entries?

For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E08.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv

Looking at the mkv headers, all 3 files have the complete name field populated, but only agents of shield has the movie name field populated. Not sure if those are the right field names or if they're tags or what, that's just what `mediainfo` labels them as. I figured it might be something, but it looks like it's a total red herring.

[grim 1]

As a follow up, Emby must have refreshed the library again because the `s1` hack isn't working anymore. I had 2 episodes for For All Mankind that had spaces and parentheses in them so I renamed those and refreshed the library again. That didn't make a difference and everything was still grouped as versions.

I then noticed a `Split Versions Apart` button, so I clicked it and well that didn't help things at all. I even moved the files out of the library directory, scanned the library, moved them back in, and scanned it again still getting versions for every episode except for the one I split that's just listing 4 s02E08's now, but the s01e08, s03e08, and s04e08 all still show all 4 episodes as versions of each other.

[Luke 42080]

What is the full path to the for all mankind series folder?

[grim 1]

$ find For.All.Mankind/ -type f | sort
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E01.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E02.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E03.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E04.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E05.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E06.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E07.iNTERNAL.720p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E08.720p.x265-ZMNT.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E09.iNTERNAL.720p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s1/For.All.Mankind.S01E10.iNTERNAL.720p.WEB.H264-AMRAP.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E01.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E02.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E03.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E04.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E05.720p.x265-ZMNT.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E06.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E07.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E08.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E09.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s2/For.All.Mankind.S02E10.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E01.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E02.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E03.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E04.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E05.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E06.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E07.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E08.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E09.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s3/For.All.Mankind.S03E10.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E01.720p.WEB.x265-MiNX.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E02.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E03.720p.WEB.x265-MiNX.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E04.720p.WEB.x265-MiNX.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E05.720p.WEB.h264-EDITH.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E06.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E07.720p.x265-T0PAZ.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E08.720p.x265-T0PAZ.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E09.1080p.x265.mkv
For.All.Mankind/s4/For.All.Mankind.S04E10.1080p.x265.mkv

[Luke 42080]

What is the full path?

[grim 1]

The full path just has the library prefix which is `/nas/multimedia/TV`. In other words, it's right at the root of the TV library's path.

[Luke 42080]

Are you still having an issue with this?

[grim 1]

using `s#` for some series that were having issues fixed it, but if I switch them back to `season.#` the issue comes back. However, I have many other series that use `season.#` that don't have the issue. In other words, I seem to have a temporary fix that doesn't make any sense.

[RanmaCanada 496]

To rename your stuff, use Filebot or Rename My TV Series.  Filebot is not FOSS anymore but you can easily find versions on your favourite private trackers, RMTS is FOSS.  You should also be using the naming guide as mentioned.  Software is dumb when it encounters something it doesn't expect, and it will do stupid things, and then the devs need to find out why it did that stupid thing that it wasn't supposed to do.

[grim 1]

Why would I rename stuff that is currently working and spike my backups? Software is as dumb as we allow it to be, adding unit tests to handle these corner cases and figure out what is actually breaking is a much better solution than than renaming tens of thousands of files as I've previously stated in this thread..

[Bottles51 74]

https://www.filebot.net/

Filebot makes quick work of it and is worth the money. There are other choices. Just an option for you.