TV episodes out of order

[crusher11 1101]

I'm adding my NBA collection as a TV series. Each season is a season, each game is an episode. Naming structure is as follows:

 

NBA/Season 1971/NBA - s1971e701127 - Bucks vs Knicks.avi

NBA/Season 1971/NBA - s1971e701225 - Hawks vs Suns.avi

 

etc.

 

However, when editing the metadata there are no episode numbers or anything entered. They appear to be sorting alphabetically. I've set the metadata on the series level so it sorts by Aired, not Absolute or Dvd, and I've entered the correct airdates, but the December 25 game shows up first followed by the November 27 game. Now, I could manually add the episode numbers but they're long and not particularly clear even to me, much less anyone unfamiliar with my numbering system, so I'd rather avoid that if I can. Given that I've entered an air date for each episode, surely they should be showing up in the correct order?

[Luke 42081]

Make sure they all have season and episode numbers as ultimately that is what is used for sorting.

 

When you specify to sort by air date, it really just means that.

[Happy2Play 9783]

I'm adding my NBA collection as a TV series. Each season is a season, each game is an episode. Naming structure is as follows:

 

NBA/Season 1971/NBA - s1971e701127 - Bucks vs Knicks.avi

NBA/Season 1971/NBA - s1971e701225 - Hawks vs Suns.avi

 

etc.

 

However, when editing the metadata there are no episode numbers or anything entered. They appear to be sorting alphabetically. I've set the metadata on the series level so it sorts by Aired, not Absolute or Dvd, and I've entered the correct airdates, but the December 25 game shows up first followed by the November 27 game. Now, I could manually add the episode numbers but they're long and not particularly clear even to me, much less anyone unfamiliar with my numbering system, so I'd rather avoid that if I can. Given that I've entered an air date for each episode, surely they should be showing up in the correct order?

 

Display order only applies to provider metadata.  So Aired will attempt to get the metadata from the providers in Aired order.

 

But images may show your issue better and episode metadata.  But to me the naming scheme should already be sequential.

[crusher11 1101]

Display order only applies to provider metadata.

Why? Why can't it order them by the airdate entered in the custom metadata? It works exactly the same way.

 

But images may show your issue better and episode metadata.  But to me the naming scheme should already be sequential.

I'm not sure I follow.

[Luke 42081]

Why? Why can't it order them by the airdate entered in the custom metadata? It works exactly the same way.

 

I'm not sure I follow.

 

Because the ordering is always by season and episode numbers. When you select order by air date, it uses the air date to find the season and episode numbers, then sorts on those.

[crusher11 1101]

That doesn't make any sense.

 

First of all, why are there different options if they all do exactly the same thing?

 

Secondly, WTF does "uses the air date to find the episode numbers and then sorts on those" even mean? It's presumably capable of finding episode numbers without that setting being changed.

 

Genuinely: why can't it ignore episode numbers and just sort by air date?

[Luke 42081]

That's just how tv series work. You need to enter season and episode numbers, or better still use a supported naming convention and then you won't have to enter them in the metadata editor.

[crusher11 1101]

I did use the supported naming convention and nothing was entered.

 

But "that's just how it works" isn't an answer to "why can't it work differently".

[Luke 42081]

 

 

s1971e701225

This looks like a supported naming convention but in reality we've never tested episode numbers that high so I would use smaller numbers.

[crusher11 1101]

How am I supposed to do that? Those are the numbers.

 

I still see no reason Emby couldn't be coded to sort by the actual air date in the metadata.

[Happy2Play 9783]

I don't understand the issue, so I would need to see what you see.  But I had no issue adding your two episode above sorted properly in season.

[crusher11 1101]

Right. But that looks awful.
 

If sorting by airdate actually worked the way it seems like it should, I could remove the episode numbers:

 

 

The air date is included in the metadata and the series is set to sort by airdate instead of episode number. In a logical world, this would sort everything correctly while also looking much neater.

[Happy2Play 9783]

It looks awful because that is default recognition no editing.  How about your actual metadata for those episodes.  I can only assume since you are changing metadata it is changing the order.

[crusher11 1101]

I assume it's sorting them alphabetically in the absence of an episode number, instead of sorting them by the airdate from the metadata.

 

The episode numbers are all super-long and not particularly clear (they're all just the date in yymmdd format), so I'd rather not have them display if possible. As there's an "air date" metadata field and an "airdate" sorting option, I assumed this would work.

Edited August 3, 2019 by crusher11

[Happy2Play 9783]

That setting only applies to then metadata pulled from provider.  So if you media is in DVD order it will get the metadata for DVD order from provider.  It has nothing to do with the actual item metadata airdate/releasedate those are just itemdetails display info.

 

How about you show us an example of the metadata applied to one of the episodes.  As the fields populated by default on my test (ie season and episode).  Looking at the image you provided it would appear you strip the episode number as I got what you got trying to emulate what you have provided.

 

I guess your other option would be apply a sequential sort title to put them in the order you want with the metadata you have provided.

 

Set title removed episode number, set sort title as 1 and 2.

[crusher11 1101]

That setting only applies to then metadata pulled from provider.

But why? Surely it makes sense to use the metadata in the NFO, especially if it's the only (or even primary) metadata source?

 

Looking at the image you provided it would appear you strip the episode number as I got what you got trying to emulate what you have provided.

As I said, the episode number is just a rather ugly form of the date. I'd rather not display it if possible. Thus, removing it and sorting by airdate seemed like a good solution, because I assumed sorting by airdate would do what I wanted. And, really, it should. There's no reason for the airdate sorting to function the way that it does instead of teh way I expected it to.

[Happy2Play 9783]

Well as stated that is not a UI sort function it is a metadata provider function, so I guess you could make a Feature request as there is no function for way you are trying to do.  But sort title will accomplish what you are trying to do.