Change watched status for episodes no longer in my library?

[nmkaufman 50]

Is there a way to mark episodes that no longer exist as unwatched?

I'm running into a scenario with shows that have been re-arranged on thetvdb, where new episodes are being marked watched as soon as they're collected.

This is happening when multiple past seasons are combined into one, so the current season/episode number is recycled from a past episode I've already watched.

I suspected the Trakt plugin was to blame, so I uninstalled it and marked my entire libary as unwatched.

Now, tonight, the new episode of a particular show (s14e05) got marked as watched, because season 13 (which I watched) used to be season 14 on theTVDB.

This leads me to to believe the watched status of episodes I no longer have are still being cached somewhere.

Is there a way to unmark these shows as watched? Or to make the default behavior to forget the watched status for episodes that are no longer in my library?

Edited July 1, 2020 by nmkaufman

[Happy2Play 9783]

Only option I can think of that you can try is Marking the entire Series as Unwatched, but I do not know how episodes that no long exist are affected in this scenario.

You can mark at Library, Series, Season or Episode via the check mark.

The web client hover on series or enter series.

But yes I can see how this would be a issue if Series season change that much.  Have not seen them go back a season only forward in my experience.

 

[nmkaufman 50]

Unfortunately, I marked my entire TV library unwatched after uninstalling Trakt, so episodes that no longer exist definitely aren't effected.

I can give another example. Jay Leno's garage season 6 just got 're-arranged' into the second half of season 5.

So all next season (if there is one) season 6 will get marked as watched, and never appear in my 'next up.'

These sorts of shenanigans were supposed to be 'fixed' by TheTVDB v3, and the new API, but they're as bad as ever.

Edited July 1, 2020 by nmkaufman

[nmkaufman 50]

If I completely delete, and re-add my TV library to fix this once and for all, will it leave my carefully curated metadata alone?

A lot of my cover art is hand-picked, so I'm paranoid re-adding the library is going to destroy my work.

Does the initial metadata scan, when adding a library, act like "replace all metadata?" or "search for missing metadata?"

[Carlo 4561]

Just a thought but if you're worried about your graphics you could use a little script to set all graphics files (ie png, jpg, gif,etc) in your library to read only so that it would be impossible to overwrite.

[nmkaufman 50]

Is that necessary? Is re-adding my television library going to wreck my metadata?

[Carlo 4561]

All I can say is that if you graphics are stored in the directories with your media they should get used by default when you reload the library but having them set as read only would guarantee they don't get over written.

If you don't have your graphics being saved to the media libraries then I WOULD assume you will loose them by reloading your libraries.

Are you still using Trakt? Because even if you make all these changes if you've synced this data it could very well change things back to where you are right now!

[nmkaufman 50]

If I do this, I'm going to retire trakt for now.

I'm still on the fence, though.

The next time TVDB does it's switcheroo to a show I'm actively watching, I'm right back where I started.

 

Maybe a better solution is adding a dummy episode, unwatching it, and then deleting it again.

 

Several time now, though, I've skipped episodes of shows because they're getting marked watched erroneously. I need to figure something out.

 

I wonder if it would be possible to write a plugin to mark all removed episodes as unwatched, somehow.

 

Also, maybe I'll just leave my existing user as the 'admin' account, and create a new account I actually use for watching.

 

Edited July 30, 2020 by nmkaufman

[Carlo 4561]

You could do the dummy episode thing but this would likely only work for your USER name and not others on your server.

Yes a plugin could be made but this would likely only be needed by you so unless you write it I don't think there would be any demand for it.

You might be better off making a copy of your library.db, learn a bit of sql and just fixing this info that way.