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[kolia]

Hello,
I'm quite up to date on how to organize movies bonuses. However when it comes to series it gets a bit more complicated because specials are specific footages that should be played between specific episode. Has someone come to an efficient way to organize specials?
Thank you

[blgentry]

When you say "specials", you probably mean real episodes of series that were not in the main Season?  For example the Christmas specials of Doctor Who?

Or do you mean special features that are on DVD sets of TV shows like extra footage, or character profiles or things like that?

If you mean "real episodes", and you want them to appear between specific episodes, then number them so that they are sequential.  For example, if you have Season 1 with Episodes 1 through 18 and you have a special that is supposed to "air" in between episodes 9 and 10.  You have several options:

1.  Renumber everything from 10 down so that "10" is now the special, the original "10" is now 11, etc.  So you end up with Episode numbers 1 through 19 (18 regular plus one special).  You probably don't want to do this.  But if you do, it's nice and clean.
2.  Number the special something like Episode "9A", or "9-1".  Either of these notations will sort this special after 9 and before 10, which is what you want.

The TVDB seems to group all specials together under their own "Season" numbered 0 (zero).  This doesn't seem to match what you want.  But it may help you in retrieving the metadata for these specials, which you can then renumber (season and episode) to place them where you want them.

Brian.

[RoderickGI]

It is annoying that TheTVDB implemented Specials as part of Season 0. It would have been better if they implemented x.y terminology from the start so that Episodes went 9, 9.1, 9.2, 10, etc., where all the Episodes with decimals are non-core Episodes, such as Specials. But they didn't, so we have to live with it.

Unfortunately, both of Brian's method will result in trouble if, by any chance, you run the "Get Movie & TV Info..." against any of these Episodes with non-standard episode numbers. For that very reason, I implemented a policy of always using the Episode numbering structure of TheTVDB a long time ago, even when it was a pain.

The good news is that it is easy to sort all Episodes and specials in chronological first aired date. Most of the time this date is accurate, although some studios/broadcasters have shown Episodes out of the sequence intended by the producers, and that can muck things up.

Doctor Who is easy though, as an example. Just sort your View of the [Series] by [Date], which is the Originally Aired date from TheTVDB, and Specials will be sorted correctly, interspersed among the core Episodes.

In Standard View you could change the sort for the existing TV Shows View, although it is probably better to create a specific View for this issue. The list display shows what you want clearly.

In Theatre View it would be best to create a new View that adds a sort by [Date] at the "Set rules for file display" level, and does not include the [Season] sort in the Details section of the View. The first two attached images show the setup, and the last the result. Yes, it is just a big list of Episodes, but it does sort the way you want.

[kolia]

Thank you both blgentry and RoderickGI for your feedback. Yes I'm trying to find the best way to organize specials, those episodes that were not in the main Season. I think that RoderickGI solution is wise, because not following TVBD numbering scheme will end into a kind of a mess. I just tried with one TV Show ("Un Village Français"), it turns out that the tvdb.com do not list specials in the database. I guess that I will have to enter it manually. Anyhow, I do think this is the right approach.