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[Jimbot]

Hi,

Is it possible to scrape the DVD order of selected TV series from thetvdb website.  There are a few series out there where the DVD order is different from aired order, and tagging these by hand is rather time consuming.

Thanks

[6233638]

I haven't seen the option. I had this problem a while back, and ended up having to fix it manually.

[bunglemebaby]

I haven't seen the option. I had this problem a while back, and ended up having to fix it manually.

Yeah, the ability to specify DVD order for lookup would be a great addition. Ripping TV Series from DVD/BD is painful enough without needing to manually configure meta-data like this. I tend to prefer watching series in DVD order as well, which makes this double the manual effort (manually input episode numbers, lookup meta-data, then re-number the episodes manually as they are on the DVD). I believe there are other applications that allow this option, so the ability is there on the TVDB end.

[skarsol]

Running into this myself, any chance this will be considered for addition?

[mwillems]

I'm not sure that data is there on the TVDB end in all cases.  It's usually there, but I've seen a few TVDB entries (usually for older shows) that don't have the DVD order (or production order) even listed; it's air order or nothing.

Personally, I'd rather have lookup by series and episode name (which TVDB definitely supports in all cases I've seen), but the current JRiver "get" function doesn't seem to accept (at least I haven't been able to figure out a way). 

I certainly wouldn't say "no" to a DVD order lookup, but it wouldn't completely solve the underlying problem for me.

[6233638]

I'm not sure that data is there on the TVDB end in all cases.  It's usually there, but I've seen a few TVDB entries (usually for older shows) that don't have the DVD order (or production order) even listed; it's air order or nothing.

The obvious example for me was Firefly, because the "aired order" was so incredibly stupid.
I actually don't know why they would air it in that order, other than trying to kill the show.
The feature-length first episode was aired as episode 11 for example!

DVD Order
Aired Order
 
It seems like DVD Order would make the most sense to use as the default in Media Center, because it's most likely to be the order which our discs are ripped in.

Personally, I'd rather have lookup by series and episode name (which TVDB definitely supports in all cases I've seen), but the current JRiver "get" function doesn't seem to accept (at least I haven't been able to figure out a way).

Are you filling out this information manually? I don't know how you would get the episode name without the episode number?

[Hendrik]

Personally, I'd rather have lookup by series and episode name (which TVDB definitely supports in all cases I've seen), but the current JRiver "get" function doesn't seem to accept (at least I haven't been able to figure out a way).  

The problem with that is that matching names is rather fragile, you need the proper spelling or it won't work at all, and many people don't have episode names in their file names - or the file name doesn't support all special characters and they get changed, and the lookup breaks. Or you have to go and fix that manually by looking at TheTVDB, which defeats the purpose really.
Using the episode number is just much much simpler for lookup.

I've only a few shows in my library where the air order and dvd order are different, and I had to re-order them for lookup manually to fix it, but it was somewhat of a rare case that they changed the order that I didn't really bother to think too much about it, as it would mean quite a bit of complexity as well.

I suppose I could try to re-visit this topic, and simply add a checkbox in the two lookup dialogs to enable DVD order.
This would then only work for manual lookups, since it just doesn't know any better during automatic import, and not changing the default, since who is to say DVD rips are more common than TV recordings, but should be much easier still than re-ordering things.

It doesn't help though that TheTVDB uses different formatting for the DVD Episode number, ie. in Firefly its "1.0" instead of plain "1" - another point against using it as a default, since that field is barely maintained on many shows.

[mwillems]

The problem with that is that matching names is rather fragile, you need the proper spelling or it won't work at all, and many people don't have episode names in their file names - or the file name doesn't support all special characters and they get changed, and the lookup breaks. Or you have to go and fix that manually by looking at TheTVDB, which defeats the purpose really.
Using the episode number is just much much simpler for lookup.

That makes sense. I understand it wouldn't be ideal from a support perspective. I was just imagining being able to use it in manual lookups (which is how I end up doing most of my lookups), certainly not using it automatically.

I've only a few shows in my library where the air order and dvd order are different, and I had to re-order them for lookup manually to fix it, but it was somewhat of a rare case that they changed the order that I didn't really bother to think too much about it, as it would mean quite a bit of complexity as well.

Maybe I'm just unlucky, almost none of the series I've been dealing with have the same air order and DVD order, but a lot of it is either older programming or children's programming so maybe that's the hitch.  Batman: The Animated Series and the muppet show both aired in a completely different order than the production order (which is what's on the DVDs).  Same with Star Trek (TOS), Farscape, the original Twilight Zone, Firefly (as noted above), and (I think) a few seasons of the Simpsons.

I haven't done a whole lot of this (I've only done a very few series, to be fair), but I actually haven't encountered a DVD series where the air order 100% matched the DVD order  

Are you filling out this information manually? I don't know how you would get the episode name without the episode number?

I enter it manually off of the DVD case, the same way one would get the episode number.  I do that because (as noted above), I haven't encountered DVDs where the DVD order actually matches the aired order, so I had (erroneously apparently) concluded that the episode number is kind of useless. I've generally had to manually lookup all of the episode numbers based on the episode name to get the right info filled in.  It sounds like I've just been unlucky. 

[MrC]

I don't have many DVD series, so this topic is only marginally interesting to me personally.  However, I wonder if there is any value in a tvdb.pl, similar to amg.pl and discogs.pl?

I'd imagine it would work by you selecting all your episodes you want tagged, and it would work on a per-series, per-season basis, using the sort order you specify.

Outside of this, for MC, I think the best UI you can present is a mapping table, which presents the season's episodes on the left side of the table, and your episode files on the right-side.  A user would check/uncheck that their file should be tagged.   Each side of the table would have the appropriate field columns to sort the episodes, and the user's side would be drag-sortable as well.  This provides the correct row-mapping, and the On/Off switch allows one or more episodes to be tagged.

This basic mapping table, if generalized, could be used for all tagging from remote sites, for any media type.

[blgentry]

I'm bumping this because I just spent a good bit of time figuring out how to manually "trick" MC into getting the correct Episode information for a DVD series I have ripped.  Because the Aired Order and the DVD Order are fairly drastically different, I had to tell "get tv info" the "Aired Number" and have it fill in the right information.

Having the option to switch to the DVD order *manually* (not by default) would have saved me a good bit of time with this project.  Just some kind of check box or something on the Get Movie & TV Info dialog box would definitely do it.

The end result is all rather beautiful I must say.  Having a Panes view of TV series with thumbnails of all of the episodes is really awesome.  Especially because I can do stuff like make a Pane to only show me the episodes I haven't watched yet.  The power of MC with video...

Brian.