Anyway to 'browse' metadata to figure out how to name something properly?

[CrookiesAndCash]

First, yes, I have read the wiki when it comes to naming things. (https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows/) I know how jellyfin expects files to be named, however my issue is that I don't know how the metadata sources expect files to be named. As an example of this issue, I've ripped some of my MHA blurays and at first I was super confused because the movies weren't getting any metadata. I had them named as the jellyfin wiki said I should, but I didn't have them named how the metadata sources wanted them. I had them in "Jellyfin/Anime/Movies/My Hero Academia/My Hero Academia - Heros Rising (2019).mkv" and wasn't getting any metadata, however when I then changed it to "Jellyfin/Anime/Movies/My Hero Academia/My Hero Academia Heros Rising (2019).mkv" the metadata was picked up properly. (for what it's worth, these exact file names may be wrong, but this is the gist of what happened. It wasn't scraping the meta-data because the file was named slightly wrong from what the meta-data source was expecting. I don't recall the exact thing I had named them before when it wasn't working, but it was a very minor change like replacing a "-" or a ":" that fixed it)

My issue is that I can't find any way to figure out what my metadata sources want me to name the files sometimes. Most of the time, it's obvious, you can just follow the guide on the jellyfin wiki and it's fairly clear that episode 27 should be named the exact same as episode 26 was, just replace the 6 with a 7. That's not hard. However, when it comes to things like specials, I still have no idea how my metadata sources want them named. If I put them in a "Season 00" folder then they show up under "specials", but they clearly aren't named correctly because they have no meaningful metadata that's been scraped. No fanart, the names are clearly just ripped from the filenames/embedded titles, etc. 

Is there some way to ask Jellyfin what my metadata sources are looking for so that I can figure out how to name my files properly for them? I know that this isn't an issue that's the fault of Jellyfin, (arguably it's not even the fault of the metadata sources either, it's sorta just an inconvenience about how different people use slightly different naming conventions/biases) but it is incredibly angering to be trying to brute force tons of different name variations just to get the data to be ripped properly instead of just being able to ask, "hey, what do you want me to call this?". I have to imagine that there is some way of puilling up what my metadata sources are expecting (for instance "anidb lists there as being 10 specials for My Hero Academia, the 1st one is 'My Hero Academia: Survival Training (Part 1)', the 2nd one is ... and the final one is 'My Hero Academia: Training of the Dead'. Anisearch lists there as being 11 specials for My Hero Academia, the 1st one is ...") but I can't figure out how. This isn't just an issue I've had with MHA either, but MHA's specials are being a particular pain because no matter what I try nothing rips them properly. Generally I can spend anywhere from a minute to an hour brute forcing different names and I'll land on the right one eventually, but these specials are just not working out for some reason. (and, eitherway, I would really like to find out some way to avoid having to spend that minute to an hour brute forcing different names.)

[TheDreadPirate]

Non-alphanumeric characters should be avoided in folder and file names, except where specified for special functions in Jellyfin, like when using the "versions" syntax.

The way you had it before, My Hero Academia - Heros Rising (2019).mkv, would trigger the part after the hyphen to be left out of the title when Jellyfin queries TMDB/TVDB/AniDB. Also, the folder name should match the file name. And each movie should have their own folder.

For shows, the FOLDER name for the series is the most important. The FILE name should just be s01e01.mkv, to indicate which season and episode it belongs in. You CAN have the show name and episode name, as shown in our documentation. But that is just superfluous info for human readers. It is not used by Jellyfin.

That also applies for specials. Most online DBs will specials in a "season 0". So specials would be in a specials folder and the files named s00e01.mkv.

And example of an Anime with multiple seasons and multiple specials. TMDB is my primary metadata source.

Code:

Shakugan no Shana/
├── Season 01
│   ├── s01e01.mkv
│   ├── s01e02.mkv
│   ├── s01e03.mkv
│   ├── s01e04.mkv
│   ├── s01e05.mkv
│   ├── s01e06.mkv
│   ├── s01e07.mkv
│   ├── s01e08.mkv
│   ├── s01e09.mkv
│   ├── s01e10.mkv
│   ├── s01e11.mkv
│   ├── s01e12.mkv
│   ├── s01e13.mkv
│   ├── s01e14.mkv
│   ├── s01e15.mkv
│   ├── s01e16.mkv
│   ├── s01e17.mkv
│   ├── s01e18.mkv
│   ├── s01e19.mkv
│   ├── s01e20.mkv
│   ├── s01e21.mkv
│   ├── s01e22.mkv
│   ├── s01e23.mkv
│   └── s01e24.mkv
├── Season 02
│   ├── s02e01.mkv
│   ├── s02e02.mkv
│   ├── s02e03.mkv
│   ├── s02e04.mkv
│   ├── s02e05.mkv
│   ├── s02e06.mkv
│   ├── s02e07.mkv
│   ├── s02e08.mkv
│   ├── s02e09.mkv
│   ├── s02e10.mkv
│   ├── s02e11.mkv
│   ├── s02e12.mkv
│   ├── s02e13.mkv
│   ├── s02e14.mkv
│   ├── s02e15.mkv
│   ├── s02e16.mkv
│   ├── s02e17.mkv
│   ├── s02e18.mkv
│   ├── s02e19.mkv
│   ├── s02e20.mkv
│   ├── s02e21.mkv
│   ├── s02e22.mkv
│   ├── s02e23.mkv
│   └── s02e24.mkv
└── Specials
    ├── s00e03.mkv
    ├── s00e16.mkv
    ├── s00e29.mkv
    └── s00e31.mkv

[CrookiesAndCash]

If specials are supposed to be named with the same Season#Episode# format then how do you know what order to put them in? Specials by their very nature are sort of additional extras that don't fit neatly into that sort of ordering, so if it's not even using the name to parse them that makes the problem even worse. (though if there is some way to have jellyfin tell you what your metadata sources say it'd still be mostly solved since you could just see which episodes have which titles and name them accordingly based on the actual title of the files you have)

[TheDreadPirate]

You have to go to your primary metadata source and just kind of figure it out. Some shows only have 1 or a handful of specials (Violet Evergarden, for example), some have dozens and dozens (like my Shakugan no Shana example).

Another personal example that required a lot of manual work, the original 5 seasons of Futurama. The DVD source media has a MASSIVELY different order than what I wanted and was used to. You just have to set the file names according to the order, which may require you watch every file. If your media has the episode name, that can definitely help.

At the end of the day, if the order you want is different than the order you have you just have to figure it out. Jellyfin nor Plex nor Emby has a way to figure out what you have. YOU tell Jellyfin what you have and Jellyfin has mechanisms to adjust which order it queries from TMDB/TVDB.

[CrookiesAndCash]

I'm aware you need to tell jellyfin what file is which, I'm looking for a way to get jellyfin to list the specials that exist (according to my metadata sources) and their associated titles/episode numbers. I know I'll have to identify which file is which manually, but I can't even find any way to figure out how they SHOULD be named to do that. If the only thing it's looking at is a Season and Episode number how can I possibly figure out what arbitrary episode number was assigned to each individual special? If I could literally just see a list in jellyfin of "episode" 1-### of all of the specials that exist ("Season 0 Episode 1 : All Might Rises", "Season 0 Episode 2 : Hero League Baseball", "Season 0 Episode 3 : Training of the Dead", etc.) then I can append the correct episode numbers to them to scrape that metadata, but without even being able to see a list like that I have no way of knowing which special should have what episode number.

[TheDreadPirate]

You have to go to TMDB's website, or TVDB, and look at what "episode number" they use for each special you have.  There is no mechanism in Jellyfin to help you with this process.  YOU tell it what you have and it gets the metadata.

   

[theguymadmax]

The closest thing to what your looking for can be accomplished with missing episode fetcher with the TVDB plugin you can use the "Missing Episode Fetcher" feature with the TVDB plugin. Here's how to set it up:

1. Install the TheTVDB plugin from the catalog, then restart the server.
2. In the Dashboard, go to My Plugins, select TheTVDB, and make sure the "Include Missing Specials" option is checked.
3. In your Library, enable the "Missing Episode Fetcher" feature.
4. Scan Library - scan for new and updated files.
5. On the homepage of the web UI, click your user profile icon in the top right corner and select Display.
6. Enable the "Display Missing Episodes Within Seasons" option, then click Save.

Your library will now show all episodes marked as **"Missing"** for each series. They will include titles and episode numbers in the metadata, but this is only from TheTVDB.

[CrookiesAndCash]

The closest thing to what your looking for can be accomplished with missing episode fetcher with the TVDB plugin you can use the "Missing Episode Fetcher" feature with the TVDB plugin. Here's how to set it up:

1. Install the TheTVDB plugin from the catalog, then restart the server.
2. In the Dashboard, go to My Plugins, select TheTVDB, and make sure the "Include Missing Specials" option is checked.
3. In your Library, enable the "Missing Episode Fetcher" feature.
4. Scan Library - scan for new and updated files.
5. On the homepage of the web UI, click your user profile icon in the top right corner and select Display.
6. Enable the "Display Missing Episodes Within Seasons" option, then click Save.

Your library will now show all episodes marked as **"Missing"** for each series. They will include titles and episode numbers in the metadata, but this is only from TheTVDB.

This is the only thing that's even close to a solution. It still doesn't actually give episode numbers very conveniently, you need to go into the ... dropdown and hit "edit metadata" in order to see the episode number for each individual episode, but since Jellyfin naturally orders things in ascending order you can assume that the first item listed is Ep1 and from there it seems to work well enough. (though not perfectly, I did notice some ordering weirdness that made them not add up quite right, but it was an easy enough fix)

With that said, it's really insane that this isn't a builtin feature if Jellyfin exclusively relies on episode numbers like this. The episode number prescribed to these specials is going to be completely arbitrary and I even went out of my way to check various metadata sources and they don't even seem to follow this episode-naming schema that jellyfin is using at all. (on things like Anisearch or AniDB some OVAs aren't even included in the same series as the main show, sometimes the seasons are each entirely different listings but all have the exact same title, etc.) I completely understand that it'd be basically impossible to come up with an algorithm to reliably figure out which episode is which for you automatically, but you should not have to use some third party plugin and then mentally count to figure out which episode number is associated with which special. The bar to solving this problem is literally just being able to hit a button and then have a plain-text list of "episode ### - Title" so that users can figure out how to name their files so that Jellyfin can identify them properly. (even then ambiguously titled specials might be a problem, but there isn't really anything Jellyfin or anyone else can do about that)

Without this single plugin I genuinely don't know how I would have even been able to go about figuring this out, especially since (as mentioned) you can't even reliably go to your metadata sources themselves in order to figure out what "episode" the various specials are. I'm generally super leniant when it comes to most FOSS software (most of the time it's just a matter of taking 10 minutes and learning how to do it) but I genuinely don't even know how I would go about doing this if not for this specific plugin. This isn't even a quality of life thing where it just makes it easier, I legitimately can't think of a reliable way of finding these associations if even the websites for the metadata sources themselves can't tell you. The only thing I could possibly imagine would be literally brute-force naming them incrementally and seeing what episodes show up within jellyfin but even that can be shakey since if Jellyfin can't find associated metadata it'll use the file's title, embedded information, etc. to add it to the folder. If the only thing Jellyfin goes by is Season/Episode number pairings then not telling the user which episode number is associated with which special seems like a massive problem. It's asking the user to just magically know the completely random number assigned to each special from nothing. (which, again, I couldn't even figure out what episode number they were when I was directly referencing my metadata sources!)  Do most users just straight up not use the specials feature of jellyfin or something? I honestly don't get how most people even go about adding specials if the only way to add them is to assign them an episode number, but only a very specific episode number, oh and by the way we won't tell you what that number is, oh and you can't find it out by going directly to your metadata sources either. I'm not even mad just genuinely confused, how is this just, not a problem? The only way to use a core feature of Jellyfin is to know information that you aren't told and can't find out, unless you use one very specific plugin and even then it's not completely intuitive and requires quite a lot of unnecessary manual grunt work. This isn't even a matter of "it would be so easy to just add a button to show which episode numbers have which titles!" (though, it should be relatively easy feature-wise. If all Jellyfin needs in order to get metadata info is an episode number then a basic while loop that scrapes from episode 1 to episode N where N is the first episode without any valid metadata, then show a basic text popup that tells the user which episode returned which title, year, etc. It'd obviously take a couple of hours to implement well at least, but relative to other features it'd be incredibly simple) I just legitimately cannot understand how people use (or are expected to use) this feature when they aren't told information that they need to know in order to be able to. It feels like if the only way Jellyfin would allow you to scrape special metadata it prompted you for a randomly generated password to unlock metadata-scraping for specials and then just never told you what the password was.

[TheDreadPirate]

What the websites for TMDB and TVDB shows in browsers is not the same as what their API expects.  When you names your files according to our documentation, Jellyfin will construct a query and send it to their APIs and when Jellyfin asks for "Shakugan no Shana, Specials, Episode 16", TMDB/TVDB will respond with that data.  But your files and folders have to be named so that Jellyfin knows how to construct the query.

Code:

Shakugan no Shana/
└── Specials
    ├── s00e16.mkv

   
   

Without following the naming convention how would Jellyfin automagically figure out what you have?  Reading and analyzing every frame?  And compare it to what?  There is no central database with which to look up and compare that analysis to determine what you have.  We could both have the same show/movie, but depending on how we've encoded the file the video analysis could yield completely different results.

Most shows have a limited number of orders for their main seasons.  But for specials, they are all over the place.  Especially with anime.  You know what you have in terms of specials.  Find it in TMDB and name the file s00e##.mkv.  As long as the folder is named properly, it will find the metadata.