SOLVED: Trouble with anime ordering

[copsforfertilizer]

Hello, all. I'm very new to Jellyfin and have been playing around with it for a few months now. Haven't really had any trouble with any media but Dragon Ball shows up in the wrong order and it's been a hassle to try and sort it out so far. 

I'm wanting to order the show using the Funimation saga that is shown under Sagas on the tvdb website. I have the tvdb plugin with the proper API key installed. I believe I have my folders set up correctly; Dragon Ball (1986)>Season 01-Season 09, all episodes named "Dragon Ball S0*E**" and have tried to identify the series using the tvdb code. 

The tvdb site itself says Sagas are "usable as 'Alternate Order' in API-connected systems".  I have gone into the series to edit the metadata to change the Display Order but have no option for "Alternate Order". I chose Story Arc and see that the movie db has matching sagas as to what I want under their episode groups. Season 1 through 3 are fine, but it gets weird after that. The English sagas show as 9, but there are some sagas online that combine seasons 3, 4, and 5 as a single saga. It appears that's what my Jellyfin is attempting to do even though I have files/folders split into 9 separate seasons. 

TMDB shows almost the same Sagas and says to use Story Arc but seems that it uses a 1x*** naming scheme for episodes. I tried to 1x*** naming in a single folder but then the show only had the single season and not split up into the sagas. I then moved them all into Season folders accordingly, but then every episode showed up as the first season. 

I haven't ventured into creating my own .nfo files because I'm hoping I won't have to go that route. I've gone back to my original naming system and only seasons 1 through 3 are correct. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong and appreciate any help!

I've attached a screenshot of how the show is populating now. Seasons 4, 5, 6, and 7 are out of order and pulling the wrong images. Season 1-2 and 8-9 seem to be fine and showing the correct episodes as well.

[TheDreadPirate]

Try switching back to TVDB as your primary provider and select "story arc". I think that may still select "saga". And switch back to sxxexx as shown on TVDB's site.

[copsforfertilizer]

It seems to only be messing with seasons 4 through 7.

I had just switched everything back to format shown on TVDB (S01E01, S02E02) styled format with the title of the episode after that then after seeing your post, changed just the troubled seasons to "Dragon Ball S04E01" without episode titles. Double-checked and I had TVDB as my primary choice for shows, selected story arc and am still having them appear in the wrong order.

I went through every season and entered the matching season codes from TVDB before refreshing the metadata for each season as well. Think adding the season codes to the folder names would help any?

[TheDreadPirate]

Ooohhh. I see what you mean by 1x## on TMDB. The way think that needs to be numbered, if you use TMDB is to just name it s01eXX.mkv. Also, why are all the episode names in Japanese on TVDB?

[duckrental]

Also, why are all the episode names in Japanese on TVDB?

If you're not logged in on TVDB or don't have a preferred language set, it displays episode titles in their original language.

[copsforfertilizer]

So I went through and tried a few things but nothing has been working. I named and ordered files to line up with what is shown for the English sagas on TMDB (https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/12609-drag...4269003673)
It seems like seasons 1-3 and 7-9 are fine, just seasons 4, 5, and 6 are not appearing correctly.

Everything is named "Dragon Ball S0*E0*" and in separate folders titled Season 01-Season 09. I made sure that TMDB was the only metadata provider I had selected and made primary, identified the series using the code from TMDB, changed the display order to Story Arc under the edit metadata menu, refreshed the metadata by changing the refresh mode to "Replace all metadata" and images and still no changes for the same seasons. Maybe I'm not doing this in the correct order or manner?

I am about ready to delete the whole series and try again another time eventually at this point. All my media is stored on an external HD that is mounted within Ubuntu. Jellyfin doesn't have write permissions for the folders with everything in there, could that be an issue when trying to change metadata? I thought that I'd read that Jellyfin stores metadata in its own folder so I'm not entirely sure.

[copsforfertilizer]

I ended up getting a whole new file set of the series, renaming it 1xEE, 2xEE, etc split up into season folders and it actually sorted everything correctly.

I should have left it that way, but the new series file set was more than 10 times the size of the other one I had, so I changed all of that to the same naming scheme and switched them out. Then everything was in an even worse state, multiple seasons having the wrong episodes listed. I tried to move the huge set back and use the original naming scheme but now I'm not able to get it back. I can't believe how crazy this is.

[copsforfertilizer]

Alrighty, it was a bit tedious but I was able to sort it out! Since I don't have proper permissions set on my directory with all the media I would turn my server off, plug the external HD into my laptop, move/rename files, then restart the server. 

First, I renamed all episodes as 1x001-1x153 and left them in the Season 01 folder. Then I refreshed the metadata for the show using just TMDB. That showed every episode in just one folder, but it named every episode properly. Jellyfin displayed all episodes in a single season this way. 

Then I turned the server off, made Season 02-Season 09 folders and split up the episodes accordingly without changing any file names. Rescanned my library and each episode was still named properly and split into season 1-9, but had the episode number from 1-153.

From there I manually edited the metadata for each episode and set the season/episode number for each one. It eventually moved each episode out of season 1 into each according season. 

I made sure to lock the metadata after that and I am still seeing everything correct in JF in my browser as well as my Roku.