Special episode question

[Garpernaut]

SOLVED: thanks to below comment by TheDreadPirate

Hello everyone. First time posting here because Jellyfin has worked like a charm so far. But I've come across an issue that I cannot find a specific fix for, despite having googled and hunted through reddit threads. Forgive me if it's been addressed somewhere in documentation or a thread I failed to find.

I have an anime which TMDB organises as
Specials - 9 episodes
Seasons: 1-6

However these 9 specials are in fact 'filler' episodes that IMDB numerises within the seasons themselves at their story/chronological places. I'd like to follow this, but am not sure how to get Jellyfin to pull correct metadata because it follows TMDB.

I have tried organizing them as:
S05E02
S05E02.5
S05E03

I have also tried organizing them as
S05E02
S05E02S01
S05E03

This so far has placed them in where I want them to be, but now I'd like to feed them the correct metadata (whether thats from TMDB or IMDB) so that they get their episode descriptions and correct thumbnails. Is that possible? Thanks in advance.

Edit: So according to this (https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/61709-drag...409fa5e18f) thread on TMDB there is a separate International episode ordering that does what I'm trying to do. Is it possible to get Jellyfin to pull from this insdead?

[imthatjeremyguy]

For me I've always labeled Special episodes as: s00e01, s00e02 etc.... still placing the file in the proper season. Yes a specials folder does created on top so you could watch all specials separately, but they still will be present in the season, albeit at the top instead of in release order.

[Garpernaut]

I'm aware I can do that. I'm looking more for a way to place those 'special' episodes in their play order in the series. Like above, I have an episode that takes place between what TMDB thinks is E02 and E03

[TheDreadPirate]

For me I've always labeled Special episodes as: s00e01, s00e02 etc.... still placing the file in the proper season. Yes a specials folder does created on top so you could watch all specials separately, but they still will be present in the season, albeit at the top instead of in release order.

You can have specials appear in the season they are meant to appear in.  On the special click on the "..." context menu and "Edit Metadata".  Scroll down to "Special Episode Info" and enter where it should appear.

   

Now it will appear in both the separate Specials folder and in the season it belongs in.

   
   

Code:

chris@rat-trap:/media/library/Anime/Violet Evergarden$ ll *
'Season 01':
total 6437772
drwxr-s--- 2 chris jellyfin        15 May 19 20:43 ./
drwxr-s--- 4 chris jellyfin        4 May 19 20:49 ../
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 555219815 Aug  5  2023 s01e01.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 533247537 Aug  5  2023 s01e02.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 504995503 Aug  5  2023 s01e03.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 584962029 Aug  5  2023 s01e04.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 512576003 Aug  5  2023 s01e05.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 450771955 Aug  5  2023 s01e06.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 495785342 Aug  5  2023 s01e07.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 471714983 Aug  5  2023 s01e08.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 385812290 Aug  5  2023 s01e09.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 553460721 Aug  5  2023 s01e10.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 527484256 Aug  5  2023 s01e11.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 537420275 Aug  5  2023 s01e12.mkv
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 484589298 Aug  5  2023 s01e13.mkv

Specials:
total 635050
drwxr-s--- 2 chris jellyfin        3 May 19 20:43 ./
drwxr-s--- 4 chris jellyfin        4 May 19 20:49 ../
-rw-r----- 1 chris jellyfin 650869532 Aug  5  2023 s00e01.mkv

[Garpernaut]

Thanks DreadPirate! I've given this a try and it's solved a problem I've been beating my head against all day! Even works with multiple special episodes nested between two normal season episodes.

[algorizan]

Hi I'm having a similar problem. I already knew you can specify the "Airs after season" and "Airs before episode" settings.
However, I have multiple specials that go in between regular episodes and I don't know how to order those specials. For example, I have specials that are "Intros" and "Outros" and "Summaries" of regular episodes. So the Outro for E05 goes before E06, but the Intro for E06 also goes before E06 and so does the summary of E05. I would like to have this order: E05 > E05 Outro > E05 Summary > E06 Intro > E06. But the settings only let me specify "After E06" for all of those specials, and jellyfin isn't ordering them the way I want, it doesn't even do it alphabetically so I don't know what criteria it uses if any. It could help if I could specify for example that the E05 Summary is before the special E06 Intro, but these specials don't have an episode number within S00 because they don't exist in websites like TMDB, TVDB or IMDB, so I had to set the metadata manually.

Is there any way to achieve what I want?

[Efficient_Good_5784]

Hi I'm having a similar problem. I already knew you can specify the "Airs after season" and "Airs before episode" settings.
However, I have multiple specials that go in between regular episodes and I don't know how to order those specials. For example, I have specials that are "Intros" and "Outros" and "Summaries" of regular episodes. So the Outro for E05 goes before E06, but the Intro for E06 also goes before E06 and so does the summary of E05. I would like to have this order: E05 > E05 Outro > E05 Summary > E06 Intro > E06. But the settings only let me specify "After E06" for all of those specials, and jellyfin isn't ordering them the way I want, it doesn't even do it alphabetically so I don't know what criteria it uses if any. It could help if I could specify for example that the E05 Summary is before the special E06 Intro, but these specials don't have an episode number within S00 because they don't exist in websites like TMDB, TVDB or IMDB, so I had to set the metadata manually.

Is there any way to achieve what I want?

Specials get sorted based on their episode number.

So you can make multiple appear before an episode, but they will be sorted on the episode number in their metadata.
You can edit them manually to give them an order you'd like.

[algorizan]

Specials get sorted based on their episode number.

So you can make multiple appear before an episode, but they will be sorted on the episode number in their metadata.
You can edit them manually to give them an order you'd like.

Thank you, that's good to know!
Based on that I came up with a system that works well enough. I've just assigned arbitrary episode numbers to those specials (in the thousands, so that they don't overlap with existing specials episode numbers) in the order I want.