With TheTVDB, we historically have 3 episode orders : "Official Order" (default), "DVD Order" and "Ansolute Order".
On TMDB, you can create multiple alternate orders for each TV shows. They are called "episode groups".
The main difference is that the "alternate orders" available are defined for each TV show.
Here is an example of a show with multiple "alternate orders" aka "Episode groups" : https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/30983-case-closed
I think that TheTVDN has also added the possibility of new alternate order in the last version of their site, but I didn't study how they do it as I'm currently migrating all my data from TheTVDB to TMDB.
Can you add support for the TMDB "alternate orders" aka "episode hroups" ?
I think that nothing special is needed in Kodi as long as all the scraping is done bt MC.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I am sorry to say I am not inclined to add this functionality to MC
Looking closer at this functionality on TMDb site, I see the Episode Groups are not fixed, but custom, meaning there is no common core descriptions or even episode counts.
If MC only used TMDb for TV Episodes I may be inclined to persue this feature, but the complextities of incorporating this and making it work successfully in MC is not something I can spend hundreds of hours on, when the chance of breaking working code is extremely likely.
Also it would mean a different method of scraping these episode, matching to filenames, storing Episode Group data, reworking the tv browser tab to incorporate the new episode sorting required, thats just a few issues I can think of off the top of my head.
I did look at the returned data when checking what Episode groups are assigned to a Series. I Also looked at how the episodes data was returned per Episode Group ID. This is a quite complex structure to incorporate into MC, and has issues of its own.
See below list of Episode Groups for the series Case Closed you mentioned above.
Note the episode count for each group. tmdb states there are 976 episodes in total.
Yet, German Broadcast only lists 308, French Broadcast only 218
{
"results": [
{
"description": "All episodes chronologically split by calendar year.",
"episode_count": 903,
"group_count": 24,
"id": "5af83d88c3a3682ac8007b28",
"name": "Year Split",
"network": {
"id": 569,
"logo_path": "/cIMyE9cw1W4kMFGxmC17HKTnVz9.png",
"name": "YTV",
"origin_country": "JP"
},
"type": 1
},
{
"description": "All specials chronologically split by different groups of specials, for examples, OVAs and Magic Files.",
"episode_count": 50,
"group_count": 7,
"id": "5b09cf3892514146fb007a0e",
"name": "Specials",
"network": null,
"type": 1
},
{
"description": "Order in which the episodes are distributed on DVD in Japanese. The DVDs are organized in \"Parts\", while every part has several \"Volumes\" that contain the episodes. The order is a bit different from the original airing.",
"episode_count": 842,
"group_count": 26,
"id": "5b05d643c3a3684c89003ccb",
"name": "Region 2 DVD Order",
"network": null,
"type": 3
},
{
"description": "Order in which the episodes are distributed on DVD in german. Note: The original Japanese 1 and 2 hour specials were edited into shorter episodes of 30 minutes for German television and aired on several days. It's impossible to display this alteration here on TMDB, so the different German parts are combined and mapped to the original Japanese special.",
"episode_count": 140,
"group_count": 5,
"id": "5b142e06c3a368534f001141",
"name": "German DVD Order",
"network": null,
"type": 3
},
{
"description": "Order in which this show was first broadcast on German television. Note: The original Japanese 1 and 2 hour specials were edited into shorter episodes of 30 minutes for German television and aired on several days. It's impossible to display this alteration here on TMDB, so the different German parts are combined and mapped to the original Japanese special.",
"episode_count": 308,
"group_count": 4,
"id": "5afdcddd92514127a0001878",
"name": "German Broadcast",
"network": {
"id": 411,
"logo_path": "/ybTppkzqb3XOWKNcco144BFlosB.png",
"name": "RTL II",
"origin_country": "DE"
},
"type": 7
},
{
"description": "Funimation acquired the rights to distribute the first 104 episodes in North America in 2003, where they started airing on \"CartoonNetwork\" on May 24, 2004. No more than 50 episodes were broadcast until Funimation made the episodes available with the launch of the \"FunimationChannel\" in November 2005 and later on their official website.",
"episode_count": 123,
"group_count": 5,
"id": "5afe8a960e0a262487005adf",
"name": "US Broadcast",
"network": {
"id": 728,
"logo_path": "/a5oMoSOlNaH6AydiqLm6Gf5dnAx.png",
"name": "Funimation Channel",
"origin_country": "US"
},
"type": 7
},
{
"description": "",
"episode_count": 724,
"group_count": 15,
"id": "5b05e73a9251410d94003dc1",
"name": "Italian Broadcast",
"network": null,
"type": 7
},
{
"description": "The first 73 episodes were broadcast in 2000 on network \"KBS2\" and later replayed by \"Tooniverse\" until 2004, when the subsequent episodes were continued only on \"Tooniverse\". Note: The original Japanese 1 and 2 hour specials were edited into shorter episodes of 30 minutes and aired on several days. It's impossible to display this alteration here on TMDB, so the different Korean parts are combined and mapped to the original Japanese special.",
"episode_count": 691,
"group_count": 15,
"id": "5b0aaec39251411e5400769b",
"name": "Korean Broadcast",
"network": {
"id": 2498,
"logo_path": null,
"name": "Tooniverse",
"origin_country": ""
},
"type": 7
},
{
"description": "Order in which the episodes were broadcast in France on television channels France 3, Cartoon Network, NT1 or AB1.",
"episode_count": 218,
"group_count": 2,
"id": "5b0af3d59251411d2f00ace6",
"name": "French Broadcast",
"network": null,
"type": 7
}
],
"id": 30983
}
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I can live without them. For the moment, I just have 2 or 3 series on DVD that are not in the basic order.
I deliberately choose this example so you directly see that it is a complex thing. I didn't want to hide this fact.
Note : There are much less episodes in the "French Broadcast" and "German Broadcast"episode groups because only part of the episodes were broadcast in France and Germany.
If MC only used TMDb for TV Episodes I may be inclined to persue this feature, but the complextities of incorporating this and making it work successfully in MC is not something I can spend hundreds of hours on, when the chance of breaking working code is extremely likely.
Perhaps, at a time or another, it will be necessary to completely rewrite the TV show episode scraping to clearly separate TheTVDB and TMDB. After that, I think that the episode groups may be looked at again.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
With TheTVDB, we historically have 3 episode orders : "Official Order" (default), "DVD Order" and "Ansolute Order".
On TMDB, you can create multiple alternate orders for each TV shows. They are called "episode groups".
The main difference is that the "alternate orders" available are defined for each TV show.
Here is an example of a show with multiple "alternate orders" aka "Episode groups" : https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/30983-case-closed
I think that TheTVDN has also added the possibility of new alternate order in the last version of their site, but I didn't study how they do it as I'm currently migrating all my data from TheTVDB to TMDB.
Can you add support for the TMDB "alternate orders" aka "episode hroups" ?
I think that nothing special is needed in Kodi as long as all the scraping is done bt MC.
I am sorry to say I am not inclined to add this functionality to MC
Looking closer at this functionality on TMDb site, I see the Episode Groups are not fixed, but custom, meaning there is no common core descriptions or even episode counts.
If MC only used TMDb for TV Episodes I may be inclined to persue this feature, but the complextities of incorporating this and making it work successfully in MC is not something I can spend hundreds of hours on, when the chance of breaking working code is extremely likely.
Also it would mean a different method of scraping these episode, matching to filenames, storing Episode Group data, reworking the tv browser tab to incorporate the new episode sorting required, thats just a few issues I can think of off the top of my head.
I did look at the returned data when checking what Episode groups are assigned to a Series. I Also looked at how the episodes data was returned per Episode Group ID. This is a quite complex structure to incorporate into MC, and has issues of its own.
See below list of Episode Groups for the series Case Closed you mentioned above.
Note the episode count for each group. tmdb states there are 976 episodes in total.
Yet, German Broadcast only lists 308, French Broadcast only 218
{ "results": [ { "description": "All episodes chronologically split by calendar year.", "episode_count": 903, "group_count": 24, "id": "5af83d88c3a3682ac8007b28", "name": "Year Split", "network": { "id": 569, "logo_path": "/cIMyE9cw1W4kMFGxmC17HKTnVz9.png", "name": "YTV", "origin_country": "JP" }, "type": 1 }, { "description": "All specials chronologically split by different groups of specials, for examples, OVAs and Magic Files.", "episode_count": 50, "group_count": 7, "id": "5b09cf3892514146fb007a0e", "name": "Specials", "network": null, "type": 1 }, { "description": "Order in which the episodes are distributed on DVD in Japanese. The DVDs are organized in \"Parts\", while every part has several \"Volumes\" that contain the episodes. The order is a bit different from the original airing.", "episode_count": 842, "group_count": 26, "id": "5b05d643c3a3684c89003ccb", "name": "Region 2 DVD Order", "network": null, "type": 3 }, { "description": "Order in which the episodes are distributed on DVD in german. Note: The original Japanese 1 and 2 hour specials were edited into shorter episodes of 30 minutes for German television and aired on several days. It's impossible to display this alteration here on TMDB, so the different German parts are combined and mapped to the original Japanese special.", "episode_count": 140, "group_count": 5, "id": "5b142e06c3a368534f001141", "name": "German DVD Order", "network": null, "type": 3 }, { "description": "Order in which this show was first broadcast on German television. Note: The original Japanese 1 and 2 hour specials were edited into shorter episodes of 30 minutes for German television and aired on several days. It's impossible to display this alteration here on TMDB, so the different German parts are combined and mapped to the original Japanese special.", "episode_count": 308, "group_count": 4, "id": "5afdcddd92514127a0001878", "name": "German Broadcast", "network": { "id": 411, "logo_path": "/ybTppkzqb3XOWKNcco144BFlosB.png", "name": "RTL II", "origin_country": "DE" }, "type": 7 }, { "description": "Funimation acquired the rights to distribute the first 104 episodes in North America in 2003, where they started airing on \"Cartoon Network\" on May 24, 2004. No more than 50 episodes were broadcast until Funimation made the episodes available with the launch of the \"Funimation Channel\" in November 2005 and later on their official website.", "episode_count": 123, "group_count": 5, "id": "5afe8a960e0a262487005adf", "name": "US Broadcast", "network": { "id": 728, "logo_path": "/a5oMoSOlNaH6AydiqLm6Gf5dnAx.png", "name": "Funimation Channel", "origin_country": "US" }, "type": 7 }, { "description": "", "episode_count": 724, "group_count": 15, "id": "5b05e73a9251410d94003dc1", "name": "Italian Broadcast", "network": null, "type": 7 }, { "description": "The first 73 episodes were broadcast in 2000 on network \"KBS 2\" and later replayed by \"Tooniverse\" until 2004, when the subsequent episodes were continued only on \"Tooniverse\". Note: The original Japanese 1 and 2 hour specials were edited into shorter episodes of 30 minutes and aired on several days. It's impossible to display this alteration here on TMDB, so the different Korean parts are combined and mapped to the original Japanese special.", "episode_count": 691, "group_count": 15, "id": "5b0aaec39251411e5400769b", "name": "Korean Broadcast", "network": { "id": 2498, "logo_path": null, "name": "Tooniverse", "origin_country": "" }, "type": 7 }, { "description": "Order in which the episodes were broadcast in France on television channels France 3, Cartoon Network, NT1 or AB1.", "episode_count": 218, "group_count": 2, "id": "5b0af3d59251411d2f00ace6", "name": "French Broadcast", "network": null, "type": 7 } ], "id": 30983 }I can live without them. For the moment, I just have 2 or 3 series on DVD that are not in the basic order.
I deliberately choose this example so you directly see that it is a complex thing. I didn't want to hide this fact.
Note : There are much less episodes in the "French Broadcast" and "German Broadcast"episode groups because only part of the episodes were broadcast in France and Germany.
Perhaps, at a time or another, it will be necessary to completely rewrite the TV show episode scraping to clearly separate TheTVDB and TMDB. After that, I think that the episode groups may be looked at again.
That would be a mission and a half to complete. But who knows.
I'm placing this in the declined forum, but will keep an eye on TMDb to see if their next API improves on Episode Groups.