Special Episodes Causing Problems

[bigjess007]

Can someone help me with Sonarr and special episodes? The series is the Graham Norton Show. It just started back up yesterday. The first episode was a special episode.

Here’s TVDB: http://www.thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=80660&seasonid=660297&lid=7
Episode Number Episode Name Originally Aired Image
Special Batman Extra: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Pet Shop Boys 2016-03-25
1 Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Kirsten Dunst, Stephen Mangan 2016-04-01

Sonarr doesn’t list the special episode that aired yesterday in the episode list. It starts with episode 1. So it found and downloaded the special episode and then named it episode 1.

I manually edited the episode to the special name, did S19E00 as the info and then did an “update series info and scan disk”. In the history for episode one it said missing/deleted, and then on the main screen, it changed the status to not yet aired and friday as the air date. I checked it later, and it downloaded the same file again, and ofcourse named it episode 1 instead of the special.

How do you fix this? I fought with this series last season cause it got out of wack and was a real pain (same scenario downloading and renaming one episode ahead). Up in the series info blurb is all the links to the various DB’s and TVRage (and TVMaze) has it laid out better to classify the special as episode 1 which I think sonarr would do better with, but my understanding is you can’t manually edit the episode’s source info for a series.

Here’s TVrage for reference:
http://www.tvrage.com/The_Graham_Norton_Show
Next: 19x02 – Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Kirsten Dunst, Stephen Mangan (Apr/01/2016)
Graham is joined on the show by Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Kirsten Dunst and Stephen Mangan.
Prev: 19x01 – Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams and Pet Shop Boys (Mar/25/2016)
Graham is joined on the show by Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams and the Pet Shop Boys.

How does the experts deal with these situations? Thanks!!

[Taloth]

Tvdb maps it as S00E14, you can see it in the Specials section Sonarr. So number it like that and sonarr will pick it up.

Check this http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006xnzc/broadcasts/upcoming
See the episode with Chris Hemsworth airing on April 1st being called Episode 1? not Episode 2. The Batman Extra is mentioned separately but still part of ‘Series 19’.

Scene is probably wrong in this case. it’s not S19E01. Normally stuff like this would get released as S19E00 or just S19.Special.Batman.Extra. Unless BBC changes it later on, then tvdb gets fixed up too.
I do see a possibility of petitioning tvdb to list it as S19E00, considering BBC calls it Series 19 Batman Extra, but at this point it’s not worth it.

Take a look at the Doctor Who site while you’re at it? Notice that the specials such as Last Christmas and Husbands of River Song be listed separately, instead of as part of the Series? That’s coz BBC sees em as specials, so does tvdb and scene btw.
Both tvdb and scene ‘try’ to follow the the original site, but have different rules when it comes to dealing with edge-cases. It gets worse when the original site doesn’t mention season numbers/episode numbers, then you get messy stuff like MythBusters.

One of the problems is that we can’t distinguish between a ‘special’ special like behind the scenes, Doctor Who Extras, Talking Saul… or just a full-length episode airing outside of the normal season. If we could’ve made that distinction then we would be able to make the UI a bit nicer, but alas.

[bigjess007]

Thanks for pointing me at the specials section. I have to confess I totally forgot they were the whole way down there at the bottom. When I add series I usually choose “Future” as the monitor default and then just let it go as I’m hoping for a “set it & forget it”. But it seems that future doesn’t make sure to pick up future specials. I may not be setting things properly either

I do remember mythbusters being a bit of a mess last year but it did seem to work itself out.

I renamed the episode to the special and Sonarr still wouldn’t grab it. So I got it in via it’s entry in the special episode and then refreshed the series. For a while it was fine, but then it downloaded the same episode again and put it in as episode 1 in season 19. I deleted it again and I think it did it one more time. I finally got it to stop and right now it shows episode 1 as airing Friday and hasn’t tried to get episode 1 again.

I’m betting though I’m going to fight with it again all season (like last season) as when it downloads this Friday, it will still grab episode 1 from the indexers which is really this special instead of the true episode 1. But I think that will be the fault of the indexers and not Sonarr right (because they named the special S19E01 where in fact if anything it should have been S19E00 and S19E01 technically hasn’t aired). If that is the case, is there anyway of renumbering the episodes in Sonarr to say for episode 1 look for new files named S19E02? Or am I just going to have to turn off automatic monitoring for this series and go get them myself (won’t be able to do a search manually cause it will search with the wrong query)?

Thanks again!

[Taloth]

It scene continues with E02, and tvdb doesn’t adjust then it will probably be added to TheXEM. But till that time you’ll just have to keep an eye on it

[bigjess007]

I noticed it downloaded Friday’s episode again so I again did the delete and refresh and was just going to shut off automatic monitoring for this season cause I didn’t want to have to fight with it like last season and lo and behold, the special episode got moved to season 19 episode 1.

So not sure who to thank, but whoever convinced TVDB to update things, thanks!

[Taloth]

That’s coz it got changed on the BBC site as well But problem solved.