Sorting Imported Videos

[FidgetyRat]

The V7 UI makes great use of video meta data but doesn't seem to actually want to use it!

For example, I can have the whole first season of How I Met Your Mother in its own folder, enter folder view, and be able to select the season separated from other seasons.

Trouble is, all episodes are totally out of order. I guess folder view sorts according to file name, not meta data, which would put "Episode10" in front of "Episode 1" due to string sorting.. To make matters worse, sage doesn't display episode numbers at all, so I have to have a physical episode listing in front of me if I want to go in order.

Is there a way to still use the folder view (so it separates recordings neatly) but allow episodes or videos to be sorted via meta data?

If I go to "Titles" view, it just blobs all of them together and ignores their logical placement, so How I Met Your Mother will just be intermixed in all seasons with smallville, etc.

[FidgetyRat]

I noticed that if I edit the episode names in the meta data, and lead with the number (zero padded) then it will sort in order,

so

"01: Episode 1"
...
"10: Episode 10"

does sort in order. A bit of an annoyance having to edit the meta data of each file, but at least it will pass the wife test now.

[Fuzzy]

For starters, Sage doesn't even HAVE an episode tag to use. Phoenix/BMT utilizes it's own CUSTOM tag for SeasonNumber and EpisodeNumber. So all sage has to go on is Either Filename, or Title/Episode names. The only numerical tag sage could utilize would be ShowID, which for imports is MF[some_random_number]. Personally, I'd recommend moving your TV shows into the recordings database, where there are many more options for sorting/categorizing episodic content. (still no explicit/built-in season-episode options, but sorting by ShowID would work if it is set in a sortable fasion, or using OriginalAirDate would probably be best). You'd have to use something like BMT to populate that data though.

Also, there are some more common methods of naming files to be properly sortable. Most robust is to use a s00e00 notation in the filename... something like

Family Guy - s04e25 - You May Now Kiss the... Uh... Guy Who Receives.mkv

This will properly sort it out for you, whether you group it down by season or not.

[FidgetyRat]

Sounds good. Thanks. One down side with plugins is you often lose sight of what is part of core and what's not.