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Does the PlutoTV Metadata for channels include season and episode information for episodic programs?

Open troycarpenter opened this issue 3 months ago • 2 comments

I'm wondering if the metadata provided by PlutoTV includes Season and Episode numbers for programs?

I have used this utility to load the M3U8 file and the XMLTV data into Jellyfin. However, the lack of season/episode numbers prevents Jellyfin from being able to schedule recording an entire series. With no season/episode information, Jellyfin only offers to record a single airing, and even then it doesn't categorize the show correctly.

If season/episode information is available through the metadata API, would it be possible to include that in the XMLTV file? Currently each program seems to only include the title, description, and artwork.

Thanks for a great utility!

troycarpenter avatar Oct 08 '25 20:10 troycarpenter

I do see the season and episode numbers in the episode data:

episode: {
    _id: '6667d9fc626cfe001342ef38',
    number: 9,
    season: 13,
... }

I'm guessing the numbers above are one-based. The XML spec says they should be zero based. So the above would need to be translated into an xmltv statement like:

<episode-num system="xmltv_ns"> 12 . 8 .  </episode-num>

I'm also not sure spaces are supposed to be there. I'm also guessing that some type of data check would need to be in place since movies and one-off programs don't usually have seasons and episodes.

troycarpenter avatar Oct 08 '25 21:10 troycarpenter

I was able to cobble something together to create the required episode-num tag. The spaces are fine to be there, and I was able to leave any missing numbers out completely.

However, it highlights another problem with the Pluto metadata. For each program, there's no reliable way to determine if the program is a movie or an episode or a one-off program. The one-off programs do tend to leave out the episode or season number, but many movies have season:episode listed as 1:1. The metadata does tag the programs with genre and sub-genre, but I've never seen a movie include a "movie" tag.

In any case, I did get what I wanted which is that now Jellyfin sees seasons and episodes for episodic programs and can schedule them. It's a bonus that all movies show at the first episode of their first season.

troycarpenter avatar Oct 08 '25 23:10 troycarpenter