I’m just wondering so I can get a sense of the wait time, but how long is backlog? Normally I wouldn’t ask but this show is even more messed up than before now I’m not sure which episodes I should be marking. It’s been almost a month since I posted about the initial problem. Did I post it in the wrong category?
It’s best to open a support ticket by clicking “Contact Support” so that it doesn’t get lost on the forums. We’re trying to clean up the public forums as they are quite a mess and are trying to steer our users to tickets. I’ll convert that post to a ticket, and get it queued.
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Awesome! Thank you! I’ll be sure to Contact Support in the future!
@Kate, are y’all any closer to fixing this show? It’s been more than a month and the seasons are still duplicated. I tried checking my support ticket, but it isn’t there anymore. Episodes that need to be deleted haven’t been. I’m sorry to harp on this, but I don’t want to mark episodes because I don’t know which season, 13 or 2021, will get deleted.
Thanks!
I’ve kept away from this topic after the initial posts and it’s gotten hell-a-long - is there an updated FAQ with specifics of all of this?
I’m certainly glad that the TMDB DB quality has improved since the initial trakt V2 mission abort but I’m still sceptical about handling the watched data to be honest. Someone mentioned specials disappearing and stuff? Not sure how 100% matches have been done for content but previously “completed” shows have been reappearing on the back end of my show progress.
Eg. Childrens Hospital - Trakt.tv this now has the 10 initial webisodes as S1 (which was previously just 5 combined episodes). Specials are still untouched and feature all the webisodes from S1…
The Asterisk War: The Academy City on the Water - Trakt.tv has S1 & S2 combined as the first season + separate again… duplicate content just left in on trakt (from the change history this was all already there before merging)?
Sadly changes the other way around are not that apparent.
Here is some info… Trakt Forums
@sp1ti - I think my earlier post answers most of your questions.
When you come across shows that have issues, please let us know. Also keep in mind it’s free to create an account to update listings at TMDB, and as a VIP, you’re able to “Refresh Images” to do a deeper, instant refresh on Trakt once you’ve finished.
@arcreactor Thanks but the article is why I was asking in the first place - it’s rather basic.
@Kate Ok, I scrolled past the post and did not read the remark about “many accidental” switches. Are those documented anywhere so that one could check if they’re interested?
Some questions I have:
- Could an indicator be implemented in the comparison for episode descriptions when there aren’t any? Dates and episode names are one thing but the meta data involves a lot more tbh (I know you have them “saved” but anything not matching the source is always bad)…
- Based on @ImpaktNY48 example for How It Should Have Ended Specials - Trakt.tv we’ll get zero info when the history gets axed or content is incomplete? Those events should really be dumped some place so people to have a chance to rectify this (or not have been accepted for merge in the first place).
- What is with specials in a different order? I’ve seen this plenty - will/was the meta data just set to TMDB with my history being altered to that?
- When I check out the open stuff in the queue I see plenty of content TMDb rejects - what’s the plan for those? @justin implied that he’ll just lock potentially 50k+ shows after the deadline but since it has been extended those should actually be thrown out - yes? Can they be hidden from the site like some of the blocked adult stuff? (This was already brought up multiple times and ignored to be answered every single time oO)
- Are episode IDs saved? What’s the plan for long running anime, telenovelas, etc. which were in the past always split up on TVDB due to technical limitations? Case Closed (TV Series 1996- ) — The Movie Database (TMDb) for example is a single season on TMDB - since new episodes are still coming out you can’t freeze those? Can you set those to a specific episode grouping from there (eg. Case Closed (TV Series 1996- ) - Season (TV) — The Movie Database (TMDb)) and then change the order?
- Will the TVDB IDs be kept on the site even after the API $$?
- I forgot - how is the TVMaze mapping done? Loosing the airtime will be a big hit… That site is certainly missing a lot of shows too…
As a side note: After scrolling through the history a bit I’m honestly quite shocked on how you handled the inquiry about the actual costs if you haven’t even talked to TVDB and the proposed licensing costs are only based on “hearsay”… Imho it’s quite naive to think that TMDB wouldn’t do something similar in the future too. TVDB certainly made plenty of mistakes but they were kinda crushed hard by all the tools and apps that popped up relying on their data. Still, they always offered data dumps and the majority of the content was pretty much “stolen” by TMDB (with even a TVDB scraper bot being active in the early days of their DB incarnation). Once TMDB takes the whole load I’m sure this ends up bleeding them money too (you stopped serving images in the API for exactly the same reasons). Not sure why it’s fair to pay for “justwatch” but not for the metadata provider on which the entire site is relying on? The only similar open database that comes to mind that seems to have a decent way to monetize themselves is discogs (audio) and they don’t even have the burden of serving 4K images… I obviously don’t have a solution either just my 2 cents…
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I honestly agree. I regret not pushing @justin harder regarding this. Even if the outcome of making the transition would likely have been the same, it still should be done with with all the facts in mind. And you don’t even know if the price their offering is something that can be paid. There are so many series that are going to be cut off in a couple months so I think it’s worth a try.
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If this was Reddit I’d reward you with Platinum. I said much of the same months ago. This situation can just as easily happen with TMDB.
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Not to be rude but tick tock tick tock…? It’s been been almost a month and my questions/suggestions/concerns were not even worth a reply? In t-54 (ironically double of the current “idle” time) it will be October 1st where we’ll end up being stuck with whatever mess this becomes.
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This totally sucks. I can’t get any replies either and no one responds to my ticket either.
We hear you and are working to improve the TMDB transition process through support and some backend merging tools. Kate is doing a great job handling the high support load. Sean and myself are responsible for the more advanced data fixes and we are honestly way behind on those and working to juggle them with our other responsibilities.
I’ve been out of the office recently and delayed on responding to a lot of things, I’m sorry for delays. The TMDB transition is a high priority item and we’ll formalize a “rule” set soon for how we will handle things. I’m not going to dive too deep into the behind the scenes, but we’ve had many conversations with metadata providers and app developers which helped us reach our TMDB transition plan.
To address some more specific questions:
- Agreed that full metadata comparison is more then just season numbers, episode numbers, and titles. That is our initial check though and it works well to see if a show’s structure can remain intact when switched over.
- If specials are re-arranged on TMDB, we will adjust them on Trakt to match.
- A show that only exists on TVDB will remain on Trakt, but stop getting updates if no TMDB entry exists for it. Not sure beyond that yet, but maybe we can use TVMaze or OMDB as a fallback for some of those shows?
- We have episode IDs for Trakt, TMDB, TVDB, and IMDB. Coverage depends on what TVDB and TMDB have. It will require manual adjustment for us to move episodes to the TMDB structure in the “Case Closed” example. The actual episode records will still be the same, so they will have any IDs already attached.
- TMDB allows TVDB IDs to be entered in the external ID section. Trakt will store those if entered. Any existing TVDB IDs will remain.
- Existing shows with airtimes will keep those. New shows imported from TMDB will check TVMaze for airing info. If that doesn’t exist or is wrong, we can manually fix a show via support.
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Thanks for the reply and sorry for always nagging - can’t help it 
.
I know you don’t owe us much of an explanation but if the transition with the due date dictated by thetvdb was indeed a conscious decision with all options checked then that is good enough for me. I’m sure we won’t see anything as disastrous as the V2.0 launch from you ever again but the potential is there with stale meta data going forward.
I don’t think those are options. TVMaze is more strict than TMDB when it comes to web content and OMDB I don’t really know but it probably won’t be serviceable to most users anyways given that it’s not really a common ID used in mediacenters, etc.
If you want to commit to TMDB then I’d recommend to rounding them up, tagging them and letting them expire after a certain period.
That is good to hear.
Not really a fan of this approach - the solution is sadly too often “fix via support” which is only benefits trakt itself and is tedious for us, the end user (I think this is also not exposed in the API?).
Are you going to add a button for TVMaze in the sidebar too (please)?
Looking forward to hearing more. I do certainly expect some additional tools/support for the users some time soon too though if you want to do this seriously:
- Reporting single shows through support is tedious and we don’t know if others already did that. Can’t we get a report icon or allow us to “double confirm” the shows and have them put into a moderation queue (sometimes the differences are so minor that they’re irrelevant and are again just work for us users)?
- The deadline needs a bigger announcement on the site itself so more people get involved, including a clearer status on the show page (including after the deadline so the titles can be identified)
- A change history of what was done to the episodes would be nice to know on each shows’ page (at least for a while). I have some manual mappings for the myanimelist sync I maintain which potentially gathers quite a few mistakes due to the changes in season structure. This would also identify the aforementioned “accidential” switches or removals of specials (without notification).
- Everything on https://trakt.tv/transition/tmdb/missing should be auto-refreshed frequently as it features shows which haven’t been updated in months which already have the TVDB filled in on TMDB (saw plenty of those). Please also add a
for title search as there is no selectable title in that list. - There also needs to be a clear policy about what to do with ineligible/duplicated content as mentioned above. I’m thinking abridged series, documentary master lists (like various UK docs, etc.), mini-series, anime OVAs, etc. Those fill up pages on the missing check and let’s everyone start from point 0 if they check them out to fix.
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I released an update allowing us to lock specific seasons and episodes. For example, we might lock the specials but everything else is fine to migrate and use TMDB data.
The transition page also includes a middle Trakt column now to help compare what we have vs. TMDB and TVDB. The comparison is ultimately done on the TMDB vs. TVDB data still, but the Trakt column is a good reference for us that we’ve been using internally.
We are working on improved data movers and mergers right now, which will help adjust seasons and episodes for show with more complex differences.
Other notes:
- I’ll add a way to report bad data soon, similar to how you flag comments. I plan to indicate if it’s already been reported too to not waste time re-reporting it.
- OMDB should be standardized on IMDB IDs which is why I mentioned it. They aren’t an open database though, so I agree not best option for data but it could be better than nothing for some shows not allowed on TMDB.
- Airing info is available in the Trakt API. Ideally we’d want TMDB to start allowing airing info, but I don’t think they plan to. Trakt of course needs this info for the calendar feature.
- We’ve looked into a “change history” but haven’t found anything yet without requiring massive amounts of data storage.
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Items can be reported from the website now. This works for movies, shows, seasons, episodes, and people. Just click the report button in the sidebar, choose a reason, and give us the details. This opens a support ticket behind the scenes, so we can still communicate with you if needed.
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The report feature is a (long) overdue godsend 
. thanks a lot!
do we see that lock? I haven’t noticed it so far.
this is a welcome addition. makes it a lot easier to distinguish problems (just had a good example too Imgur: The magic of the Internet). I might actually poke through some of the “my” shows now.
TVDB recently unveiled how we can initially get “free access” to the API (in a scummy way); only by adding IMDB and EIDR IDs (https://www.eidr.org/ / Search | EIDR). Not sure you heard of the latter but I don’t think they’d allow those shows either and it looked quite bothersome to manage (not sure how they have episodes either if at all).
Ok, then that’s good. With the report function maybe even feasible ;).
I get regular bumps on the airing time thread on TMDB and it doesn’t look like Travis has any interest in adding it.
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Yes, the sidebar will indicate if the show/season/episode/movie is locked. It’s a new feature so we haven’t locked much yet,
This is a good example where we’ll merge those last 3 episodes into the specials. We’re in the testing phase on that merger.
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I reported all three as duplicates however I was wondering if you’d actually merge them. You are just doing a basic duplicate check for each user or would this potentially generate additional plays (I’m sure some people just clicked seen on all of them after finishing the show)?
In general I’m curious on how things will go in the future. I haven’t touched my TV metadata in a while so I’m still on TVDB. From what I can tell a popular legal backup tool is also not going to switch. There won’t be an impact from syncing around dead ID data?
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Wonderful!
I’ve been wondering, is it possible to turn of those emails? I’d rather get no emails (only if there’s an actual reply), or just a browser notification if possible…
I can’t find any setting currently, but maybe you guys have not enabled it?
Otherwise I’ll just set up some rules to auto move Ticket received/closed mails to the bin 