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Series

Under Construction

This documentation is actively being developed.

When a Series is clicked on via the home page or the search bar, you will access the Series page (at /series/{series_id}) where all Series-level options, Title Card customizations, files, and actions can be viewed.

Series Page Series Page

This page is separated into two sections - the actions (on the left), and the options (on the right).

Actions

Poster

When a Series is added to TitleCardMaker, it looks for a poster in your media servers (Plex, Emby, Jellyfin) - if a library has been assigned - and then TMDb.

This poster is purely visual and is not used for Title Card creation.

Changing the Poster

If you would like to change the poster, hover over the poster and click the Edit Poster button. This will launch a modal where you can either enter a URL which TCM will download the poster from, query TMDb for a poster, or upload a file from your current machine.

After selecting any of these options, clicking Update will then swap out the currently visible poster for the Series.

To the right of the Series name are two arrow icons ( and ). Clicking either of these will navigate to the previous and next Series alphabetically from the current Series.

If you click either arrow and the current page does not change and the arrow becomes greyed out, then there is no next or previous Series to navigate to.

Monitoring

Each Series can be monitored and unmonitored. All Series start as monitored unless explicitly unmonitored, which can be done by clicking the green / red button below the Series poster. Unmonitored Series do not do the following actions automatically (all actions can still be done manually):

  • Refresh Episode data - i.e. check for new Episodes, look for modified Episode titles, etc.
  • Add Episode translations
  • Download missing Source Images

The Tasks in the scheduler that are responsible for the above actions will skip all unmonitored Series.

Create Title Cards

Scheduled Action

This action occurs automatically as part of the Create Title Cards Task.

Create Title Cards can be pressed to prompt TCM to begin updating existing, and create new Title Cards. This action encompasses the following:

  1. Refreshes all Episode data1; then
  2. Queries any assigned Libraries for updated Episode watched statuses; then
  3. Looks for any missing Episode translations; then
  4. Download any missing Source Images2; and finally
  5. Begins Title Card creation

Background Execution

Because Title Card creation can take a long time, Card creation is executed in a background thread. This also means that if you start Card creation, make a change which would prompt new Cards, and then restart Card creation; TCM will create, delete, then re-create the Cards.

Title Card Loading

Scheduled Action

This action occurs automatically as part of the Load Title Cards Task. Title Cards are never automatically force-reloaded.

Below Create Title Cards may be multiple sets of grouped buttons which can be used to load all created Title Cards into the relevant library.

Selecting Load Cards will load only unloaded Title Cards into the associated Connection and library. This only affects Title Cards which were changed (and not re-loaded), or never loaded in the first place.

Selecting Force Reload Cards will reload all Title cards into the associated Connection and library. This is much slower than normal Card loading, but can be used as needed - most commonly when the metadata of a Media Server is reset and previously loaded Title Cards are removed.

Remove Episode Labels

TitleCardMaker looks for specific labels on Episodes within Plex to determine whether it is able to download Source Images from that Episode. This is done to avoid grabbing a "Source Image" which is actually a previously loaded Title Card, or some image with a PMM overlay applied.

Alongside each Plex library will be a Remove Episode Labels button. This button can be pressed to remove the labels which TCM uses to track whether an Episode can provide a Source Image. This is applies to all Episodes of this Series within Plex.

Options

Libraries

Which libraries this Series can be found in on your Media Servers. This setting is required for a Series' Title Cards to be loaded into the respective server.

Any number of libraries can be added to a Series. However, if your effective Episode Data Source is a Media Server, only the first library associated with that Connection will be queried for Episode data.

Updating Libraries

When adding or removing libraries to a Series, the various library-specific actions can be updated by refreshing the page.

Changing Library Names

TitleCardMaker stores a lot of data under the specific library name as it appears in your Media Servers. Because of this, changing the names of your libraries in your servers is strongly discouraged if it can be avoided.

Episode Data Source

Where to get Episode data from. If left unspecified, this will fall back to the assigned Template(s) or global Episode Data Source value.

If this is a Media Server, this Series must have at least one Library associated with that Connection.

  1. During this, TCM queries the effective Episode data source for any new Episodes and adds them to the Series; and updates the titles of all existing Episodes to match what is currently present in the Episode data source if title matching is enabled. ↩

  2. During this, TCM will not replace any existing images, nor will it download any backdrops or logos. TCM will search for images in the order specified in your global image source priority. If the Series does not have any libraries assigned for a given media server Connection (e.g. a Plex Connection being in your source priority, but this Series having no Plex library) then it will be skipped. ↩