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Series

Under Construction

This documentation is actively being developed.

When a Series is clicked on from 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 at the top of the page, and the options in the middle/bottom.

Actions

On the far left and right of the action bar are arrows ( 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.

Monitored Status

Each Series can be monitored and unmonitored. All Series start as monitored unless explicitly unmonitored, which can be done by clicking the green or 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.

Library Actions

For every library which the currently selected Series is assigned to, a menu item will appear of the library and Connection name (e.g. TV Shows | Plex). This item can be clicked to view all available actions for that library.

New library not visible?

If you just added a library to the Series and there is no menu item for it, just reload the page.

Title Card Loading

Scheduled Action

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

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

Plex Servers Only

This setting only appears for libraries associate with Plex servers.

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 Kometa (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.

Delete Title Cards

All Title Card files can be deleted (and removed from the database) by clicking the Delete Title Cards button on the right-side of the action bar.

Delete Series

The Series itself can be deleted by clicking the Delete Series button on the right-side of the action bar. This will open a prompt asking whether you'd like to delete just the Series, or the Series and all associated Title Card files.

If you have toggled the Delete Series Source Images option then this action will also delete all Source Images associated with this Series.

This will not delete any associated Templates, Fonts, or Syncs.

Progress Bar

Underneath the actions bar is a progress bar which displays the total number of currently created and missing Title Cards.

This is updated periodically, but clicking the card text will force TCM to refresh that information.

Color Accessibility

If the default colors are hard to see, these can be changed to higher contrast options by toggling the global Color Impaired Mode setting.

More Cards than libraries?

If the listed Card count is higher than the total number of Episodes, then most likely you have enabled Multi-Library Filename Support, and TCM has created a separate Card for each library of the Series.

Poster

When a Series is added to TitleCardMaker, TCM looks for a poster in your media servers (Plex, Emby, Jellyfin) - if a library has been assigned. If one cannot be found, it searches TMDb, or TVDb.

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 and click the poster. This will launch a popup 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 machine.

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

Preview Title Card

Save your changes

Remember that if you make any changes to the Series or Episode Card options, you must click Save for these changes to be come permanent. TCM will not warn you about unsaved changes.

On the top right side of the page is a Title Card live preview which can be used to quickly observe changes to Cards.

This preview can be refreshed by selecting an Episode from the Preview Episode dropdown (below the Series name), or clicking the preview Title Card itself.

The preview will reflect all changes in the Series and Episode except changes to any assigned Templates (due to how these are handled in the underlying database). These changes must be saved.

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. ↩