Houston, we have a problem.
Obviously, a major malfunction.
Gaaah!!!
I’ve gone and deleted leading articles from the filenames of over 10,000 TV episode videos and metadata files (having to rewrite all my scripts to accomplish this now and in the future).
I had to create alternate titles for several series at TMDB where searching failed without the leading articles: “The First (2018)” becomes “First Hulu (2018)”, “The Hunt (2015)” becomes “Hunt BBC (2015)” … similarly needed to create “Responder BBC (2022)”, “Teacher Hulu (2020)”, “War of the Worlds BBC (2019)”, “Wire HBO (2002)”.
(As typical with TMDB, most failed matches included titles with very short one word titles; usually being hijacked by series with longer titles including that word. BBC’s 2019 “The War of the Worlds” failed because it understandably conflicts with Studio Canal’s 2019 “War of the Worlds”.)
After disconnecting from iTunes, deselecting my shares, deleting my Infuse database, restarting my AppleTV, and reimporting … I first thought everything was okay when I viewed my collection in the files browser. My alternate titles worked to correctly identify all the troublesome series, and all were presented in proper filename order.
SO - CONSIDER MY SURPRISE
When I went to the library and clicked the pink icon for “TV Shows” and all my titles were sorted alphabetically by leading article!!
“The Expanse”, which you promised would be sorted under E, is STILL sorted under T. So is “The First”. As is every other title beginning with “The …”.
Every title beginning with “A … ” is sorted under A. As is every title beginning with the articles An, El, Das, La, & Les (which have similarly been stripped from filenames).
What. The. F—-.
How? No filename, nor containing folder, begins with T.
Exhibits 1-3:
Bizarrely, “Sort by Title” at least disregards the leading article “The” — though not “A” and “An” (“A Perfect Planet” and “A Teacher” still listed with As) nor the foreign equivalents mentioned above.
How in tarnation does “Sort by Filename” result in titles being sorted by leading articles when neither the folders NOR the actual filenames include the leading articles?