1 Folder versus Many

General Discussions
1

Forgive me if this has been discussed before. I have an extensive library in my server, as I expect many of us do. My question is what the best way is to share this media within Plex in regards to folders.

For example, on my hard drive I have my TV library stored by folder for easy. Also, within Plex I have my TV library I have added each individual folder into the library. As a result I have 27 separate folders listed. Is this better than listing just the main TV folder? Is it easier for Plex, and faster for updating?

I have had no problems so far, just wondering if I am wasting time adding individual folders when 1 would be just the same.

Thanks for your opinions.

2

@Nenra my setup is 2 folders. a TV and Movies folder. within the TV folder, i have a folder for each show. beyond it are files following naming conventions. so it’s something like

  • Media
    • TV
      • Duck Tales
        • s01.ep01.the_title_of_the_episode.file_extension

or within the Duck Tales folder i break it up with season folders

  • Season01
    • s01.ep01.the_title_of_the_episode.file_extension

for movies

  • Media
    • Movies
      • Incredibles (2018)
        • Incredibles (2018).file_extension

so i have a top folder called Media and within that folder i have folders i consider “types”. other folders in this level are “Sports” for sporting events. but within that i just use the following naming convention like

  • Media
    • Sports
      • 2018-07-14 Pacquiao VS Matthysse
      • 2018-06-28 England VS Belgium

so on and so forth. now if it can’t detect the media for metadata, i just manually browse for it and add it. it’s really up to you. i don’t believe there’s a “wrong” way of doing it. this is just how i organize my files outside of plex but eventually plex does a good job of managing it within the software IMO.

3

Thanks for the answer. My gut says the same thing, that it probably makes no performance difference. Mainly just faster adding 1 folder instead of several. :slight_smile: Good to hear how others do it.

4

Yeah I agree.
Personally I have one TV shows folder and one movie folder.
I do have a separate TV folder for documentaries and a separate folder for my 4K remux movies.
However in the case of the documentaries that’s just personal preference as opposed to lumping them into the TV library and using the genre filter.

5

I like that idea. I have bonus content and special events in my main library. I like your idea

6

Please consider using the actually supported naming convention:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220687-naming-series-season-based-tv-shows/

Media /
   TV /
      Duck Tales /
         Season 01 /
            s01e01 - the_title_of_the_episode.file_extension
7

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