In my movie library and went to edit, from there I chose a specific folder in the hard drive where I have all my movies, then plex instead of adding the movies from the specified and choosen folder, added every single movie from the entire hard drive? is this a bug?
Plex should only find movies that are located in the folder you specified or any folder inside the folder you specify.
for example if you specify C:\Movies
And you have
C:\Movies\Toy Story (1995)\Toy Story (1995).mkv
C:\Movies\Toy Story 2 (1999)\Toy Story 2 (1999).mkv
C:\Movies\OtherMovies\Monsters Inc (2001)\Monsters Inc (2001).mkv
It will find all 3 of these because they are all under C:\Movies
But if you store a movie in C:\Blah\The Simpsons Movie (2007)\The Simpsons Movie (2007).mvk
It should not find your Simpsons movie because it is not under C:\Movies
I hope that makes sense and is how yours is behaving.
Yes Plex scanner is recursive. It will scan within your selected path and include all sub folders.
@NewPlaza said:
Yes Plex scanner is recursive. It will scan within your selected path and include all sub folders.
So, how do I add 1 or 10 new movies to my existing movie library without adding all my movies all over again? I had to manually delete 610 movies and this takes a lot of time.
if the movies are already inside Plex, Plex won’t add them again.
if you manually deleted the library items / movies from within Plex… re-scanning your library will re-discover all of them.
as explained by nokdim… make sure the movie folder linked to your Plex movie library contains only movies you want Plex to look for.
If you e.g. use your My Movies folder for the media and there’s already movies you don’t want Plex to see, you can either define an own subfolder such as My Movies > Plex (linking this one to Plex instead) or create a .plexignore file telling Plex which videos to exclude.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201375253-excluding-new-content-with-plexignore/
Otherwise… whatever movies are in the folder you link to Plex, Plex will find and add them.
@luigy39 said:
@NewPlaza said:
Yes Plex scanner is recursive. It will scan within your selected path and include all sub folders.So, how do I add 1 or 10 new movies to my existing movie library without adding all my movies all over again? I had to manually delete 610 movies and this takes a lot of time.
Easy, add the 1 or 10 movies to an existing path. Plex will see you added 1 or 10 movies.
Take @nokdim example.
Add your new movies in C:\Movies
Plex will see the new files and add them to your existing library. Remember you can add more then one path. I have 5 folder paths connected to one of my libraries.
@tom80H said:
if the movies are already inside Plex, Plex won’t add them again.
if you manually deleted the library items / movies from within Plex… re-scanning your library will re-discover all of them.as explained by nokdim… make sure the movie folder linked to your Plex movie library contains only movies you want Plex to look for.
If you e.g. use yourMy Moviesfolder for the media and there’s already movies you don’t want Plex to see, you can either define an own subfolder such asMy Movies > Plex(linking this one to Plex instead) or create a.plexignorefile telling Plex which videos to exclude.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201375253-excluding-new-content-with-plexignore/Otherwise… whatever movies are in the folder you link to Plex, Plex will find and add them.
Thank you for your response.
I’ve had Plex for about 1 month, so I am not an expert in any way, shape or form. let me explain what I did and let me know where I went wrong, please.
I have a hard drive where I categorize my movies into different genres, like 'Animation", “Drama”, Sci-Fi". etc, etc. each genre has its own seperate folder in the hard drive. This morning I went to my movie library and clicked on “EDIT”, then I clicked on “ADD FOLDERS” then on “BROWSE FOR MEDIA FOLDERS”, I then chose the hard drive where all my movies are and then I went to the specific folder where I add my new movies, which I call “NEW FOLDER”, and then hit “ADD”, after that Plex went and added the entire hard drive.
Sorry for not understanding how plex works, but if I choose a specific folder, why does plex add the whole hard drive?
let’s get specific…
can you please post what folders are linked to your library in Plex and how your folders are organized in your Windows Explorer.
Plex doesn’t scan your entire library unless it’s told to… maybe there’s some mistake that slipped through below your radar 
The charm of Plex is that you shouldn’t need to structure your movies in individual folders (such as by genre, new…). Plex will allow you to easily filter e.g. by genre, watched/unwatched – this is especially handy if you have a movie which belongs to multiple categories. So unless you have some very specific requirements / use cases (e.g. if you want to distinguish between actual movies and shorts, or separate 4K content in sharing-scenarios…), you should be able to deal with 1 movies folder linked to 1 movies library.
Let’s get there 1 step at a time 
PLEX should not be adding the whole hdd. Why do you think PLEX is scanning the entire drive?
I mean, Let’s say with the information you have provided.
D:\Animation
D:\Drama
D:\Sci-Fi
Then you add the folder D:\NEW FOLDER
PLEX will scan and add all files in that new directory( D:\NEW FOLDER ) to the library.
that’s how it’s supposed to work.
you add a folder to the Plex library, Plex adds every movie it can find in this folder and its subfolders to the library. There’s no way to select individual movies. Plex goes for the entire content of this folder.
@tom80H said:
let’s get specific…
can you please post what folders are linked to your library in Plex and how your folders are organized in your Windows Explorer.
Plex doesn’t scan your entire library unless it’s told to… maybe there’s some mistake that slipped through below your radarThe charm of Plex is that you shouldn’t need to structure your movies in individual folders (such as by genre, new…). Plex will allow you to easily filter e.g. by genre, watched/unwatched – this is especially handy if you have a movie which belongs to multiple categories. So unless you have some very specific requirements / use cases (e.g. if you want to distinguish between actual movies and shorts, or separate 4K content in sharing-scenarios…), you should be able to deal with 1 movies folder linked to 1 movies library.
Let’s get there 1 step at a time
I have 2 external hard drives right now and there were set up by genres before I got plex.
@tom80H said:
that’s how it’s supposed to work.
you add a folder to the Plex library, Plex adds every movie it can find in this folder and its subfolders to the library. There’s no way to select individual movies. Plex goes for the entire content of this folder.
So, in order to add a new movie to the library without duplicates I need to create a folder for each new movie or group of movies?
no… just add it to one of the folders linked to Plex.
the movies already listed in Plex will not be added again.
@tom80H said:
no… just add it to one of the folders linked to Plex.
the movies already listed in Plex will not be added again.
Thank you.
just make sure the folders linked to your Plex library contain only movies you WANT to be added to Plex.
if there’s some you don’t want to see in Plex, just move them to a different folder that isn’t linked to Plex – this will automatically delete them from Plex when you re-scan the library.
