Allow Separate Local Asset / Metadata Storage

[phutt]

Simple enough concept.

I spend a tonne of money on giant mechanical drives to store media and they are great at this. I also store a load of tiny jpeg/png/etc files for posters and subtitles and such.

I want to chuck an SSD in my server just for the metadata; replicate the Plex folder heirarchy conventions but it’s just got a few thousand images and whatnot.

Benefits to the end user are faster loading of the library, ability to back-up all metadata easily and ‘cheaply’ & much easier maintenance of metadata across a larger library.
Benefits to server are less wear and tear on my precious mechanical drives loading a tonne of tiny files all the time.

By way of explanation, here is what I’m getting at:

Storage Media 1 folder structure
[Plex Libraries]

[VIDEO]

[Movies]
Movie1.mkv
Movie2.mkv
[TV]
_[ShowName1]
__[Season 1]
__[Season 2]
_[ShowName2]
__[Season 1]
_[ShowName3]
__[Season 1]
[HOME]
_[2019_Holiday]
_[2020_PandemicNoHoliday]

[AUDIO]

[MUSIC]
_[ARTIST 1]
__[ALBUM 1]
__[ALBUM 2]
_[ARTIST 2]
__[ALBUM 1]
__[ALBUM 2]
__[ALBUM 3]
[AUDIOBOOKS]
_[AUTHOR 1]
__[BOOK 1]
__[BOOK 2]
[COMEDY]
_[COMEDIAN 1]
__[SHOW 1]

Storage Media 2 folder structure
[Plex Libraries]

{METADATA}
[VIDEO]

[Movies]
Movie1.png
Movie2.jpeg
[TV]
_[ShowName1]
poster.jpeg
Season01.png
Season02.png
fanart.png
_[ShowName2]
poster.jpeg
Season01.png
fanart.png
_[ShowName3]
poster.jpeg
Season01.png
fanart.png
[HOME]
_[2019_Holiday]
poster.jpeg
fanart.png
_[2020_PandemicNoHoliday]
poster.jpeg
fanart.png

[AUDIO]

[MUSIC]
_[ARTIST 1]
folder.jpg
_[ARTIST 2]
folder.jpg
[AUDIOBOOKS]
_[AUTHOR 1]
folder.jpg
__[BOOK 1]
poster.png
__[BOOK 2]
poster.png
[COMEDY]
_[COMEDIAN 1]
folder.jpg
show 1.jpeg

Bonus points if we can have a Movies>COLLECTIONS folder for local collection posters, simply named whatever the collection is. eg *MCU.jpg* *Back to the Future.png* et cetera.

[tom80H]

There’s already an existing feature suggestion thread discussing such an option.
I suggest you comment/vote in that thread in order to avoid distracting/dispersing votes.

Add multiple scan locations for local assets

Can you please add the ability to have the agent scan more than one location for local assets. My movies are located on one drive and the settings , agents/movies/personal media/local media assets/settings allows for one location ( ex. C:\ ). I however store other personal media i would like scanned for assets on another drive (ex M:\ ). when I add the folder from the m:\ plex does recognize or load all the available files and the majority do not have asstes or metadata. I had to scan folders ab…

The same goes for the bonus part of your suggestion

Feature Request -- ability to use local collection posters assets

There is currently no way to use local assets for collection posters like we can other artwork (poster.jpg etc…). I’d like to have the ability to set collection posters locally rather than having to select or specify it via the plex UI. One possible solution could be to have a collection.jpg in the folder with the movies which are part of the collection. You could even mandate that a copy the same collection.jpg for each movie which is part of the collection has to exist.

I’ll therefore close this thread as a duplicate.

[OttoKerner]

To me this sounds like what Plex server does anyway: scan all the local assets and create copies in its own plex data folder. Which can be relocated to a SSD already.