I’m considering Plex for serving movies on a local lan.
I’ have 4 TB of movies and tv-series in two separate directories:
E:\Videos\Movies and D:\Videos\TV-Series.
Currently, the family accesses my movies/series on a link page, names only.
If Plex wouldn’t ‘hammer’ my setup too much, it would be a lot better user experience.
My naming convention is considered pretty ‘standard’ as far as it goes:
Movies: Zombieland.2.Double.Tap.2019.mp4
Series: Altered.Carbon.S01E08.mp4
Does Plex’s database config establish links to files without requiring a change in directory structure or changing what is considered a ‘standard’ naming convention?
On initial config, does Plex retrieve and store data for all found movies and series?
Do you store in separate directories and point your database to the data/movie links?
Or do you modify the actual directory the movies are stored in (a deal-breaker, in my case)?
I’ll be serving files on my local lan to family members who access the server via browser on laptops and desktops, no phones.
Do you think Plex would be too ‘heavy’ for my limited use-case’?
System: workstation, dual Xeon, 65MB, 4TB, 2TB, 2TB all SSD.
Plex has specific naming/organization requirements (for movies and TV shows). There’s no guarantee Plex will do the right thing if you don’t follow that, resulting in anything from incorrect matches that you have to manually fix, Plex merging unrelated items together that you have to split apart, or not scanning in content at all.
On initial config, does Plex retrieve and store data for all found movies and series?
Yes. You can create libraries for your movies/tv shows, point them to your movie/tv folders, and Plex will scan everything in.
Do you store in separate directories and point your database to the data/movie links? Or do you modify the actual directory the movies are stored in (a deal-breaker, in my case)?
Plex doesn’t rename/reorganize your files. It keeps track of file locations in its database.
Do you think Plex would be too ‘heavy’ for my limited use-case’?
I don’t think so, but it mostly depends on exactly what kind of experience you’re looking for.
As far as whether Plex would ‘hammer’ your setup, there are some features that can be resource-intensive when media is first added, like generating video preview thumbnails if you have them enabled, or intro/credits detection if you have a Plex Pass, but once Plex has processed your library, I wouldn’t consider it resource-intensive. However, during playback, if Plex has to convert the file on-the-fly to be compatible with the formats a particular device supports, that will use system resources.
No, Plex does never do that. (with the exception of the “delete” feature, which you should disable while only testing the software)
Plex will probably be able to recognize your movies just fine.
For TV shows it may work if the media collection is not too large. But you should better use a folder structure for your tv shows, with folders per show and subfolders per season. https://support.plex.tv/articles/201543057-why-is-some-of-my-content-not-found/
Yes. It will retrieve all the data of the items which it recognized (“matched”) and store them in its own Plex data folder.
Yes, Plex’s own data store and the actual media should be strictly separated.
I’d say just install it and try it out.
Unless you are adding raw 4K UHD Bluray rips you should be good with your server hardware.
You can ease the server load and reduce the need for video transcoding by using the dedicated player apps instead of web browsers. Free download below.
Just be aware that the Plex data folder is by default on drive C: If you don’t have much free space on there, you better move it to somewhere else right before adding the bulk of your media to Plex.
I really, really recommend that you just bite the bullet and follow the Plex naming rules for TV shows, in the links others provided.
Plex IS pretty good about tolerating non-standard naming but there are no guarantees about that. It might even work now, and stop working later.
Maybe give Plex a try without renaming anything and just see how you like the interface. Some of your stuff may be missing due to not following the rules – don’t worry about it yet. If you decide you want to give Plex a real tryout, then rename everything and rescan the library.
