Development Request: Plex to have option to ignore folders or nested folders

General Discussions
1

Plex has a FILENAME convention for Movies and TV shows, this is sensible and works well HOWEVER, it fails miserably if the Plex Server has the media stored in a folder structure that is convenient and sensible.

This was discussed here where the only solution proffered was to change the folder structure, that is no solution at all.

The development I am requesting is for Plex have an option to ignore the folders completely and just rely on the filename which should be in accordance of the Plex filenaming convention.

WHY is this important?

Well if you have thousands of media files it slows down the computer, splitting them up into smaller groups helps improve speed, is more convenient for the user and just makes sense.

Currently this folder

PlexSeries/Comedy/Californication/Series01/Californication S01E01 Pilot.mp4

Is NOT identified by Plex, in fact it sees the word comedy and then wrongly identifies all content below calling it BBC Comedy.

Movies are also affected, on disk I store movies by genre and by franchise, something like X-Men or Star Wars can be confusing if sorted by filename so I use the year

PlexPG13\PG13\SciFi/X-Men/2011\X-Men First Class (2011) PG13 Narrative Text.avi

This not only causes the movie to incorrectly identified but it lists it at the top of the library because it is using the 2011 nested folder name.

All Plex needs to do is use ONLY the file name.

Grabbing the right most text in the string as far as the backslash \ and then moving from left to right will produce

Californication S01E01 Pilot.mp4

Californication S01E01 is all that is needed to id the episode and the series to which it belongs (S01).

The same applies with the movie.

X-Men First Class (2011) PG13 Narrative Text.avi

X-Men First Class (2011) tells place all it needs to know.

All we need is an option to tell Plex to ignore the folder and pass the filename to the media agent that does the search.

Please develop this feature and please vote for it if you are a Plex user.

2

This can be fixed by changing the way you have your library paths setup on Plex. Take a look at the Add Folders part of Creating Libraries

See my screenshot here how my library is setup with multiple folders (I don’t have the same folders you do, but the same principle applies, just add the library folder to the proper point so the scanner can do its job):

In the case of tv shows the path to your library paths should be (for as many as you have):
PlexSeries/Comedy/ PlexSeries/Drama/

Same in the case of your movies:
PlexPG13\PG13\SciFi\ PlexPG13\PG13\Comedy PlexR\R\SciFi

I don’t think there is any need to change how it works currently if you set up your libraries in the correct way. This effectively ignores all of the other folders because Plex itself is pointed at the folder at the proper level. Hopefully this helps. :slight_smile:

3

Sorry but you clearly have misunderstood, it CANNOT be fixed by the method you suggest.

I want ONE library for movies and ONE library for TV Shows.

I did say

  "This was discussed here where the only solution proffered was to change the folder structure, that is no solution at all."

I said I did NOT want to have 20 libraries for series and 20 libraries for Movies, it makes Plex unworkable.

I am requesting a development for Plex to use the FILE NAME not the FOLDER, if you have a way of making it do that then please advise, otherwise you are not contributing.

There is no logic to using folders, except when to give Plex a clue when people have NOT used the file naming convention Plex suggests.

Thanks anyway.

4

@rkcc4 said:
I want ONE library for movies and ONE library for TV Shows.
Yes and adamskoog already told you the solution.
Just add multiple folders to one library like he said:
@adamskoog said:
In the case of tv shows the path to your library paths should be (for as many as you have):
PlexSeries/Comedy/ PlexSeries/Drama/

Same in the case of your movies:
PlexPG13\PG13\SciFi\ PlexPG13\PG13\Comedy PlexR\R\SciFi

5

nowhere in @adamskoog post did he suggest that you create multiple libraries.
He is pointing out that you can add multiple folder to a single library

6

@rkcc4 said:
Sorry but you clearly have misunderstood, it CANNOT be fixed by the method you suggest.

I want ONE library for movies and ONE library for TV Shows.

No, I didn’t misunderstand, but I believe you have. The screen shot above is for my one movie library looking at multiple folders, just like what you are needing to do. Please read my post and look at the options a bit closer. The answer to your issue is there if you give it a chance and read the documentation.

7

@rkcc4 - I think you might be misunderstanding the way Plex scans your files. It does not start at your files and work it’s way up. It starts at a folder and works it’s way down. And for TV Shows, the folder that the library points to needs to be the parent where the shows are. Using your example:

PlexSeries/Comedy/Californication/Series01/Californication S01E01 Pilot.mp4

You want the library to start at the Comedy folder. If you want all your TV shows in 1 library, just add each parent folder to the library like @adamskoog showed above.

PlexSeries/Comedy
PlexSeries/Horror
PlexSeries/Romance
etc…

I have TV shows on different drives and this works that way too. Just point to each parent folder, but make sure you don’t have any loops. i.e. Don’t point to the Comedy folder and the PlexSeries folder for the same library.

PlexSeries
PlexSeries/Comedy

For movies, it doesn’t really matter. You can next movie folders as much as you want and Plex should be able to find them properly.

8

I can see what Adam suggests is a kind of workaround but with 3 drives and 20 genres it means adding 60 folders manually one by one.

Setting this up once is tedious enough, but if I recommend Plex to others as I do I inevitably get asked to set it up. So if this design makes it more tedious I just don’t recommend it.

Even then it does not work for movies in a franchise which I may name by the franchise then by year (think X-Men with all it’s prequels and sequals).

Now I can rename, I can stop using genres but any software that inconveniences the user like this is badly designed in my book. If we have these media databases and a file can be matched if it includes the title and year or the title and series then episode number I see no reason to use the folder name, except to know that files are in the folders.

I stand by my OP, I think Plex would benefit from having the option to use the filenames.

Thanks to all for input.

9

I understand your frustration but it would not be possible for Plex to adapt to every user’s organization structure.

I would suggest that if you do not plan to put each genre in their own library when using Plex, there is no need to keep it in your original file structure. Just move all your Shows up a level. Since it’s a move, it will be quick. Then you only need to add 3 folders.