Does having movies inside a folder help matching over and above file naming?

[marvin_hecht]

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Does having movies inside a folder help matching over and above file naming?

I am settting up a media server for exercise videos. While I have experimented setting them up as tv shows versus movies, I am forced to set them up as movies since that is what moviedb supports (there are some exercise videos entered as tv series in their database- but it will not be long before the moderators get around to deleting them).

OK so this means for P90X I have a top-level folder called P90X (2004), and then inside there, folders for each of the 20 or so videos: P90X - Chest & Back (2004), P90X -Ab Ripper (2004), P90X - Plyometrics (2004) etc. Inside each folder is the .mp4 with the exact same name as its folder.

OK, so I know this makes neat and clean for storing .srt files and/or custom .jpg (which I may do for some). But it is a royal PITA to both create these extra folders, and it means that when you go into the “folder” view - it may also show you other folders instead of the videos at this point (not sure-I’ll have test this). When I set “folder” view I want to see all the workout videos for P90X.

What I want to know is- does having this dedicated folder help matching? I want to hear from the programmers or developers. I initially had problems with matches and so I started setting up these folders for about 1/2 of my workout videos. But now I think the matching problem was due to other things (like there not being an entry for particular videos in moviedb).

So if the answer is that FOR MATCHING IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE, what advantages are there for having these folders? Other than the ability to cleanly retain keep the associated .srt and .jpg folders in there beside the movie itself?

Let’s say I get rid of these folders but just keep the “top level” folder, say P90X (2004). It actually doesn’t matter if I put the year there, right? I could just have P90X right? In fact, I have not found ANYTHING in the plex documentation about how to title folders “above” the level of the movie folder itself - does Plex care? I youtubed and some people have just have 1 MOVIE folder and thousands of movies in that single folder, others have a folder called A for all movies starting with A, B for all movies starting with B. I suppose some people have folders for Genre, or some other naming system instead - it could be anything, right? From a programming perspective, does this cause Plex problems? Like does Plex have to pause for a second, does it try to find a movie called “A” before going one level below and looking at all the movies inside the “A” folder ? Maybe I will even change the names of this level of folder to the main trainer eg a folder for all of Tony Horton’s exercise videos, another one for Julian Michaels, etc.

Thanks in advance.

[JuiceWSA]

TV Naming convention for grouping personal media files

TV Show Library is correct. Fix Match/Search Options/Agent/Personal Media That will tell Plex this is a Personal Item - and Plex won’t mess you up trying to match it. <— or Blow your Edits when it does - and it will. Now you’ve done that - there is no way to get exactly what you want, but you can do this: A TV Show Library Folder/ .......Family Movie Time/ <---whatever you want here ...........Season 2019/ <---the most obvious is a year type season, but you pick .............Family Movie Ti…

Note:
IMDB is NOT a Plex Agent.
TMDB is
TVDB is
P90 is NOT listed in any database.
It’s ALL Personal Media.

If you want it to work like a TV Show - put it in a TV Show Library - name and structure like a TV Show and Fix Match to Personal Media so you can edit it.

[Volts]

That’s an interesting question. Having good file naming is the solution to a lot of issues, and it’s The Gospel that directory structure matters too. Who are you to question The Gospel? I’m curious too.

The Movie and Series (TV) scanners definitely look at the directories. For TV there’s definitely an assumption that it’s Series/Season.

With “perfect” file names, I’m not sure if the directory structure matters as much. So I agree - that’s an interesting question.

There’s comments in the .py like this:

  # Not a perfect standalone match, so get information from directories. (e.g. "Lost/Season 1/s0101.mkv")

So it’s clear that directories can help matching if file naming isn’t adequate.

There’s a big update to the Movie scanner in the current PMS beta, and I have no idea how it behaves.

For the “old” scanners, you can see the Python code. I’m not sure where this gets put on different platforms, but on FreeBSD it’s something like:

.../Plex Media Server/Resources/Plug-ins-fede5bdc7/Scanners.bundle/Contents/Resources

I haven’t looked at or thought about it enough to say that it DOES or DOESN’T have other pros/cons.

For movies, the Plex documentation encourages directories, especially IF you are using any of the additional features - especially local media assets or extras.

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I fear that your question is going to be drowned out by “matching P90X is weird” answers.

P90X and Jillian Michaels are probably the “best case” for workout videos because they have been added to some of the databases. For others I thought this was a good discussion. It doesn’t address your scanner/directory question, but it shows some of what other people have done for workout videos and has some good links.

Workout Videos - This really can't be THAT difficult

Hello, I have been googling like mad trying to figure out the best way to add Workout series to Plex. Collections are kinda meh since I want to share with computer illiterate family. I tried adding P90X3 as a library and these seems to work great. You’ve got TV Shows, Movies, P90X, P90X2 and P90X3. When you go into P90X3 everything is named correctly (using the file name as the title ‘ab-ripper’, ‘chest and back’ - cool!). The problem with this is if you want to have dozens of Workout Series i…

[FitnessEnthusiast]

Thank you for that information esp from the programming perspective.

I can vouch that moviedb has all the P90 series and more, just to set the record straight.
https://www.themoviedb.org/search?query=P90
https://www.themoviedb.org/search?query=P90x
https://www.themoviedb.org/search?query=P90X2
https://www.themoviedb.org/search?query=P90X3

I did some more experimentation yesterday and so far, with perfectly named files for workout videos as movies, they do not need to be housed in their own folder - I found out that when Plex was matching things wrong, its because that particular workout video was not in moviedb and I had to create an entry, OR it was there but did not have the release date (year). So I cannot find a single case so far where for me it matched “better” when housed within its own folder - but I’ll see how the new Plex scanner works when it gets released next week - I’ve heard good things - so I think it will only get better.

I have a question in the tvdb forums about fitness videos, but officially they are not supported and will get deleted. The moviedb Bible does officially support workout videos entered as movies but marked as a video. No problem, and no risk of deletion. Now… that being said, some series are entered either both ways, or only as TV shows and guess what - it works AWESOME when they are set up as TVs shows. Except, since that is not supported, those entries may get deleted.

Insanity Max 30 is entered both ways at moviedb - and I’ve got it set up both ways on my Plex server right now. There are pros and cons of each method with a slight edge to TV shows. For TV shows you get to see the various episodes and little previews, but you also have to scroll up/down more than I want. Also, when entered as a TV show, you see various posters for the various “seasons” and these are mostly 1 season - except someone may have entered some of the workouts as a different “season” - eg I entered the “deluxe” disks of Insanity Max 30 as a second “season”.

Setting things up as Movies is something I initially balked at, but I am beginning to like.
You can keep all the videos in one folder (per my question above) and in FOLDER VIEW you can go in and see all the available videos for a workout series, and the display is more compact (less up/down sideways) scrolling than when set up as TV show. You don’t get those little previews of the video but most people have entered cool “posters” for each episode and labelled them with the workout on them, so it works fine. If you don’t want to view by folder, you can also create a collection for each workout series, and add the videos to that collection. I think this new scanner coming out will also pull moviedb’s collections and make your collections for you- but for workout videos this won’t work - because moviedb only allows collections (in their database) for actual movie collections like the Star Wars series.

Overall there are MANY more entries in moviedb for workout series as movies, and because they don’t risk getting deleted (they are supported) that’s what I’ll go with. Also I like the fact that with movies & COLLECTIONS I can group what I want personally, whereas if entered as TV show, I am stuck with whatever someone else “Decided” gets grouped as a “season.” Eg for T25 some people like to split the episodes into 3 seaons for the 3 phases (alpha, gamma, betta) whereas I regard it as 1 series / season.

In the ideal case I’d like to see Plex have a category called Fitness Series and/or one of these databases could support these properly- because they really are their own thing. But… that will probably never happen.

[TeknoJunky]

how you organize your files is entirely dependent on if you want to rely on movie db, or tvdb metadata, or if you want to use ‘other video’ library with no metadata.

moviedb metadata will need to be organized according to the correct movie structures plex accepts.

tvdb metadata will require organization like a tv show with seasons, according to plex naming guidelines.

using a misc video library free’s you from any naming standards, and you can organize and name them however you want, but of course there is no magic metadata.

I put my exercise and other videos, into a misc-video library, and organize however i feel is most appropriate.

[marvin_hecht]

Thanks.

Hey to keep people looped in- I am going back to putting each movie in its own folder. Had noticed some wierd things like the “Ab Ripper” being matched with “Jack the Ripper” - lol - and its just safer anyway, cannot hurt.

[JuiceWSA]

If you:
Fix Match/Search Options/Agent/Personal Media

Plex won’t try to match anything.
Personal Media is Personal Media - Nothing is matched to anything.

You do want that - unless you want Plex to blow every edit you make when it keeps trying to match an item that won’t match - and note: that Lock Button does nothing in this regard… nothing.