Hello,
I’m new to plex and after a long search it appears as plex has all the features I’m looking for in a media management and streaming application, like adding your own tags and a netflix-like design, that lets you upload your own covers and background images.
But I prefer to manage my file folders and the shown data on my plex media database manually, so when building my plex databass, there’s no way I’m using the auto-scanner.
I have an own folder system on my PC, usually for each franchise and sub folders for movies, tv specials, tv seasons, soundtracks, singles, pictures, trailers and more and some franchises even have more sub folders as for example different quality, subtitle languages and more.
A lot of these files are also connected to other programs and applications, so I just can’t rearrage and rename all my files.
That’s why I’m looking for a way to manually add and organize my files on plex. I don’t mind that it would take me some time adding info on every episode, season and so on and I already found that feature on plex, but it appears as I can only edit already existing entries.
Is there a way to manually add new entries? For example something like “create new tv show entry”, which then lets me fill in all the data, seasons and links to specific folders containing media files or the files directly?
I can do that in all the other media applications and it seems like such a basic feature.
If there’s no direct way of doing this, is there maybe a workaround?
Like I assume the data of all entries, categories and allocated file locations are stored somewhere in the local plex folder. Would it be possible to manually edit these in order to add more entries with custom file locations and names?
No, Plex is not built for manual interaction but for automated one. Once it is added to your database with the system, you can alter it with your own data if yuo want but you need to respect the way Plex want your media organized to let them be added to the database for one. Otherwise it simply won’t work.
Does it definitely have to be a scanner agent?
I’m not familiar with how plex works on the programming side, but does it continuously depend on a fixed file structure while running or does it just write and save everything into a local database once during a scan, where the series name, amount of seasons, file paths and other infos are stored?
If that’s the case, it could theoretically be manipulated.
But another question would be: Is this even allowed? I don’t want to temper with it or let others temper with it for me and end up getting in trouble or anything.
Thank you, I will try that out and see how it looks.
If you are making a Movie Library I think you will want to make leave the scanner as “Plex Movie Scanner” but change the agent to “Personal Media” so it does not download metadata ( if you use “other videos” the file display is not the same as movies.)
For TV library use the Personal Media Shows Agent. It needs to be a tv library to for show/season/episodes to work properly with things like on Deck.
But i suppose if you are only ever going to be viewing “by folder” then an “other videos” library is fine.
I suggest adding a few folders to a library the way plex expects them then seeing what you can get away with as far as editing the Db if you plan on doing that.
I tested around with that “other videos” for a bit, but all it does is throwing in all files from the folders I selected. Is there an option to sort these somehow like TV shows?
What I meant by folders is to set it up like a TV show. When you click on it, it shows you seasons, which contain the episodes. That basicly feels like a folder structure: Series name - Season name - Episode files. I’m looking for a way to set it up like that by myself. Create a custom TV show for, lets say One Piece, then add “seasons” manually and rename them, so I could create a “season” named “Movies”, where I add the One Piece movies I have, a season named “First Story arc english dub”, where I add all those episodes, and so on. I’m looking for management like that without having to set it up like that on a single drive. For example I have some older One Piece episodes on one hard drive, but more recent ones on another drive. But I want to have them displayed together as part of the same show/season. Am I able to do that?
And is there a way to change a file path? When I choose a file, click on edit and then info, it only lets me copy the path for some reason.
You need to make a TV library but set the agent to “Personal Media Shows” so it does not try to download metadata from TVDB or themovieDB. Be aware that TV libraries an be very particular about file naming to be scanned in.
You would need to do that directly in the database. (not something we would generally recommend)
You can have part of show in one folder and another in another folder/drive . If plex recognized them as the same show they will be combined . if not you can merge them
Thanks a lot for your answers. I tried it out, but for some reason after adding files, it didn’t show them under TV shows or other videos (I assume because of the filenames). Immediately after that, the browser tab only showed a spinning circle and it couldn’t connect to the server anymore by refreshing the page. After restarting the server, the whole library got wiped. Dunno how that happened, but it was most likely my fault. Well, it was just a test server, so no harm done
Due to all the testing, I think I got a decent overview about how Plex works, what it can do really well and where are it’s limitations.
I don’t think I will be able to use it as a media collection library for my needs, especially because it doesn’t add any media file regardless of it’s namings and I’m missing a bunch of customization options.
But because of it’s excellent transcoding abilities, especially how nicely it handles stylized typeset-heavy subs and how easy it is to set it up, I will continue to use it as a streaming server program.
So, I will just set up a separate folder on my harddrive and copy everything, I want to watch through plex in the near future, in there, so I can safely rename the folders and file names to make them plex scanner-friendly, without having to touch the original files. After watching, I can just delete the files through plex in order to make space for the next shows.
I feel like this may be the best I could do in my case.
I will also write some of my library customization ideas in the suggestion forum section. Although I won’t expect that it will change anything, It’s never a bad idea to put some ideas out there
