I’ve read through multiple forum threads discussing home videos, but I’m still not sure how to do it right.
There are several challenges. First, home videos come in all sorts (and I’m only interested in family videos, not some other videos, like lectures, presentations, etc.). Some videos cover repeating events (birthdays, holiday, vacations, etc), some are random (a toddler learning to use a spoon). Since they come from different devices (cell phones, DSLRs) they may be in different formats (some may support or contain metadata, some may not). There may be longer videos (school performance), or shorter ones (child learning to walk). There may be multiple videos for some events (a few videos from a walk in the park), and some may be covered by a single video file. So how do you make it work in PLEX?
Can someone share what worked for you? How do you store the files on the hard drive (how do you name them, how do you group them)? How do you add videos to PLEX (as TV shows, movies, something else; do you have separate libraries for different types)? How do you define metadata to make these videos easy to find in the PLEX app? Is there a chance that PLEX will make a better category for home video libraries?
@alekdavis said:
Can someone share what worked for you? How do you store the files on the hard drive (how do you name them, how do you group them)? How do you add videos to PLEX (as TV shows, movies, something else; do you have separate libraries for different types)? How do you define metadata to make these videos easy to find in the PLEX app? Is there a chance that PLEX will make a better category for home video libraries?
Wow… that’s a bunch of questions… let me take a stab at it:
How do you store the files on the Hard Drive… All my Video files are MP4 files, all of my Posters and Fanart (AKA backgrounds) are JPG’s.
How do you add videos to Plex… I actually have a few Home Video Libraries, and they are separated by content type. For example one library called Cooking Videos, another library called Home Videos, another called Music Videos, and another called Adult Clips. In each of these libraries the files are in separate folders (many Plex users find themselves using “Folder Views” in each client that supports it, because of the metadata limitations of these personal library types).
How do you define metadata to make these videos easy to find in the Plex app… I have taken the time to create individual Posters and Fanart images for each of my files and I store them in the folders with the video media. By telling Plex to use Local Media Files as the metadata agent, it will look for, and use, these files to display in my libraries when browsing. This leads me to one of my pet peeves with Plex right now that can be found in this thread - so I won’t elaborate here. As for the textual information in each entry… well let’s just say I’m a bit OCD and have time on my hands, so I entered this information myself. After all… even Plex says to use the Home Video Library type for media that would not normally have its own metadata available through typical internet sources.
Is there a chance that Plex will make a better category for home video libraries… God, I hope so. This is severely lacking in Plex. There are many threads, and a couple you might want to place your vote in, that can be found by a quick search on the subject.
That’s my quick $.02.
Hope it gives you some food for thought.
@Plexhilarated said:
That’s my quick $.02.
Hope it gives you some food for thought.
That’s good info. Thank you @Plexhilarated. Makes sense. I’m just still not sure how to best organize the home (family) library. As I said, I don’t care about sports, music, etc, since organizing these is not difficult. But for home videos, there are things like repeating events, multi-file events, single-file random events, and other oddities. Like does it make sense to have a folder for Birthdays and then under it add each year, or simply have a flat structure with all birthdays (but separate from everything else), or have a year folder and underneath would be Birthdays, Vacations, etc. E.g…
Some good tips here. Thank you @cayars. I wish there was a similar article for organizing family videos (there are some quirks that make them a bit more complex than such videos as sports, etc).
I would use your second structure… but that’s just me.
I’m more likely to remember the fact that it was a “Vacation” to somewhere, than I am to remember “When” we went.
I wouldn’t want to have to drill through several years to find something.
Some good tips here. Thank you @cayars. I wish there was a similar article for organizing family videos (there are some quirks that make them a bit more complex than such videos as sports, etc).
I use the same technique for family video. I just recently redid my collection due to family request.
I now have them setup in chronological order by year. So it appears like a TV show. I have “year” seasons.
@cayars said:
I use the same technique for family video. I just recently redid my collection due to family request.
I now have them setup in chronological order by year. So it appears like a TV show. I have “year” seasons.
So you have all videos (regardless of event types, such as birthdays, vacations, etc) as flat structure under the year when they were shot? How do you name files (do the file names reflect video titles, or do you set up titles manually)?
@cayars said:
I have my videos named similar to these:
S1994E02 - Wedding Rehersal - 9-9-94.mp4
S1994E04 - Wedding - 9-10-94.mp4
S1998E04 - Easter 1998 - 4-12-1998.mp4
S1998E05 - Grandma’s Birthday - 4-29-1998.mp4
S2006E01 - Aquarium in Deptford.mp4
It’s not the ideal but it works. IMHO, Plex needs to redo Home Videos!
Great, this is really helpful. Do you use a custom scanner to set up titles from filenames or do you enter them manually? Are there any other tricks to help you find videos in PLEX, like, say, you want to watch an episode of Grandma’s Birthday but you don’t remember if it’s from what exact year?
In the past, I have done as folks above have suggested (make home videos into a TV Show library and specify unique agents). However, I need to create a new one and now I see that there is a “Home Video” library option when I try to create one. I can’t find any documentation on what is different for this. Can anyone help? Should I create it the way I always have or is there something better with the new way?
A little bump – still hoping copies and pastes the details from the Plex Pass thread – it doesn’t seem like that info should be locked for only PP holders. Thanks!!
After struggling for some time to try and organize NON movies or TV Shows I finally found a way to pretty easily organize some “personal” media". NFL LIBRARY
LEARNING LIBRARY
SUMMARY My choice of icons on this last set of images is only temporary and I’ll soon be replacing them with some icons I’ll make specifically for Plex. I just added them to grab some screen shots. This “Learning” library is still a work in progress and I only have about 25% of my DVDs ripped and uploaded. Just started it yesterday.
This way of organizing a library has made it easy to find media. This is especially helpful on the xBox One as there is no search feature. Trying to find an NFL game from last week WAS BLOODY HELL but now it’s a piece of cake.
I know many people struggle with trying to make sense of putting their personal media up in Plex in a way that makes sense to navigate and I think these two different libraries show that this can be accomplished. I’ll be using this technique with a couple of other libraries such as personal family videos, other sports libraries, etc…
HOW TO DO THIS The “Secret Sauce” to this setup is three things: 1) Addition of a new Scanner 2) Addition of a new Meta Agent 3) Naming your files properly so they “fit” a category in your new library.
Extended Personal Media Scanner Go to the following thread and download the Extended Personal Media Scanner here: https://forums.plex.tv/topic/88982-rel-extended-personal-media-scanner/ The installation directions may be a bit “off” so this is what you want to do. Follow the instructions give to navigate to the “Scanners” folder. Only don’t put the contents of the zip here yet. Create a sub-folder under Scanners called “Series” without the quotes. Now find the .PY file in the zip and put this file in the Series folder. You should end up with something like the following: C:\Users\cayars\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Scanners\Series\Extended Personal Media Scanner.py
Extended Personal Media Shows Agent Go to the following thread and download the Extended Personal Media Shows Agent here: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/83440/rel-extended-personal-media-shows-agent Follow the instructions exactly as posted in the first message so you end up with something like the following: C:\Users\cayars\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins\ExtendedPersonalMedia-Agent.bundle <-- this folder/directory will now have both “Contents” and “Resources” in it.
You may want to stop/start Plex server at this point if the next section doesn’t work.
FILE NAMING You will see the scanner/meta-agent can take various formats of naming and be able to work with them. I’ve found the S2014E01 format to work the best for me especially with sports. If I used date based formats (2014-01-20) then I get results I may not want. For example while the Super Bowl this year will be played in 2015 I don’t want this game or the playoff, etc listed under the year 2015. I want them to be with the rest of the 2014 season. This of course is a personal preference. The date based naming style cold be super using with family movies. Just use the style that works for the library at hand.
I’ll share some file names: 2012 Week 1 NFL Week 01 - S2012E01 - 49ers at Packers.mp4 Week 01 - S2012E02 - Bengals at Raven.mp4 Week 01 - S2012E03 - Bills at Jets.mp4
2013 Super Bowl Super Bowl - S2013E01 - Broncos at Seahawks.mp4
2014 Week 15 Week 15 - S2014E01 - Bengals at Browns.mp4 Week 15 - S2014E01 - Broncos at Chargers.mp4 Week 15 - S2014E02 - Cardinals at Rams.mp4
So the format is “category” - “year/episode” - “file name”. Make sure each file has a different episode number.
For my Learning library: Educator Math - S04E01 - Expressions and Formulas.mp4 Here I’m not using date in the series but just a series number. Course one will be season 01, course two will be season 02, etc.
ADDING A NEW LIBRARY You add a new library as normal EXCEPT you start by adding a “TV SHOWS” library. Add your folder(s) as normal and then click on "Advanced" Here you will choose both a different SCANNER and a different AGENT like so (The two we just installed): Have fun and let me know how this works out for you!
