Repost of @cayars excellent post in the Plex Pass-only forums:
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!
Carlo
