How do you guys separate your documentaries and movies? Obviously Hollywood movies are different then documentaries, but Plex won’t recognize a Movie folder, Tv Show folder and a Documentary folder, Or at least I can’t get it too.
So I’ve resorted to putting documentaries in the movie folder amongst all the Hollywood movies, which annoys me. This is what my file structure looks like, but it won’t show anything of the files unless they are in the Movies or Tv Shows and I already tried pointing Plex to look in that specific folder. can you guys show me screen shots of your file structure? Id like a folder within documentaries labeled, WW2, Space Stuff, etc and then put all the docs I have into the corresponding folder.
let’s take this up one step at a time. @TeknoJunky has brought up a valid option… however I’d like to keep this as a last resort.
Step 1:
You should familiarize yourself with how Plex works, e.g. how to setup libraries, how to associate folders to a library and how to prepare media in general in order to get the best Plex experience you can get
The best way for this is checking out some of the related support articles you can find here: https://support.plex.tv/articles
Looks like a lot but you won’t need to read them all (however it’s good to know where to find them when you run into a specific issue).
Those 2 should be a good baseline:
Media Preparation (more of a general reference to ensure Plex can later on properly lookup your videos)
ok… I admit it… that’s slightly more than 2
Step 2:
Think of how you want to structure your library… you basically already expressed what you want to achieve:
Library 1: (Hollywood) Movies
Library 2: Documentaries
Library 3: TV Shows
While Movies and TV Shows should be self-explaining (if not, please raise your hand ;)) – we might need to spend some thought on your documentaries.
Step 3:
Key question you’ll need to answer for yourself:
Are those documentaries listed as “movies” in TheMovieDb.org?
If they are, you can use the library type “MOVIES” – if none (or most) of your documentaries are not in the online database, you will be better of going forward as proposed by TeknoJunky.
However… if some of your documentaries are series, you might want to consider a 4th library of type “TV SHOWS” – the online reference for those should be TheTVDb.com
Once you’ve ensured your videos are properly organized/named, you can get Plex to work and create a beautiful library of them (incl. posters, descriptions etc.) – except you had to fallback to the library type “OTHER VIDEO”… for those all you’ll get is the file name as the title of the video.
Step 4:
When it comes to structuring your documentaries inside a library, there’s basically 2 options:
assign genres – this way you can filter your library e.g. by WW2, Space, or Stuff documentaries (if Plex was able to get metadata from the online databases, the default genre for those documentaries is most likely a plain “Documentary” – so no harm in overwriting that)
use collections – same as with genres you can edit the movie’s metadata and assign a collection tag. with collections you will not be restricted to filtering your library but you can also display those clusters in line within your library. So you can create a collection of WW2 documentaries and will see them all in one place inside your library.
