As smart as Plex is at finding metadata for my files online, it still relies on a specific folder structure that has to be managed manually. It’s very time consuming and there really should be a smarter way of doing it in 2012.
This is my proposal how to solve this problem and a feature I really would like to see in Plex Media Server in the future.
[list]
[]WATCH FOLDER(S): PMS watches a user specified folder, for example Downloads, for incoming media files. It also looks in the subfolders.
[]**IDENTIFY MEDIA: **When PMS detects a new video file, it analyzes it and selects the best match using the following critera: If it containes character combinations like “S01E01”, it’s probably a TV show and Plex files it as such. If the file doesn’t contain “S01E01”, but contains combinations like “XviD”, “BDRip” or “Blu-Ray”, in combination with a year, “2012”, it’s probably a movie and Plex files it as such. Plex also looks for the lenght of the file. If it’s less than an hour, it’s a TV series. Plex is smart enough to only look at the first portion of the name.
[] **AUTOMATIC SORTING: **When Plex has identified the type of video, it moves (or copies) the file to the appropriate location, namely the one(s) used in PMS’ Sections. For example, a TV show would be moved to /TV shows//. If there are several specified locations for the same section, Plex is smart enough to put it on the one with the most free space. It’s also obviously smart enough to look for already existing entries of the show and place all new episodes in the same folder.
[]MANUAL FALLBACK: If Plex can’t find a match automatically, for example because of a very messy filename, the video file isn’t moved and the user is alerted. Plex waits for a manual match and subsequently moves the file to the correct location.
[]FILE RENAMING: Since Plex now knows exactly what kind of media it’s dealing with, there would also be an option for cleaning the file names. For example, an episode can be renamed “Show - S01E01.avi”
[]SUBTITLE SUPPORT: Plex is also smart enough to watch the Downloads folder for subtitle files. If there’s a matching TV show episode or movie in the database, it will snag the subtitle and sidecar it with the video. If there isn’t a match, it will do nothing with the file until there is one. Useful if the video isn’t finished downloading, but the subtitle file is. Subtitles can also be matched manually.
[/list]
These are just the tip of the iceberg, but would save a huge amount of time. I do this (well, trying to) with Hazel today, but Hazel doesn’t know about metadata so it’s not as smart. If you guys have any other ideas how to do this easily, please let me know. But having Plex with this feature integrated would still rock.
What do you think?
HI,
Sickbeard + Couchpotato
Thanks. Gonna give it a try.
Would still like it integrated though :-)
EDIT: Way, way too complicated. Can't for the life of me figure it out.
yeah, personal view = unlikely
1) Why compete with those products unless you think you can do it better (and when you play with them, you'll be hard pressed to think of what "better" would be) - maybe it's a "nice to have" thing but download management is not really the same thing as media playback
2) Plex, being a corporate, needs to maintain good relations with content providers - adding functionality like this is unlikely to help achieve that. There is pretty much only 1 form of content that this type of thing would be targeted towards and that is the one "hated" by the content providers
If you're running into a particular hurdle PM me; will be happy to provide some help.
Thanks for being so helpful :)
1) I did play with them and gave up. It is way too nerdy. I sat for 4 hours with Usenet and a bunch of different clients, some of which I needed to compile my own etc. It's very un-Mac-like and wasn't worth the effort. Way, way, too complicated for the average person. It's also not about Download Management. It's about doing what is needed to get content into Plex. No matter where you get your content from, it has to be filed in Plex' watched folders manually. This could be way easier with the method above. (Think iTunes and what it does with metadata and file structure).
2) I realize that, but let's not kid ourselves here. This is what people use Plex, or any other media center for that matter, for the most.
Very nice of you. And thanks for all the help. I got pretty far, but after a few hours I gave up. Might try again later. ;)
My main complaint is that we’re wasting the resources of the various metadata providers, namely TheTVDB, by scraping once for our file-renaming-utility and then scraping again for Plex.
Plex proxies all the data, it does not come directly from them.
Hi,
my two cents on this. I personally use automatic + hazel + tvnamer to do the job. That gets me covered at least for all TV shows coming in. Tvnamer I strongly recommend for fetching data from thetvdb and renaming the files correctly it is just a wonderful tool. It is command line based but it is quite easy to integrate in hazel or you can write a small Automator action to enable drag and drop.
That said I don’t think it is necessary to replicate all this functionality in Plex as there are so many tools out there that can do the job.
However the idea of an inbound folder where one can drop correctly named media files and then PMS moves adds them to the library and moves them to the right location does have some merit.
Cheers,
Poldi
Thing is, all those tools are for geeks only and a lot of work to use. As Mac users, we're spoiled by nice GUIs and ease of use.
The incoming folder is absolutely the most important aspect of this suggestion, as I find Plex is usually smart enough to figure out the correct match even with messy file names. So even if we drop the suggested renaming feature, an incoming folder would probably work pretty well anyway. It's just important that Plex can prompt the user if it does not find a match. Then the ability for Plex to use both series and films agents on the media and select the best match is not a stretch either.
I had a similar setup. I had Hazel monitoring a folder and once it detected a new show it would automatically run a shell script for TVnamer to run. Not sure when exactly, but now I keep getting shell script errors when it tries to run TVnamer. TVnamer runs fine if i manually run it through terminal. Any suggestions?
How long ago did you use them? Sickbeard and Couchpotato are pretty much install and run these days - not difficult at all. Can't imagine what took you four hours the first time?
This week. They're not.
I have my automatic downloads handled and the names of the shows are always propperly named so that plex can identify them.
I would just like something to sort them into the correct folders. I took a look at SickBeard, but it seems fairly over-the-top for a simple task like that, besides the fact that it seems not that easy to set up, at least not without several hours of configuration…
Is there any other way/App that can copy or move my new Shows to the respective folder??
EDIT: Never mind!!
I figured SickBeard out and after playing with it for a couple of hours, I LOVE IT!! I wonder why no one has made a proper App out of it, but it works alright this way.
A watch folder would be a nice way to do a lightweight scan every hour. Right now I have automatic scanning turned off because it works so hard that it disrupts playback. The “only scan when a change is detected” option doesn’t work for me because I use a NAS and it doesn’t trigger the event on my Mac when I add a file from elsewhere on the network.
Hi,
I had a similar issue with Hazel once after and update. This was some strange install issue. I contacted the developer, who was btw. very helpful and responsive. After removing Hazel and re-installing it and a restart of my Mac it was fixed.
Try this and if it doesn't help get in touch with the chief noodler. As I already said he is very responsive and you have an answer to your request within a day.
Regards,
Poldi
+1. And for those that are suggesting alternative methods, bear in mind that not everyone uses the same system. This would benefit the Nvidia Shield in particular. I would also add that the option to auto-optimize anything added to that folder would be really useful, especially for those with poor broadband bandwidth.
try this
Hello guys, I made this in like a day and figured someone else would benefit from it so…
You will need
delempty.exe
TheRenamr.exe
HandBrake Command line version
I have included these tools in a zip here
Sorting Tool Here
