Libraries Organization (5.000+ movies)

General Discussions
1

Hello there Plex Friends,

First I would like to address this topic for heavy plex users, seriously, if you are under 2.000 movies, you are probably aware of the problem and challenge I am talking here. Sure you can voice your opinion, free world, every help is welcome, but just have in mind the method you’re using for your 200 movies or 1200 movies library might not work for someone with 5000+, understand why below…

The Limitation
Plex doesn’t have any limitation on the number of Movies you have in one library, or series, etc. But unfortunately your CPU and RAM does, whatever you’re using a NAS, a computer, etc… At some point, you will start to wait few more and more seconds for your library to be read, updated, loaded, etc. This experience becomes clear in 2000 movies at the same library.

So, since my 2000 threshold my solution was to be more creative in my movie collection, my first move was separate:

  • MOVIES
  • MOVIES DOCs
  • KIDS & TEENS
  • CLASSICS
  • FOREIGN

This Library separation gave me an after-life few more thousands.
My directory structure, for sake of scans, were already nicely split as:

But my “- MOVIES” library anyway kept growing, reaching close to 3000 now I start to look for to more wise ways to organizer it wisely and with some logic.
One route I started to explore is to separate like:

  • MAINSTREAM (where here I would add movies that went to Movies Theather, got some Box Office, etc)
  • TV & STREAM (and here movies that went straight to TV, Blu-ray, or streamings like Netflix, Amazon, etc)

But as you can see a result I am having now a complexity of libraries as:

  • MAINSTREAM
  • TV & STEAMING
  • MOVIES DOCs
  • KIDS & TEENS
  • CLASSICS
  • FOREIGN

So, now, HELP!! Please, share some ideas on how do you spread a huge movie library. How are you handling yours?

Thanks in advance,

Ket

2

You might wanna give this a read: take a look at @cayars statistics he mentions in the first post https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/131308/cayars-setup-walk-through-and-some-tips-and-tricks/p1#top

3

OttoKerner, thank you, but there is nothing at the @cayars post that relates to my inquiry here.
I am asking to other members share ideas on how they organize their libraries on big collections.

4

It is definitely being discussed in there.

5

ahahh @OttoKerner you made me read very carefully there again…
Can you precise to me where he speaks about libraries organization/taxonomy? Please… no mysteries…

In his first post, he for sure dd not indexed anything about it, it may be on a different page there!?

6

What are you using as your server and where is your media stored? I ask as I am running PMS on a i5 based Mac mini and have an unraid server as my NAS. I currently have 5670 movies in a single library and don’t experience delays in read, load, etc. Updating of the library when I add movies takes a couple of minutes, but to me that is to be expected when having to scan this number of files and no in no way affects usability. I also like that I can access all from that single library.

7

I have 1 Movies library. But there are 14 folders that point into it (folders like “Movies [#-A], Movies [B-C]”).

  1. the real slowdown occurs as Plex scans the accessed folder for any changes. One big folder or even just a few folders exasperates this slowdown.
  2. One goal for me is to minimize the management time of adding new movies. And even more importantly, minimizing management time of upgrading movies with better copies.
  3. With the new PMP user interface, I would see having numerous Movie libraries as a real point of frustration. Too many up-arrow travels to switch to the next library just to browse my entire movie collection.

Oh, and as a point of reference, I have over 5,750 movies.

8

@Ketaros said:
ahahh @OttoKerner you made me read very carefully there again…
Can you precise to me where he speaks about libraries organization/taxonomy? Please… no mysteries…

In his first post, he for sure dd not indexed anything about it, it may be on a different page there!?

I used to have it all indexed on the first page when it was mostly a tutorial but then it became a how to and chit chat thread so it got harder. When we switched forum software all the links got messed up so I removed most of them. Sorry about that.

Not sure exactly what you are asking but let me try to help. First I run on Windows platform and make use of a program called Stablebit Drivepool. Drivepool allows you to combine multiple drives to appear as one large massive drive. This for example lets me have movies on 10 drives, TV Shows on another 10 drives, NFL football on 2 drives, etc but to all programs these couple of dozen drives all appear as my “F” drive.

For TV shows I have this:
F:\TV Shows\Ended
–30 Rock (2006)
----Season 0
----Season 1
–Wings (1990)
----Season 8
F:\TV Shows\Ongoing
–2 Broke Girls (2011)
----Season 0
----Season 1
–Z Nation (2014)
----Season 3

For the above I’ll have a different season under each show name. For example The Simpsons have 28 seasons under it.
I separate TV Shows out into 2 categories on purpose for my own use which are ENDED and ONGOING. For me when a show is ended (no new shows) and I have EVERY EPISODE made I move it from ongoing to ended. So anything under ended for me will never need maintenance or any additional new episodes.

For both Movies and Music I create sub directories under F:\Movies like the following:
F:\Movies
–#
----(500) Days Of Summer (2009)
–A
–B
–T
----Top Gun (1986)
–Y
–Z
I then separate the movies into the first letter of the movie. Top Gun (1986) would be under “T” while anything with a special character or number such as (500) Days Of Summer (2009) will be under “#”. I have a directory for each movie. I keep NFO, BIF, jpg, the MP4 ect all in that directory.

By breaking things down into letters like this it allows much faster directory traversing for both the operating system and of course Plex.

For Home Movies and things like my NFL collection I do something like the following:
F:\NFL
–2012
----Week 20 Conference Championships
then all week 20 games in that directory

Now in Plex I I can add one directory to each library for every library I have except for TV Shows. So for Movies I add: F:\Movies

For TV Shows I add:
F:\TV Shows\Ended
F:\TV Shows\Ongoing

Using this style of setup keeps the file system fast and allows me to setup other programs such as an FTP server with the same “library” entry points.

Hope that helps,
Carlo

9

I’m glad to see the way I’m doing movies is the most efficient way - I also have folders 0 and then A-Z and every movie then sits inside one of those - for example:

H > Holiday Inn (year) > Holiday Inn (year).mp4

I use collections in Plex to make things easy to find - eg: every movie is in a collection for the decade it was released in - which makes it very easy to see all 80s movies for example.

10

I like that layout on disc. Not only for Plex but if you ever setup FTP server or similar it also greatly aids in remote navigation this way as only a small subset of info is passed back and forth. Same when just using looking at your local file system.

That’s exactly how my movies are as well. All files about the movie are in a directory by the same name with the year.

Something else I do is “tag” my files with Recommended, Christmas, New Years, Easter, Halloween, etc Then before each holiday I have a script that I run against the database (right now it’s Christmas movies) that creates a “virtual” library using symlinks pointed to the actual directories. This allows me to setup a Christmas (what ever holiday) Library for all my users to easily access since most of them don’t use filters. Between the holidays I have a “Recommended” library setup which I keep about 500 movies in. These are a combination of Blockbuster movies like Titanic, Terminators or really good recently released movies. Can’t go wrong by playing one of them.

So with the seasonal/holiday changes the users get a rotating library suited to the time of year or a “best of” collection. This is always appreciated around Christmas when the family wants to watch Christmas movies without having to find 400 out of 10K movies. :slight_smile:

11

Well… somehow, maybe because my screenshot the discussion became about directory structure, but this was never my question, otherwise, this topic would be “Directories Organization” and not “Libraries Organization”… heheeh…

Can each of you share how you guys organize Plex Libraries for Movies? Looking for ideas… that is what I am asking… simple! hehe

Hope it works now… :slight_smile:

12

@JuiceWSA would know but he will never see this post. The PlexPass section is such a handicap.

13

My (family’s) collection consists of over 600 movies last time I counted. I’m sure I have plenty more, especially when counting the movies I’ve recorded using Plex DVR. But anyway…
I have six shelves of movies. I have a large shelf that holds family movies (that in some cases extends to simply ‘movies rated G/PG’ due to space limitations). I have a smaller shelf for comedies, another for action films, and another for drama/thriller, documentaries, and TV on DVD. My smallest shelf contains all my box-set films and movies in large series (Star Wars/Trek, James Bond, Harry Potter, LOTR, etc). I also have a cabinet that contains all of my horror films and anything rated R.
All of my movies are organized the same way in Plex. Movies on the Family shelf go in the Family folder, Comedy shelf in the Comedy folder, etc. The only exception to this rule is the box-set shelf, although virtually all the movies in there go in the Action folder anyway. I also have additional folders for music (each family member gets their own folder), a folder for family photos, and 2 folders for my Plex DVR recordings (one for movies and one for TV shows).

14

Like @cayars my structure is based is alphabetical and designed to be easily navigated across different application/services.

I have split movies in to different quality first
HD1080
X265
4K

In those folders I have a root folder in every letter + #, Within those i store my movies. lol @cayars you have 10k movies +`?

15

@Night said:
In those folders I have a root folder in every letter + #, Within those i store my movies. lol @cayars you have 10k movies +`?

Yep. and it’s growing every day as well.

16

I did knot even know where were so movie movies that was worth storing :stuck_out_tongue: