Currently it seems Plex can offer only single level or 3 level libraries. By which I mean that e.g. Video and Movie library types are essentially one level deep. Yes there can be an enclosing folder, but it has no effect on data presentation. Those libraries just contain a flat list of items. So just a single level.
Then there’s the TV type library. In this case the first subfolder is the Show, but each episode HAS to be in a Season folder, so it’s a 3 level hierarchy.
I’m finding I need a 2 level hierarchy type of library. So each media file is grouped in an enclosing folder, which itself is grouped in an enclosing folder in the main library folder. So 2 levels deep.
This would be useful for e.g. Music Videos, so the library would list the artists and in each of those folders would be their media (videos). It also would suit other videos that would best be grouped by e.g. their artist, like TV shows/documentaries about a particular individual. The important link there is that person and there’s no season or episodes, but it makes logical sense for them all to be grouped by their subject, whoever he or she may be.
I’m thinking that ‘smart’ collections would help to overcome this limitation, but that would require manual intervention for each artist/subject.
How do others reconcile this requirement with Plex’s capabilities? Is there something I’m missing here. Is there a way to achieve such a 2 level structured library?
False. You can have multiple seasons in one folder, as long as the files are named properly. And on the other side, you can choose to have Plex display the show as a single group of episodes and not separate seasons, too.
You could do this with an existing TV library structure. Artist is the “show” and the music videos are individual episodes. You could even make videos from a specific album or period of their careers a “season”. Of course, none of the metadata would be automatic for this. You’d have to add it all yourself.
Plex can already show different works featuring an individual across multiple libraries with the Cast detail/filmography view. Actors who have been a guest on a late-night talk show get the show listed on their artist bio page, for example.
Not sure if I’m misreading your idea but so far this sounds like a fairly common misconception about how Plex works. You’re wanting Plex to display your media based on a pre-concieved directory structure, and the idea of Plex is the display is abstracted from the files. The directory organization is only meant to allow Plex to identify the media, that’s why the rules are somewhat rigid. The presentation and display of the media is dictated by the Plex client and its features.
If you want features to see a list of all people identified as being in a works on your server and pull up a cross-library view of those works, the new Artist Bio page is halfway there. But it will require further features to get an alphabetized long-list off all people (and where is the cutoff here? have you seen how long the cast row is on some films?), and get categorization for the people (musicians/actors/directors/writers). For right now, I think people who want collections like this are stuck making collections for each person for easy access (I have a collection for Akira Kurosawa movies for example).
Thanks for the reply, I’ve been struggling with PMS crashing problems, but have now thought about this some more.
First of all, I am fully aware of the Plex interface being an abstraction from the folder structure, but any maintenance of the media files REQUIRES interaction with the actual files and hence the folder structure is very relevant to how easy that is to accomplish. So e.g., although a TV type library could be used to hold music videos, it’s a kludge and requires the inclusion of Series/Season and Episode numbers in the file/folder names, which is something that therefore needs to be invented in some way that makes some sort of sense - which of course it never will as albums are not rigidly numbered. Also, using Season/Series names means manually setting Plex’s internal tags for every album which is not only arduous, but totally lost in the event of having to re-create the library for any reason.
I would also point out that Plex’s own documentation makes NO mention of being able to leave out the Season folder level which in any case would make the whole naming scheme very messy. However, wouldn’t be the first time their documentation is diametrically opposed from reality.
So no, I don’t believe a TV library is actually suitable, especially if one wants to integrate the music videos with the music. For this, the music videos need to be in a Music type folder structure, that in fact mimics the relevant Music library so everything matches and videos are correctly matched to their associated Music Artists and/or tracks.
The question then is what type of video based library can utilise a Music type folder structure?
I still maintain that Plex needs some changes and/or additions to its library types. If they could just allow a Music type library to work with videos (without requiring any actual audio files before it will include the videos), that would solve a lot of problems, particularly for Music Videos which is actually a very necessary facility that currently, let’s be honest, Plex deals with very poorly.
I dunno. “This is our third studio album” is a pretty cut and dry. On the other side of the coin, this also leaves you open to set the numbering up in the way you want since you’re not having to match some listing on a third-party metadata provider. When adding shows to my my TV library I find myself having to re-number things in a way I don’t really agree with sometimes.
If the files are named to match Plex’s TV series naming they will reload the same. Also you might be able to set up Match Hinting files to recover some of this if needed. Really I think creating backups of your library database occasionally and keeping it separate of your sever like any other good backup strategy might be better for a disaster-recovery option.
The naming scheme works in ways that Plex does not want to support officially sometimes. I can leave season numbers off individual file naming normally as long as the season folders are named “Season X” and nothing else, for example.
All my Die Hard movies are in individual folders of the name of the specific movie, but then all those folders are in a “Die Hard Collection” folder, and Plex sees the individual movies (it does not make a collection automatically, unfortunately). Meanwhile my Planet of the Apes collection is all the film files themselves together in a single folder and Plex still sees the individual movies that way, too.
I think it would make sense to just have a music library recognize video files with the same name as a track in the album’s folder as being a music video of that song, like you said. And you get a little TV icon or something in your album list you can select to play it instead of the music track. But that’s a Feature Request.
With the current limitations of Plex’s clients I still think a TV series library is best if you have that many music videos. Otherwise it would just be an “Other Videos” library.
It’s a pity that for a TV library Plex cannot handle Season/Series NAMED folders. You can edit the tags later and add a Series title, but that’s what I meant would be lost if having to reload a library. There’s no way that I know to supply Plex with a Series name/title on import. It HAS to be done later. If Plex could handle named Series folders and use that as the Series name, that would be great. However, I suspect they also need a number for other internal stuff.
I am trying to solve 2 requirements:-
I want to be able to set up a library of video files that are grouped by some parameter that can be read on import. So e.g. in the main library folder there might be a ‘Steve Martin’ folder that contains one or more of his ‘stand up’ comedy videos and Plex would display a library with those names at the top level and clicking on any one would then reveal the contents. This is sufficiently different it needs its own way to display content, grouped like that. Neither Movie nor Other Video types can do this and trying to use a TV type library requires a lot of manual adjustment and/or non standard naming practices that may well fail in the future.
My solution to the above is probably to just use an Other Video type library and only use ‘Folder View’ as that WOULD have everything grouped as required. Not ideal, but would work.
My other requirement is a library to view Music Videos whose folder structure would mimic a Music type library because music and video files would need to be matched to appear ‘in-line’ together when viewing the Music library.
So in this case, the videos folder structure is fixed and nothing can be done to ‘munge’ it is some way to fit what any other library type wants. It HAS to be a library that can deal with how it is. Not the other way around.
For such a standalone library, I don’t think a TV type could be used as if it did find anything, I doubt it would arrange it as required, not without much ‘adjustment’ of the folders and files naming etc which as I explained is not possible.
So I think again, best option is to use an Other Video type library and only use ‘Folder View’ to see the desired Music type structure.
What I have not yet tested is whether ‘Folder View’ can utilise ‘extras’ like artwork files to provide a better view. I doubt it can which would be a shame, but the lesser of two evils.
Just FYI, if you decide to put any items in an “other videos” type library it won’t recognize any custom artwork you add for a lot of players
I made a music videos library and added artwork to every song. It shows up fine on Windows so I didn’t realize there was a problem. After taking the time to organize a few hundred songs I realized none of my other devices display the artwork.
I spent a lot of time to get a random, ugly, off-center screen shot.
The truth is, regardless of file structure Plex just doesn’t really support a stand-alone Music Videos type library. Any solution you come up with is time consuming and doesn’t garner the best results
If you type “Support Music Videos” in the search bar above, you can see this isn’t a new problem
Some of the other features you’re looking for are handled reasonably well by using collections
You can have a Steve Martin collection and group stand-up, TV and movies even across library types
You can automatically create collections with a set number of movies to be included but they only get grouped by movie titles. All the Die Hard Movies would be included but this doesn’t work if you want something grouped by an actor or genre.
I believe there is a feature request to have collections created by your folder structure but you’d have to search for it
Also, instead of editing things manually inside Plex, you can put identifying information in the files metadata and have Plex display that information using mp4 files. In the library advanced settings enable “prefer local metadata”
You still have to edit things manually but if you ever had to rebuild your library or server all that information would be retained
Yes, I’ve been assiduously managing the metadata of 25,000 music tracks for many, many years now, so well aware of that process. However, there is Plex data that cannot be gleaned from any of the file’s metadata. Collections being one of them. I did read somewhere though that Plex will read the Album tag and use that as a Collection, but that’s no good when the Album tag is required for its real purpose, which is quite likely with regard to music videos.
The problem is as you say. Plex doesn’t support music videos - or any sort of video library for which a flat structure is insufficient and a TV type library simply is not suitable and requires a lot of ‘kludging’ to make work at all.
I don’t have many ‘stand-up’ type videos, so yes, I could use Collections for the artist, but empirically it’s not right. Collections should not be required for PRIMARY group purposes. So yes, grouping all Die Hard movies together is an excellent use for a Collection and I’m delighted to see the introduction of ‘Smart’ Collections, although as a Plex Pass holder I’m surprised and somewhat miffed that they have omitted to let me know about quite a few such stellar improvements that have been introduced. But that irritation aside, it should not be required to have to use Collections for THE PRIMARY grouping. That’s a bit like a Music library not using Artists and then suggesting Collections can be used instead. Yes it can be done, but the result would be poor in comparison to proper artist support and as I said, would require manually setting up all those artists. All 1000 of them? Er, no thanks.
So, back to my original post. Plex needs better support for structured/hierarchical video data, i.e. more levels than just the single one that Movies type libraries provide, but not as specific as TV type libraries.
On the other side of the coin, this also leaves you open to set the numbering up in the way you want since you’re not having to match some listing on a third-party metadata provider. When adding shows to my my TV library I find myself having to re-number things in a way I don’t really agree with sometimes.
