Hi All,
My media library wont really work, the Movies part works perfectly
M:\Media\Movies\B\Back to the Future (19xx)\Back to the Future (19xx).mkv
but my TV Shows dont.
M:\Media\TV Shows\D\Dr. Who (19xx)\Season 01\Dr. Who s01e01 name of episode.mkv
it just show D and nothing else on the dashboard, please advice, hopefully i do not have to put 500 shows in the root of the TV Shows folder.
Kind Regards,
/Lars
If your library is pointed at âM:\Media\TV Showsâ then that is the reason you are having problems. The shows must be directly under the TV libraries root folder. If you wish the have letter folders for TV then you need to add each one as a root TV folder.
That is in your library you need to have folders like:
M:\Media\TV Shows\A
M:\Media\TV Shows\B
M:\Media\TV Shows\C
M:\Media\TV Shows\D
and so on
Plex has no problem at all with a library having multiple root folder but it is VERY picky about requiring that TV shows be directly under a library root folder.
I decided that I would not use letter folders for TV shows for that reason.
I do use letter folders for my movies but, even then, I add the letters individually rather that making Plex mine down an extra level. It is more trouble to add all those individual directories but it does make Plex happier.
Thank you for the answer, though it was as i feared, Plex cant handle Tv Shows in alphabetically directory structure like Movies can, and the part about adding a library for each letter in the alphabet as directory is administratively heavy, so for now i will think of another solution than Plex for my TV Shows, and keep Movies in Plex.
Kind Regards,
/Lars
You can use a âcut and pasteâ method to add the folders to the library. That is when you click on âBrowse for media folderâ you can them paste into the resulting dialog. I use that method to add the 27 folders into my movie library. You could get âM:\Media\TV Showsâ onto your clipboard buffer and then when you click âBrowse for media folderâ paste âM:\Media\TV Showsâ into the resulting dialog and then type âAâ and add that directory and then wash rinse repeat for each letter. That is what I have done and it is much quicker than browsing for each libraryâs letter directory.
But for TV shows, I have over 500, I have decided to not use individual letter directories but rather I have one directory called âActive TVâ for shows that are still being aired and then for ended shows I have:
âInactive TV #-Hâ
âInactive TV I-Oâ
âInactive TV P-Tâ
âInactive TV U-Zâ
Those five directories make maintenance easy enough for me and Plex is quite happy to use them and match everything correctly.
I find that excessive granularity actually makes maintenance in Plex harder for me.
@lthasenhod said:
Thank you for the answer, though it was as i feared, Plex cant handle Tv Shows in alphabetically directory structure like Movies can, and the part about adding a library for each letter in the alphabet as directory is administratively heavy, so for now i will think of another solution than Plex for my TV Shows, and keep Movies in Plex.
He did not say âadd a library for each letter in the alphabet.â
The suggestion was to edit your TV library, and on the âAdd Foldersâ tab, add each âLetterâ library as a search folder. Like this:
Hi,
I understood it as such also, but perhaps i wrote wrong, english is not my native language, but still a poor solution.
/lthasenhod
Recent plunge into Plex world, so forgive me if my searching hasnât brought up relevant topics.
I have the same issue in that I have an intermediate level between the top level directory and the program folders. In my case they are classification folders (one or two also have A-D, E-F etc). They are there for two reasons. 1 They made/make it easy to manage the media in a number of ways. 2 They provide simple access to categories for non-plex ways of accessing this media. These arenât going to change until the units physically break.
I was pleasantly surprised to find PLEX caters for my method of using season/episode numbering on the files and keeping these files in one program directory i.e. no need for individual season directories. That had scared me when I read the file naming docs! Especially as the info is obviously there in the file names.
So, is there any way at all of persuading PLEX to ignore a level of directory in the file structure when scanning and maintaining TV shows? I only have about 20 categories and I could add them individually, but Iâm assuming then that the user has to know the category in advance and use specific libraries which then negates a lot of the good bits about Plex indexing such as filters returning related files etc.
Thanks.
No. You can add all those âcategoryâ folders to the very same âTV Showsâ library.
I must be misunderstanding how to do this then.
I have added one category folder as a library and the result was perfect. All data retrieved, artwork , descriptions all appears to be correct and the series are separated into seasons, despite the video files all being in one progamme folder under the category.
Following your reply, to test, I have created a complete copy of the categorised directory layout and copied about 12 video files over in various directories to recreate a partial version, then added a test library pointing to the top level.
The result is that I then get five âprogramme iconsâ, which represent the category folders that were used and in those where there were more than one program folder I get multiple seasons.
None of the program information is retrieved. - A couple of these were correctly retrieved as they were in the first category folder as well so the data source knows about them, so Plex clearly isnât getting what it needs to make the query.
Just for clarity on my original question then, hereâs a subsection of the directory structure I have and need to keep:
TVTEST
Comedy
Citizen Khan
Citizen Khan s01e01Episode 1
Citizen Khan s02e01Alias College
Citizen Khan s03e01Naanis Return
...
This Country
...
Upstart Crow
Documentary
Drama A-D
Drama E-K
Endeavour
Father Brown (2013)
Father Brown (2013) S01E01 The Hammer of God
Father Brown (2013) S01E02 The Flying Stars
...
Natural World
Animals with Cameras
...
Wild Brazil
Travel
...
Great British Railway Journeys
Great Canadian Railway Journeys
Mediterranean with Simon
...
Iâd like to be able to create a single library from âTVTESTâ, but keep the level of directory at âCOMEDY; DOCUMENTARY ⊠TRAVELâ in the file structure without it being used by Plex.
If thatâs not possible are there any alternative approaches?
sorry, the formatting kind of munged the directory structure, try this picture:
You add the individual folders with your category folders to the library. All of them.
Inside, you are still missing subfolders per season.
So, using one of your examples from above, this would be correctly
TVTEST
Comedy <-- this folder is added to the library!
Citizen Khan (2012)
Season 01
Citizen Khan - s01e01 - Episode 1
Citizen Khan - s02e01 - Alias College
Citizen Khan - s03e01 - Naanis Return
You can add several folders to a Plex library, which can look like this:
Ah! Thank you for the swift response.
I thought you simply gave a top level directory to a library. Thatâs fine then thereâs a way through. Bit of a pain but thereâs only about 25 categories so not too bad.
My experience from adding the category as a separate library was that I didnât need that extra season level - Plex picked up the seasons correctly - presumably because I have all my files labelled with season and episode irrespective of whether or not they are multi season. I donât see why Plex would need the directory structure if the files are so labelled - presumably historical decision on processing.
Please donât tell me its an absolute requirement!
Plex is very picky when it comes to tv show file and folder naming.
In the beginning you can get away with such blunders, like missing season folders. But as your library grows, it will suddenly stop recognizing new media if you donât stick to the rules.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/your-media/
There is software which can enforce these rules quasi automatically.
Filebot
Unf. Iâll have to live with it as is and hope its sufficient as the filesystem is multi use. Iâm not duplicating 12 TB of video files just to put in season directories, which will screw up some other things and confuse older members of the family.
I still find it hard to understand why season number has to be in a dedicated directory and the filename but hey, Iâm a user here and grateful for what it brings me even if not quite perfect!
You can create a second file structure dedicated to Plex. Use hardlink to duplicate each file (i.e. file system entry) but not the physical data on disk (i.e. have the same file twice with different file paths but only use up disk space for one).
