I am transferring my movies (and eventually photos, maybe music) to a Drobo 5D, which will be connected via thunderbolt to a Mac Mini serving as my PMS. I have been reading up on naming conventions and such, and am curious about the recommended folder structure when storing the files on my Drobo. The suggestions I have come across say to split your movie collection into multiple folders (i.e. by year, genre, beginning letter, etc.), or even an individual folder for each movie. Is this really necessary? What is the benefit to doing so?
I have about 400 movies that I will be putting on my Drobo, and I really don’t want to create a separate folder for each, but I will if it is the ideal setup. If individual folders isn’t quite necessary, but sub folders are recommended, how best should I categorize them?
Thank you in advance for any guidance/advice that you can offer.
You do NOT need individual folders for Movies. Plex will get me to do that over my dead body. You can do it if you like and in large Libraries it is a benefit for loading times and such. I like smaller libraries myself, but that’s up to you.
It is easier to find stuff in very large collections by breaking them into different Movie Libraries - how so would be totally up to you. I have 26 Libraries and growing. It makes sense to me and that’s all that matters. Devise some method that makes sense to you.
Not sure if you’re new to Plex or if you have any ‘Boxed Sets/Collections/Sequels’, but if you do you may want to put those items into a separate library and adjust The Sort Title Field to line them up in their proper order instead of alphabetically - which sometimes creates an issue - here’s how I do it:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1342502/#Comment_1342502
Thank you for the quick response. Are your 26 libraries genre based or random?
Also, this may be a stupid question, but are your libraries created both within PMS and where the files are stored? In other words, if I structure my Movies on my Drobo as Plex/Movies/Disney and Plex/Movies/Comedy, would I then create a Disney library and a Comedy library within PMS or will Plex recognize the separate folders if I just point the Plex Movie Library to J://Plex/Movies/?
Regarding your last paragraph, it seems the “Collections” feature would be ideal to handle Sequels/Sets, i.e. Star Wars, Bond, etc. So having said that, why do you prefer creating a separate library? I know your post says they are “tedious”, but is there something they don’t offer that creating a separate library does?
Thanks again for your help.
