After a few trials and errors, I’ve finally found a way I can handle music videos (and other libraries) within the constraints of the Plex naming structure. As with my previous comment in October 2017
The programmers at Plex would like to cookie cutter us into using their method of designation in order for Plex to sort out what type of music video by adding descriptive names to each of the files such as
-behindthescenes (behind the scenes)
-concert (concert performance)
-interview (artist interview)
-live (live music video)
-lyrics (lyrics music video
-video (regular music video)
I was not satisfied with this method since If your like me who has Thousands and Thousands of music videos…this does not make sense…I’d spend years just editing them or having to convert them because of the non-support of iso, ts.
That method doesn’t help cataloging all the DVD concerts I have…Plex would like you to rip the DVD and put it into a format it wants, but what about menus and extras that don’t transfer well, again it doesn’t make sense.
Now I continue to treat Music Videos library in the same way as I would TV Shows, however of course the Artist will be designated as the TV Show and each of the videos from this artist will be treated as episodes.
But then I had this brainstorm (at 3 am) and it worked, what I came up with is a bit of a twist on this method of designation and it was right there all along, I just didn’t see the forest for the trees because I got caught up in the Plex naming structure.
Instead of the standard structure method that Plex would have you use
Music Videos
… \Adele
… \Adele - 1x01 - iTunes Festival London Live-concert.mkv
… \Adele - 1x02 - Hello-video.mp4
I’m now structuring the “Artist with the designation” instead of each of the individual files, this method allows enormous flexibility to the user for customization. So now the file structure will look something like this (Note: Please read later on in this message how to handle, iso, ts files)
Music Video
… \Adele (Concerts-DVD)
… \Adele - 1x01 - iTunes Festival London Live.iso
… \Adele - 2x01 - At The BBC.ts
… \Adele (Video)
… \Adele - 1x01 - Hello.mp4
… \Adele - 3x01 - When We Were Young.avi
… \Adele (Live)
… \Adele - 1x01 - Make You Feel My Love-Live On Letterman.mkv
… \Adele - 1x02 - Turning Tables-Live On Letterman.mpg
Now this shows that I now have 3 artists listed as Adele instead of one but each with different designations, it actually looks very good in the Plex listing of artists especially for collectors and it will make sense later on with the search feature.
Now because I have multiple hard drives with thousands of videos, you can see the above structure of
Artist - Season x Episode - Title, where as in my case the Season is the volume name of the hard drive in which the music videos are located on.
The Volume name I use on one of my hard drives would be as an example MusVid001, etc. (Again it could be anything but you can add it to your Music Video Library with at least some number structure in order to know which hard drive the file is located on)
So when I see the Season as 1 or 3, I know it’s located on the Music Video hard drive (MusVid001) or (MusVid003) and so forth.
Now to the heart of the matter, you now use a designation in the Artists Name instead of the filename.
“Artist (Designation)” since it’s your collection and not someone else’s you can use any designation you wish, Plex just recognizes it as a different artist (which of course it’s not, but it doesn’t matter in the search section), this of course which brings us back to the realization that the cookie-cutter method, that “one-size fits all”, does not really fit all, just as one t-shirt doesn’t, one method doesn’t either. Collector’s and General users are 2 different breeds and the needs and requirements are not the same.
I understand the need for consistency otherwise this program would break down in chaos as all database would but this method does allow some flexibility for the user in the Plex Universe.
The advantage of structuring your music videos library this way is two-fold and maybe more but this will do for now.
- You no longer have to include a music file (mp3, flac, etc) in the directory to see or play these music videos especially when you initially use the agent “Plex Series scanner with Disc Image Support” which allows Plex to read all files including iso, ts, vob, etc…but by also using the External Plex Player Agent which allows you to use VLC or any other player you would designate to play the file which the internal Plex Player lacks.
Being able to keep my music and music video libraries separate is important to me not only because they are different media formats but because they are on separate hard drives. All I do is make sure I use the same name for Artist folders on each of the hard drives, for videos I create folders such as Adele (Videos) folder can be on hard drive 1 or 2 or 3…etc, you just have to move the specific video to it and Plex thinks that that is the Artists name and each of the videos will show up in that directory when adding or refreshing your library.
- Now when you do a search for an Artist in this case “Adele” You will now see all the different libraries you have “Adele” listed under such as Shows, Artist, Album, Tracks. All of them all accessible and playable. But now under the Shows directory you will now see each of the folders for Adele (Concert-DVD), Adele (Video), Adele (Live) as the header for the category and the number of videos you have in each designation.
Hopefully this method will help you deal with Music Videos in the Plex Universe
PS… I’ve tried various databases over the years and I really enjoy how Plex handles Movies and TV Shows, but it really lacked in regards to how it handles Music Videos and Music in general especially with collectors (Not to any surprise, not a lot catalog and handle Music Videos very well) but I believe using this method finally allows the user to add some customization into a very rigid structure without detracting from the Plex format but without having to rename so many files or convert them to a format that Plex uses, it just requires to restructure your folders on your hard drives.
