I’d like to create some libraries for recordings from conferences, classes and church sermons. I’d appreciate some guidance on both preparing the mp4 media files AND for organizing the libraries.
I’ve set up my subdirectories like this, with the Conferences and Grace Church libraries TV Show type:
/Conferences
–/CES (2021)
----/Season 2021
------20210104 - S2021e01 - Satya Nadella - Why Microsoft.mp4
------20210105 - S2021e02 - Tim Cook - Why Apple.mp4
–/NAB (2021)
----/Season 2021
------20210314 - S2021e01 - John Jones - Media Matters.mp4
/Grace Church
–/1999
—/Season 1999
------TMU519 - S1999e519 - John MacArthur - How to Study the Bible.mp4
------GTY43-15 - S1999e4315 - Mike Riccardi - Malachi Ch 1.mp4
This kinda works, although I have to go in and edit the titles. I’d really like to name my files in such a way that Plex would recognize and title accordingly. I have my files organized by category (Conference, School, etc), then by speaker’s name or class, then by date and title. I don’t mind changing this but haven’t found a good way to do this so Plex organizes things correctly. I’d really like to code the individual files with speaker names, dates and titles so Plex could use this material to not only organize but also label things correctly.
Has someone come up with a structure for things like conferences and webinars, and can tell me how to edit the metadata in the mp4 files so Plex can scan and use it?
You should probably look into embedding those additional information like titles, speakers… as metadata to the files instead of the files’ names.
It can make sense to organize such content in a tv-show library (using the Personal Media Shows agent). If you do that, make sure to follow the actual naming schema for tv-show based media.
Example:
Conferences & Church <- this folder is linked to your library
CES <- the "show" folder
Season 2021
CES - s2021e01.mp4
CES - s2021e02 - Tim Cook - Why Apple.mp4
NAB
Season 2021
NAB - s2021e01 - John Jones - Media Matters.mp4
Grace Church
Season 1999
Grace Church - s1999e519 - John MacArthur - How to Study the Bible.mp4
Grace Church - s1999e4315 - Mike Riccardi - Malachi Ch 1.mp4
...
The information after the season/episode pattern isn’t used by Plex but can be useful if you try to find files in your file explorer (making them easier to read for human eyes).
Depending on the platform where you prepare your files you can use a metadata editor of your choice to enter some critical information into the files – on a Mac you could use Subler; on Windows, mp3tag should be able to do the job (despite the name).
Embedded information could contain:
title, e.g. Media Matters
air date/time, e.g. 2021-03-14
speakers as cast, e.g. John Jones
…
Embedding the metadata into your files will make it easier to restore the items in case there’s an issue with your library and you end up starting over.
It’s also possible to group the files in an Other Video type library. There you could manually assign them to collections to group them by topics (e.g. CES, NAB and Grace Church). If there’s no embedded metadata (or using embedded metadata has been disabled) Plex should use the file name as title for the resulting videos.
Though even in that scenario you might be best off embedding the critical data into the metadata of each file.
Thank you Tom for your detailed explanation. I’ve edited the metadata a bit on my Windows PC, but found Plex didn’t seem to be using it (beyond library, show, season, episode) so I didn’t keep going. I’ll get back to doing that eventually as I know this information will get accessed somehow, so I know it’s worth doing. For now though, I’m just trying to get a considerable number of videos accessible in some ordered way.
The TV Shows type of library seems best but I am wondering about an Other Video type for more control since these type of videos aren’t in the Plex Movies or TV Shows databases. I’m just trying to find examples of people who have done this and have published how they’ve organized things so I can model after this. It’s fairly labor intensive since I either need to rename all the files and/or edit all the metadata, so I don’t want to start until I’ve got a plan that’s close to what I think will be useful. Guess I need to spend more time pouring through the forum to see how people are organizing their “Other” videos. Thanks again!
Thanks DBirch. Yes, I’ve used Mp3tag (and others) to retag and edit metadata. Much easier than r-clicking a file and editing it’s properties! My main question is how best to name and organize my non-TV/Movie videos so they are organized in an easy to find manner. Then I will dive into the labor intensive work of renaming and tagging all my files.
Tom, I set up a test library the way you suggested. I also edited the metadata in one of the files to see if Plex would use any of that information. Plex organized the library as expected, but, as you said it would, Plex ignored all my metadata past the episode number.
Of course, I can go into the library via Plex and edit each file’s info in the Plex database. But, if anything ever happens to that database, it would all be lost.
I’m hoping someone can let me know a way to set up a library or a media agent so Plex will populate it’s database for the library with either the metadata from the files or even from the structure of the filenames.
Can you give a specific example of what properties/attributes you’ve set in the embedded metadata of one of those files?
Did you configure the library to Prefer local metadata (see the advanced tab of that library)?
Did you just update the files in an existing library or add them anew?
I use Show Name\S##E## - TITLE [YOUTUBEID].ext as my naming format, I also use the mp3tag filename to tag converter and the rule S%season%E%episode% - %title% [%id%] and:
Are populated.
