I want to create a top-level library "Documentaries" and within that a series of sub-libraries eg "Food Programmes", "Nature Programmes" etc to group similar programmes together and keep them separate from other genres of programmes.
Can this be achieved? I could create a series of separate libraries "Docs - Nature", "Docs - Food" etc but is there a way of nesting, as I have done with the original folders in the NTFS filesystem on Windows?
I've found that if I create a sub-folder below the mount point for a library, it sometimes gets wrongly recognised as a programme name and its contents are not examined further as Plex is scanning the folders for programmes and episodes.
How do other people handle nesting and grouping of programmes - by creating a flat structure of separate libraries or by creating a top-level library with sub-libraries below it? If the latter is even possible in Plex!
A sample tree structure is
Docs
Docs\Prog1\Ep1
Docs\Prog1\Ep2
Docs\Prog2\Ep1
Docs\Prog2\Ep2
Docs\Prog2\Ep3
Docs\SubLib1\Prog1\Ep1
Docs\SubLib1\Prog1\Ep2
Docs\SubLib1\Prog1\Ep3
Docs\SubLib1\Prog2\Ep1
Docs\Prog3\Ep1
I'd like to see:
In Docs: Prog1, Prog2, Prog3 and a sub-library SubLib1
The main change is adding a sublibrary for everything you wanted inside of Docs. The reason for this is two fold. If you want to add everything in the above list to a libary you would then have your add library folders look like this:
Docs\Docs
Docs\SubLib1
If you only wanted one or the other you could add one or the other. But if you leave Docs at the first level and put a sub folder in the middle then when you add Docs Plex will treat SubLib as a random show. By moving Docs to a sub-folder as well and adding the sub folder Plex will then add the shows you add to that folder without worrying about the other sub-folders.
I would love to see this implemented. Plex works great for movies and regular aired TV shows, I think lacks a bit in flexibility. If it just used directory structure to organize (however they wanted to implement it) you could do it with:
/Documentaries
/Documentaries/Foodies
/Documentaries/Foodies/French
/Documentaries/Foodies/Italian
/Documentaries/DIYNetwork
/Documentaries/DIYNetwork/DeckBuilding
/Documentaries/DIYNetwork/LawnCare
/Documentaries/YeRandom_singleepisode
And then it just treats the last folder in the structure as the container for the individual episode.
This might be able to be addressed with a Library/SubLibrary of tags (now that it is implemented) - so you could still have all of your documentaries show up in the main TV Shows folder, and the use tags as a drill down menu?
Take a look at a similar thread about Folder Views of Music Videos... there are some work-arounds, as long as your client app supports viewing "By Folder."
I have found that Plex doesn't really care how you organize shows at the file/folder level in your hard disk. The only reason why you want to do this is if you would like to use the "By Folder" view in the player and all your shows will appear organized the way you have them in your hard disk.
The problem with scanning documentaries in Plex is that there are two general kinds of documentaries: One that is a single episode, usually filmed and produced like a movie, and the other kind is produced like a TV series with various episodes. I once had the problem where I had all my documentaries in a single folder, only separated by title. This arrangement doesn't work very well with the Plex scanners because if the library type is "Movies" then it will attempt to scan all documentaries as movies, which doesn't work well at trying to identify those documentaries with seasons and multiple episodes and does not group them in the library and every episode of the same documentary appear as individual shows. In the "All" view, this does not appear very well organized, not to mention that the metadata and posters are not downloaded and shows not tagged. However, if the library type you create is "TV Shows", then all your documentary series get identified well and grouped into seasons/episodes which looks nice, but then the ones that are single episodes, such as the ones from Disney Nature, or The History Channel, do not even appear in the library.
I solved this by simply creating two separate libraries, one is a "Movie" kind of library called "Documentary Movies" and the other is a "TV Show" type library called "Documentary Series". The documentaries themselves are also separated at the hard disk level so that the documentaries that are series of episodes are in one folder, and the ones that are a single movie documentary are in the other folder, so each library points to the corresponding folder. This works really nice because it uses the appropriate scanner for both kinds of documentaries. This way everything gets scanned and organized appropriately in Plex. I hope this idea is helpful.
You might have some problems with documentary series with titles that have years in the file name. I have some World War II documentaries that have something like "1941" at the end of the file name, and somehow Plex scanned this as Season 19, Episode 41 regardless of how it was organized in folders. The only way I was able to solve that was by entering the season number and episode number code like "S01E03" somewhere in the middle of the file name so that it was before the "1941" in the file name. I hope this helps anyone who is having issues naming documentaries.
In addition, I also organized my series documentaries into genres, so that religious documentaries are in one folder, social documentaries are in another folder, science documentaries in another, and so on. This makes them look more organized when you use the "By Folder" view, but as I said earlier, if you use the "All" view, it doesn't matter how they are organized into folders or not.
I got a similar problem / desire.
My NAS is hosting Plex. Media is downloaded by the NAS’s Downloadstation and sorted into the Plex’s Filesystem. But in fact, I’d like to exclude their added media from mine, at least from the dashboard.
It would be nice to have a “is not Genre” - for example, if you want to watch a new movie but not another “Adventure”, “SCI-FI” or “Horror”… so, you may exclude them.
Let’s be honest here… a lot of people wanting a folder structure want it for porn lol!
C’mon guys… admit it!
If you have a big collection you probably have at least a couple hundred actresses on there, so it’s a huge pain in the butt if you just make a XXX folder in your libraries and scan your porn drive it will just lump ALL the files into one folder the way Plex currently does it as it will assume each file is an individual movie, rather than a ‘scene’.
So… we want a way to make sub-folders within our XXX library in Plex that will allow us to sort each individual actresses scenes by folders and list them that way.
ie;
The hard drive is XXX
then you have 500 different girls on it… so you want a single library in the main Plex root Library, but with folders WITHIN it listed alphabetically… such as…
Abella Danger
Adriana Chechik
Aidra Fox
Etc… Etc… Etc…
There! i’ve explained what MOST people want folders for! lmao! Now make it happen Plex!
@pjthedj said:
Let’s be honest here… a lot of people wanting a folder structure want it for porn lol!
C’mon guys… admit it!
If you have a big collection you probably have at least a couple hundred actresses on there, so it’s a huge pain in the butt if you just make a XXX folder in your libraries and scan your porn drive it will just lump ALL the files into one folder the way Plex currently does it as it will assume each file is an individual movie, rather than a ‘scene’.
So… we want a way to make sub-folders within our XXX library in Plex that will allow us to sort each individual actresses scenes by folders and list them that way.
ie;
The hard drive is XXX
then you have 500 different girls on it… so you want a single library in the main Plex root Library, but with folders WITHIN it listed alphabetically… such as…
Abella Danger
Adriana Chechik
Aidra Fox
Etc… Etc… Etc…
There! i’ve explained what MOST people want folders for! lmao! Now make it happen Plex!
Well, I do not store any porn anywhere and same goes for my Plex-System. However, since then you are enabled to search/filter your search with excluding specific genres so I see (at least my) request fulfilled. But I have to admit, that the automatically added categories are weird most of the time. So are some cartoons not tagged as animation, but some movies like iron man are. So it is rather inaccurate.
I think the easiest way for PLEX to implement this has nothing to do with the scanner and how it reads the folders on the HD. It could be as simple as to allow the front-end to allow to move libraries into other libraries. For example when you point to a library and you click the ‘…’ add the option “Move…”. And then you browse the list the libraries and select the one under which you would like to move the first library. This could be a nice to have and has nothing to do with how you structure your folders.
Your first statement is wrong. Plex assumes any second level folder is the TV Show. So if you create as I have “Animated TV Shows” under “TV Shows” the former folder “Animated TV Shows” is treated as a tv series and tries to download the content for a show called “Animated TV Shows”. In my case it downloaded the “Star Trak Animated Show” which I don’t even have! All actual TV show folders in that are ignored. Although the files are listed as episodes of the “Animated TV Shows” series.
The only way Plex will pickup the actual nested folders is to directly reference a Playlist to the actual sub folders ie “Animated TV Shows”. But I, like I assume many do not want a playlist for every “TV show category”. From Plex point of view our folder organisation should be inline with what Plex displays, but I personally want more detailed/nested folder organisation but a simplified Plex display of them. Which means Plex needs to recognise or at least PROVIDE AN OPTION TO SET A FOLDER WITHIN A PLAYLIST FOLDER AS ITSELF A “PLAYLIST SUBFOLDER”.
