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<I am a new Plex Server/TV user and I’m having a tough time getting things to work.
I’ve spent several days of wasted time reading support articles and watching YouTube videos that don’t resolve my problems. I’m about to just give up. Is there NO live support anywhere for Plex, even paid support? I have so many questions it is just impractical to post them all on here when each issue will probably take multiple back and forth conversations to resolve. I need someone to walk me through each issue in real time. >
While you’re waiting for somebody to talk… would you mind posting your questions anyway?
Maybe there’s some straightforward answers to move this forward (or give potential talking partners an idea what they’ll be dealing with) 
Without more context anyone who is interested will just ignore this thread. We are willing to help, but you need to show that you are willing to do the actual setup/maintenance. Most of these cries for help are just people looking for someone to remote over and do the setup for them, without them understanding what is being done.
Hi, tom80H. Thank you for replying to my plea for help. I would be happy to post my questions. I hope this reply is the correct place to post the questions.
As I mentioned, I am new to using a device to stream things. I’ve just used a TV before now.
Background:
So, I purchased a Nvidia Shield Pro streaming device and connected it to my smart TV through my home theater receiver. I watched some YouTube video’s on how to set it up. Watching those video’s informed me about Plex. It looked like something that could be very beneficial to me, so I downloaded Plex Server to the Nvidia shield and then started watching YouTube video’s on how to set it up.
In the video’s I learned that using Plex as a media server would take a lot of storage and CPU resources when encoding DVD and Blue Ray media. That being the case, I downloaded Plex Server to my Windows computer. I did not put any media on the Nvidia Shield. My thought was to use the computer as the server and the Nvidia Shield as the Client. To do this, I knew I had to have both devices on the same WiFi network and so I did that. It took me a whole day to figure out how to get the two devices to communicate. I can now see the Server on the Nvidia Shield, however, Plex also shows the Nvidia Sheild as a Server too.
The first thing I did was try to rip a DVD using MakeMKV on the computer and put the file on the computer (Server) so I could watch it on the Nvidia Shield which is connected to my home theater and TV. Ripping the DVD and creating the .MKV file was easy. Figuring out how to get it into Plex was not too bad. I went to the Server and clicked on Movies, (not the Movies tab in the Dashboard) and told Plex where the .MKV file was on my computer drive. It brought it into the Movies Library, but the Cover picture was not right. I’ve since learned to change the file name in the computer to something like “filename, date of release, and the IMDb #”. That somehow got the cover image to change. I did this procedure with several more of my physical DVD’s.
I then tried to do the same with my digital music library which is on a USB hard drive. Each music artist/band is in a separate folder with only their name. Inside the folders are the different songs. I went into the Music tab on the Plex Server which is on the computer and told Plex where the music files were. Plex brought in most of the “songs”, but not all of them. Plex also did not bring in their respective folders. Most of the Cover art is there, but some is not.
I had MakeMKV rip Season 1 of Law and Order Criminal Intent to a newly created “TV Shows” folder on the computer. I created subfolders " Law and order Criminal Intent" and “Season 1”. As with the Movies, MakeMKV saved the ripped files to the designated folder “Season 1” and gave each file a generic file name. On the Windows computer, I changed the file names to “Law and Order Criminal Intent, the Year, Episode 1,2,3, etc., Episode name, and the IMDb # of each episode”.
I then went to Plex Server and created a “TV Show” Library on the computer Server. I entered the folder location on the Windows computer and clicked Add Folder. Nothing happened. I didn’t bring in anything. I went back to the YouTube videos and the Plex help files and watched/reread them. I deleted the TV Show Library and recreated it always providing the path/location of the .mkv files on the computer. Plex sees the folders and when I get to Season 1 folders, it sees the files, although they are grayed out. But when I click the Add button, nothing happens, and the TV Show folder remains empty.
I tried renaming the files on the computer to just Episode 1, date, IMDb #. That didn’t work either.
Questions?
Why didn’t Plex bring in the Music Folders? Even though the songs are mostly alphabetized, I want my music to be in Folders with Artist/Band names, not loose files. (UPDATE) I clicked on the “Library” tab and the individual music files are under Artist names. Some artists/files are still not imported into Plex for some reason.
Why are my TV Show files not being brought into Plex?
If Anyone can help me resolving these issues, I would be very appreciative. If I can get these basics down, I would consider purchasing the Plex Pass so I can learn to do more.
Thank You!,
Pete
Hi dbirch,
Thank you for the advice 
.
I am willing to do the work necessary to setup, build, and maintain my Plex server. I recently retired and this is one of the things I’m wanting to do with my time. I DO want to learn and understand how to do things myself and do them right. I am not new to computers, but I have never messed with networking or servers before.
I provided background on what and how I’ve tried to do so far and posted two questions to another person who wrote me first. I don’t know if this was the proper way to respond or not? If I need to create a separate main post for my questions, I’d be glad to do that.
I provided the background information because I thought that people would need to see what I have done and maybe they can tell where I went wrong.
I hope that you are willing to help me if you can.
Thank you !
Pete
Plex will require some preparation to properly recognize your media (incl. the benefits of getting proper metadata to make the best use of it).
With music and tv-show content, that’s particularly true.
Music
Files should be organized in a “library folder” (the folder linked to your Plex music library).
Plex expects files to be grouped in an artist folder which should contain 1 subfolder for each album – e.g.
Music <- the folder linked to your library
Artist
Album
01 Track Title.ext
02 Track Title.ext
...
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/
TV Shows
Same as with music, the files should be organized in a “library folder”. The library folder should contain 1 subfolder per show. Episodes should be grouped by seasons and need to be named following Plex’s naming schema for Plex to properly recognize which season/episode each file is – e.g.
TV Shows <- the folder linked to your tv-show library
Show Name
Season XX
Show Name - sXXeYY.ext
Show Name - sXXeYY - Episode Title.ext
Where XX refers to the season and YY to the episode numbers.
Your file names can contain an episode title – but that’s purely for your benefit to find them in the file explorer (Plex won’t use that part).
To improve Plex’s matching, you can include the year the show first aired or an ID of the show with this structure, e.g.
TV Shows <- the folder linked to your tv-show library
Show Name (2025) {tmdb-12345}
...
The closer you stick to the naming schema, the less headache you’ll have later on – this might seem like a lot of effort, but it’s fairly straightforward once you know what to look for.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/
Movies
You don’t seem to have issues… just a general recommendation:
I strongly recommend to place each movie into their own movie folder, not all movie files flat in the library folder. This has two benefits:
- When you start expanding your use of Plex, there’s features that’ll rely on movies being placed in their own folders – it’s easier to achieve if you do it from the beginning (e.g. adding local extras, artwork, subtitles…)
- Once your library gets to a certain size, scans will be much faster if Plex can only scan updated folders (vs. having to check every single file in the library folder.
General
There’s an article on why certain files might not be added.
Mostly this comes down to naming – e.g. Plex will ignore files named like a tv-show episode in a movie library. There’s also certain keywords in a movie name that could make Plex believe it’s part of another movie (e.g. 1 movie split across multiple files).
Your SHIELD server
If it bothers you… you should be able to remove the SHIELD server record from the list of authorized devices.
https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/settings/devices/pms
2 Likes
Another tip I would suggest since you are at the beginning of the server/streaming rabbit hole. “Plan ahead” to store your current media and the media you will aquire in the coming years in a location that will be sufficient in size for your ‘expected’ library contents.
Hi tom80H,
Thank you again for the reply and HELP!
I renamed the TV Show files on my computer as you explained and WA-LA they were recognized immediately 
. This is Wonderful!
I’m going to take things one at a time to make sure I get this right. So, if I want to create another TV Show library you said, Same as with music, the files should be organized in a “library folder”. The library folder should contain 1 subfolder per show. Episodes should be grouped by seasons and need to be named following Plex’s naming schema for Plex to properly recognize which season/episode each file is – e.g.
So, in Plex there is a Main Heading for Movies, Music, and TV Shows. If I click on the main heading “TV Shows”, I have a library called Law & Order Criminal Intent. To have a library for another TV show, I need to create another library under the main “TV Shows”. Is that correct?
As I may have other questions, I would be glad to pay you something for your assistance as I want to show my appreciation.
Pete
No.
By default, Plex creates suggests to create libraries for the most common media types:
- Movies
- Music
- TV Shows
Each library will be linked to one (or more) library folders (more, e.g. if you have your movies spread across different drives).
Each library folder can contain lots of items, e.g. all kind of different shows.
I’ve seen some users splitting their libraries:
- all music vs. x-mas music vs. classic music (stuff you don’t usually want to mix)
- all movies vs. kids movies (stuff you might want to share/expose separately)
To your specific question:
- you can simply add the other shows in the same library folder as your existing shows (following the naming schema)
- scan the library for Plex to catalog the other shows/episodes — depending on your setup, you can configure Plex to automatically, periodically or manually scan the library folder for updates, automatic scans usually require the files to be on the same machine (internal drives vs. external/network drives)
No… it’s a forum where users usually help freely/willingly.
@pmint8
I’ve also struggled a bit at the beginning. Maybe it helps if you try to try to do do it one piece at a time.
When I first installed Plex a couple years ago I’ve created a separate “play library” for movies so I could first try a movie or tv show file out. If it was named and organised correctly, I moved it to the “real” library.
After I figured the naming scheme out I created some dummy folders for me which I kept outside of the Plex folders (so it doesn’t index them and could cause some problems). If I’m not sure what is the correct name for (let’s say a German subtitle for example) I copy the name from the file in the dummy folder and modify it to the correct movie name.
Of course you don’t have to do it this way but maybe some parts could help you a bit.
Take your time! It will get easier with more experience. 
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