Organizing Topic Based Media Directories

[rlstric1_gmail_com]

Server Version#: 4.54.5

I have a media server that I thought PLEX would be perfect for but I’m having a really hard time organizing the educational videos I have stored. PLEX organizes my movies just fine because they’re single directory endpoints.

/Movies
     /Harry Potter 1
     /Harry Potter 2

My problem is that when I try to create a general library that contains all my organized educational videos, I cannot get PLEX to display the information correctly. Most of the time PLEX will display every single videos in the sub directories as if each video was a movie. Here is an example of the directory structure.

/Educational
     /Coding
          /C C++
               /Section 1
                    /Section 1.mp4
               /Section 2
                    /Section 2.mp4
          /Python
               /Section 1
                    /Section 1.mp4
     /Cybersecurity
          /Crypto
               /Crypto vid 1.mp4
               /Crypto vid 2.mp4
               /Crypto vid 3.mp4

I also tried the TV Shows type library but PLEX named every video “Episode 1” instead of their actual names.

Has anyone else structured something like this before and can give me pointers as to how to organize a large educational library.

[tom80H]

Organizing such content as a tv-show CAN make sense IF the files have embedded metadata or you’re willing to manually edit it – and of course if the different tiers/levels match the structure of a tv-show (translating show → season → episode into main category → sub category → individual videos).

You can go with an Other Videos type library. In that case make sure to configure it to use the Personal Media scanner/agents. This way the library will go solely with the available information (file name, embedded metadata).
Displaying videos by folders is not necessarily the best user experience of Plex – if your library’s structure has little depth you could try organizing the videos by Collections instead.

[rlstric1_gmail_com]

I tried the Other Videos type library with the Personal Media scanner and have Collections enabled but it still lists every video within the directory as singular entities. I’m not sure how to get them to be organized in a collection correctly.

[rlstric1_gmail_com]

I’m an idiot, actually. If I did the Other Videos library with the Personal Media scanner and then change the sort to be listed as Folder and not the default Movies then it display exactly how the directory structure is on my harddrive, which is exactly what I wanted.