Plex Media Server Poor Filing / Display issue - Wanting Windows Tree Like sub Folder Structure

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Plex Media Server Poor Filing / Display issue - Wanting Windows Tree Like sub Folder Structure

Hi guys,

I have a rather complicated question to ask but I have taken some screenshots to hopefully assist you in helping me sort out the problem that I have…

Basically I have a whole bunch of different folders which run into the thousands of video files and I would like to create some kind of “windows tree structure” with subfolders and sub-sub folders if need be.

Example, I have a folder for the kids called “CARTOONS VARIOUS”… Inside that folder is a whole bunch of various cartoon such as Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse Popeye etc… please see the attached screenshot to illustrate.

Now when I add the entire folder CARTOONS VARIOUS, in the Plex server I naturally have to select what type of content it is… Now I get that it is absolutely important to select the correct media type so that when I want to go into Bugs Bunny for example, I can see all 90 episodes of Bugs Bunny along with the correct and/or applicable name of that episode.

The problem comes in that when I use “TV shows” the Plex media server completely messes everything up in that it removes the name of the episodes and causes episode 1 episode 2 episode 59 in weird random orders.

Please see the pictures of the raw files so you can see that they have been carefully and properly renamed accordingly.

I have tried loading the media by giving the Plex media server a designation of “other videos”… But then it simply removes the subdirectory folder structure which “TV shows” offer and just puts the thousands of episodes onto one page which obviously as you can imagine is absolutely impossible to determine Mickey Mouse from Donald Duck episodes for example…

How do I force the Plex media server not to use its own built-in intelligence and force it to keep the folder structure that I have created on the NAS drive / media server and also to keep the exact filenames given to each media file and not rename each individual video file to what it thinks it should be?

You will also notice that in the screenshot I have attached is an example from the Plex media server that the folder Donald Duck is only showing 16 video files when in fact they are supposed to be 98 video files…

You will also note in the screenshot provided that when I do not give it the designation of TV show it puts thousands and thousands of files in one page which is completely impractical and inefficient… It is the picture right at the bottom of the screenshot…

I really hope that someone out there knows the answer to this is the exact same principle applies to many other video media and audio media throughout my media collection.

Other media servers out there such as Serviio do this with absolute ease and I do not want to use a completely different media server I would like to continue using the Plex media server as I have purchased the Plex lifetime membership and would really like the solution to work?

I thank you kindly in advance

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@mrpeterlivanos@gmail.com said:
How do I force the Plex media server not to use its own built-in intelligence and force it to keep the folder structure that I have created on the NAS drive / media server and also to keep the exact filenames given to each media file and not rename each individual video file to what it thinks it should be?

You can only do that if you create a Library of the type ‘Home Videos / Other Videos’
Then browse this with ‘folder view’ enabled.

Keep in mind that you’ll forfeit major ‘Plex goodness’ this way.
Primarily the ‘beautification’ of your library by automatically adding descriptions and posters. And for tv shows the automatic tracking of which episodes have been watched already and which one is up next - for every user individually.

If you want to try ‘properly’ later, this should get you started:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/categories/200028098-Media-Preparation

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@OttoKerner said:

@mrpeterlivanos@gmail.com said:
How do I force the Plex media server not to use its own built-in intelligence and force it to keep the folder structure that I have created on the NAS drive / media server and also to keep the exact filenames given to each media file and not rename each individual video file to what it thinks it should be?

You can only do that if you create a Library of the type ‘Home Videos / Other Videos’
Then browse this with ‘folder view’ enabled.

Keep in mind that you’ll forfeit major ‘Plex goodness’ this way.
Primarily the ‘beautification’ of your library by automatically adding descriptions and posters. And for tv shows the automatic tracking of which episodes have been watched already and which one is up next - for every user individually.

If you want to try ‘properly’ later, this should get you started:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/categories/200028098-Media-Preparation

Hi there, thats the point i dont want to forfeti the plex goodness… the problem is the goodness is removing files, and messing ecerything up… i looked already at the link of preparing media and cant find anything to fix all the issues i have raised? :neutral:

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@mrpeterlivanos@gmail.com said:
Hi there, thats the point i dont want to forfeti the plex goodness… the problem is the goodness is removing files, and messing ecerything up…

  1. you cannot have a multi-layered ‘subfolder’ organisation in the Plex user interface

  2. if you don’t name and organise your media files as laid out in my link, Plex will ignore, mis-recognise, falsely combine files.
    This is particularly true with tv shows.

Most of those cartoons you have are ‘tv shows’. They must follow a strict file name and folder organisation to get ‘recognised’ properly by Plex. Only then can Plex work its magic by making it ‘look good’.

But there are also movies among them.
So the first thing you’ll have to do is to change your folder organisation.
First separate movies and tv shows from each other.

Then research a bit what is a tv show at all.
I see you have ‘Bugs Bunny’ and ‘Looney Tunes’. AFAIK those classic Bugs cartoons belong to Looney Tunes.
Look them up at TheTVDB (when it is back. It is now throwing errors for me.)

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Bugs goes in Looney Tunes and there are Disney ‘something or others’ - with TVDB down it’s difficult to say or provide some working examples (I’ll check back later when TVDB is working and do that).

Got a window at TVDB. Using what I can make out from the images provided above:

A TV Show Library/
…Disney Animated Shorts/
…Season 1941/
…Disney Animated Shorts - S1941E07 - A Good Time for a Dime.avi

That’s the approved structure - there is no ‘wiggle room’. Looney Tunes and Disney Animated Shorts (along with some others) are unique in that they’ll use ‘Season 1941 / S1941E07’ when most other TV Shows will use ‘Season 01 / S01E01’

When properly named, structured and matched you’ll get the Donald Duck episode image and description shown here:
http://thetvdb.com/?tab=episode&seriesid=78988&seasonid=520463&id=4573210&lid=7

Disney Animated Shorts @ TVDB: http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=78988&lid=7
Looney Tunes @ TVDB: http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=72514&lid=7

This all assumes TVDB stays up long enough to see it in action.

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@OttoKerner said:

@mrpeterlivanos@gmail.com said:
Hi there, thats the point i dont want to forfeti the plex goodness… the problem is the goodness is removing files, and messing ecerything up…

  1. you cannot have a multi-layered ‘subfolder’ organisation in the Plex user interface

  2. if you don’t name and organise your media files as laid out in my link, Plex will ignore, mis-recognise, falsely combine files.
    This is particularly true with tv shows.

Most of those cartoons you have are ‘tv shows’. They must follow a strict file name and folder organisation to get ‘recognised’ properly by Plex. Only then can Plex work its magic by making it ‘look good’.

But there are also movies among them.
So the first thing you’ll have to do is to change your folder organisation.
First separate movies and tv shows from each other.

Then research a bit what is a tv show at all.
I see you have ‘Bugs Bunny’ and ‘Looney Tunes’. AFAIK those classic Bugs cartoons belong to Looney Tunes.
Look them up at TheTVDB (when it is back. It is now throwing errors for me.)

there are no movies and shows in the same folder, i assure you

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@mrpeterlivanos@gmail.com said:
there are no movies and shows in the same folder, i assure you

Your screenshot above tells me that you have a movie folder and inside it, there is a folder with various tv shows. This doesn’t work.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200220687-Naming-Series-Season-Based-TV-Shows

The scanners and metadata agents used by Plex will work best when your major types of content are separated from each other. We strongly recommend separating movie and television content into separate main directories.

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@OttoKerner said:

@mrpeterlivanos@gmail.com said:
there are no movies and shows in the same folder, i assure you

Your screenshot above tells me that you have a movie folder and inside it, there is a folder with various tv shows. This doesn’t work.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200220687-Naming-Series-Season-Based-TV-Shows

The scanners and metadata agents used by Plex will work best when your major types of content are separated from each other. We strongly recommend separating movie and television content into separate main directories.

the only folder I am talking about it the Cartoons Various Folder, I have not shared those other folders or included them in the scan, so please do not let the other folders confuse you… inside of cartoons is Bugs, Donald, Looney etc…thanks!!! :slight_smile:

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Then every thing within that folder needs to get renamed, restructured according to the guide for tv shows.

As I said above, there is no tv show titled ‘Bugs Bunny’, so these episodes need to be incorporated under ‘Looney Tunes’.
Same goes for Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.
Here is the full list http://thetvdb.com/?tab=seasonall&id=72514&lid=7

The double folders for Silly Symphonies need to get merged.

Both Looney Tunes and Silly Symphonies use 4-digit season numbers, btw.

At this level, a ‘season’ folder is misplaced (Spongebob & The Smurfs)

TV Show naming and organisation in general within Plex for fun & profit:

  1. Look up your show on TheTVDB
  2. Take the title as it is used on TheTVDB. If there is something in parentheses, take that too. If the title contains invalid characters (depends on your file system), like § : % *, simply leave them out.
  3. Check the naming and the folder structure of your show. Name the top folder of the show exactly after the title on TheTVDB. No abbreviations. No additional subfolders. No aliases.
  4. Name the episode files according to the above linked naming guide. Use the same title as for the top folder. Show's Title - s01e01 - additional info.ext (’- additional info’ can be left out)
  5. After you corrected the naming and folder structure, perform the Plex Dance with all files for this show.

The task of renaming and reorganizing is much faster and less painful with software like Filebot

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For Instance - Bugs and Elmer in ‘Wabbit Trouble 1941’:

A TV Show Library/
…Looney Tunes/
…Season 1941/
…Looney Tunes - S1941E40 - Wabbit Trouble.xxx

Produces:

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@JuiceWSA , dear sir, you are a genius, thank you sooooooooooooo much for the last link… filebot was the key to fixing this all for me, all the other peoples explanations were so technical and renaming 1000s of files was daunting… all is working PERFECTLY NOW!!! I thank you very very much!!!

this topic can finally be closed for me :smile:

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Genius? Hardly. I’m merely able to retain some of the knowledge previously imparted by @OttoKerner - and I’m a fast typer so I can whip up a proper file name and folder structure in no time. :slight_smile:

Depending on the original exo-planetary-naming, sometimes you have to tweek the original name a bit to get FileBot to find it, but yes, FileBot is the Miracle Worker for Plex users.

I’m pleased you got it working.

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I took this on about 2 years ago, and didn’t know about filebot. It was very tedious to look up what episode number to apply to the various episodes. I’m glad filebot worked out.

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Hi,

I’m having a slightly different issue. I originally added a handful of Looney Tunes into my PMS. I labeled them according to what’s discussed here (S1950e40, for example) and they all were scraped correctly. Now, I’m adding more and even though I’m using the same nomenclature, Plex can’t scrape it right. It is placed into the correct “season” but it’s titled “Episode 10” rather than the actual name of the short, like all the rest.

They even have the titles in the filenames after the S1950e40 business but that doesn’t work. The only other difference is that my first ones (which were scraped correctly) were mp4’s, while these are .avi’s. Doesn’t seem like that should matter. Any other ideas?

Plex just scraped another TV show correctly. This is ONLY happening with Looney Tunes.

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Go to Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB
In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase

Afterwards, ‘Refresh Metadata’ for the whole show.