Is that a trick question? 
Splitting them into separate directories makes it easier for you to manage the physical files.
When it’s time to make the “big honkin’ library” again, add each directory, one at a time, Update the Library, Optimize the DB (being pedantic), proceed with the next. Wash-rinse-repeat until done.
It wasn’t really a trick question 
I had all of the movies in a single directory until recently when someone suggested that my problem might be that I had all of my moves in a single directory. So I split them into three different directories not realizing that Plex would have to reindex everything all over again.
It is much easier for me to manage my files in a single directory instead of multiple directories and (of course) 4,300 files is nothing to Linux.
I know Plex likes Movies in one directory, TV shows in another (those broken down by directory by season, etc), music in another, etc.
But what I really would like to know is your advice on keeping all my movies in one directory or multiple directories. From you reply above, it seems to say that splitting them just made it easier on ME, not on Plex.
Plex candidly doesn’t care if they’re in one directory or not. It doesn’t care how many you actually have either. For linux (hence PMS) to suck in 5 million files is no big deal .
Perhaps I should rephrase my reply. Having 4500 movies in one library section might be an issue. Having to scroll down through that many can be daunting. This is where multiple directories can be leveraged to your advantage. “Seasonal”, “Action”, “Drama”, “Comedy”, etc.
Afaik, Plex checks for timestamp change on folder level. If you have one folder and add one new file to that folder - Plex will have to check the whole folder thus rendering it to have to go through several thousands of files. Sure, it isn’t the end of the world but in my experience it will slow things down. It is much better to keep movies in a structure such as Movies\Movie name (year)\Movie name (year).mkv - I personally also have, as Chuck mentions above, nestled it further with genre folders but this is isn’t 110% officially supported so one has to be careful as to not nestle too much (and def not with TV Shows).
@ChuckPa said:
Plex candidly doesn’t care if they’re in one directory or not. It doesn’t care how many you actually have either. For linux (hence PMS) to suck in 5 million files is no big deal .Perhaps I should rephrase my reply. Having 4500 movies in one library section might be an issue. Having to scroll down through that many can be daunting. This is where multiple directories can be leveraged to your advantage. “Seasonal”, “Action”, “Drama”, “Comedy”, etc.
@Peter_W said:
It is much better to keep movies in a structure such as Movies\Movie name (year)\Movie name (year).mkv - I personally >also have, as Chuck mentions above, nestled it further with genre folders but this is isn’t 110% officially supported so one >has to be careful as to not nestle too much (and def not with TV Shows).
OK…so…I go from having a “Movies” Library to a Movies - Drama, Movies - Comedy, Movies - Horror, Movies - Kids, etc…
Is that the general idea…?
Then just manually move them once CP drops them in a temp folder of some sort…? (Right now I have CP dump directly into the Movies library folder).
I have Seasonal, Requested, Action,Drama, Mystery, Comedy, Sci-Fi directories.
Maintenance is easy. The general 'Moves" Library gets the Action, Drama, Mystery, Comedy, and Sci-Fi directories
When building the Movies library, each of those directories is listed, one under the other.
My TV library is too big to fit on external drives, so I split it up to fit. TV, and TV2 directories. Episodes are in there. This represents the entire TV library.
@ChuckPa said:
I have Seasonal, Requested, Action,Drama, Mystery, Comedy, Sci-Fi directories.Maintenance is easy. The general 'Moves" Library gets the Action, Drama, Mystery, Comedy, and Sci-Fi directories
When building the Movies library, each of those directories is listed, one under the other.
My TV library is too big to fit on external drives, so I split it up to fit. TV, and TV2 directories. Episodes are in there. This represents the entire TV library.
Thanks @ChuckPa
I appreciate you taking the time to help make sure I understand this, so if you would please bear with me a bit longer:
I think I might be missing something. Do you have a single “Movies” library on Plex with multiple directories entered under the “Add Folders” section of the library, or do you have multiple Movie libraries “Movies - Action, Movies - Drama” each with a single directory listed under the library entry.
As I understand it, if I were to create a single library with multiple directories under that library, that is no different than having a single library with a single directory with all ~4500 movies on it since Plex is still going to index every single one of those movies as soon as I add the library correct?
For example, this appears to Plex exactly the same way and is processed exactly the same way correct:
Movie Library
Point Plex to /mount/media/movies
There are the directories:
/mount/media/movies/action
/mount/media/movies/adventure
/mount/media/moviea/drama
VS
Movie - Action Library
Point Plex to /mount/media/movies/action
Movie - Adventure Library
Point Plex to /mount/media/adventure
Movie - Drama Library
Point Plex to /mount/media/drama
These are two very different configurations. In reading everything if I were to go the first way (single Movie library) it does not seem to matter if I use subdirectories or a single directory, as soon as I add the Library, Plex has to a) scan all 4500 movies in the single directory and process the metadata for them or it will b) scan all 4500 movies in all three directories and process the metadata for them but it does so as a single Library.
Also, I understand that when I add a new movie to any of those directories, Plex would still scan “all” directories in that library looking for changes and updates since the scan is done based on the Library and not the directory.
Also, in both cases, all the movies will still show up in one Library section unless you filter by folder.
If I go the second way and add multiple actual libraries, I would have to select the library (Movies - Action, Movies - Adventure, etc) and then I would only see those movies listed, however, a search would still cross all libraries.
Do I have all of this straight?
So for me, I have zero issue (nor does anyone else in my family) in having all movies in a single Library. Rarely does anyone actually sit there and scroll through all 4500 movies, they will search for something be genre, name, etc. They might when I add new movies just to see what was added but other than that I am not too worried about all of the movies showing up in one library.
What I am concerned about is the performance of the server. With the new M.2 drive coming, and the speed difference between it and the spinning media where Plex and all of the metadata currently resides, I think I am going to be pleased with the increase in performance and hopefully eliminate my issue I am having with the media matching.
For me the main question in my mind is still this:
Is there any benefit (beyond organizational for me) to the Plex server to have my movies split into multiple directories yet still reside in a single directory or a single directory structure (Plex pointing at the top-level directory)?
Thanks
I have two servers. The NAS (which runs the TVs) has nice ‘Category’ libraries. It works well with the lack of a scroll wheel
On my desktop, I have "Movies’. Under Movies, I have each directory (folder) listed. I can filter on genre or just scroll (VERY easy with click-drag of the mouse).
The benefit I have is rebuild time. With the work I do, I sometimes push PMS ‘just a little too far’ and break it. My only choice then is to back up / wipe Library and begin again. With the work I do here, using my live servers, mistakes do happen.
Understood. I guess I will leave it as it is for right now and wait until my new M.2 arrives and go from there. It will be interesting to see if there is really any great performance gain one way or the other.
One thing I observe immediately on the TV is the reduction in load-time latency. With 4000 movie posters… That’s a lot of memory to chew up at once.
It’s also 4 GB to send every time. Yes, the choice is yours but that is the ‘cost’.
DUPLICATE COMMENT
@ChuckPa said:
One thing I observe immediately on the TV is the reduction in load-time latency. With 4000 movie posters… That’s a lot of memory to chew up at once.
It’s also 4 GB to send every time. Yes, the choice is yours but that is the ‘cost’.
OK, so I guess the very next question (you might have guessed) is how do you separate those movies? I have thousands of them, is there a program available that will automatically categorize them for me (like filebot but for categories as opposed to names) or is that a hand process…?
Yes, and am already prepared.
https://www.filebot.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=531
A template such as /Movies/{genres[0]}/{n} ({y})/{n} ({y}) becomes almost trivial and =))
Ah…so filebot will do that as well!
Thanks!!
As always… Experiment on copies to determine if the desired effect.
Just a note on the Filebot genre sorting, you may want to expand upon Chuck’s example and add a more strict rulebook for it. As is now, if a movie has been labeled (by the online source) as a family-comedy-animation-adventure-and-so-on movie, just one of these labels will be picked. You can specify that if Filebot finds “animation” it should put all of those in the animation folder etc.
My, crude, example is listed below. You can expand upon this, and surely make it even better. Search on Filebots own forum and you’ll surely find better suggestions and solutions;
'''Movies/{genres.contains('Animation') ? 'Animation' : genres.contains('Science Fiction') ? 'Sci-Fi' : genres.contains('War') ? 'War' : genres.contains('Documentary') ? 'Documentary' : genres.contains('Fantasy') ? 'Fantasy': genres.contains('Sport') ? 'Sport': genres[0]}/{n} ({y})/{n} ({y})
This seems to work well:
filebot -rename -non-strict --action test --format /mount/media/Movies/“{genres[0]}/{n} ({y})” “What To Expect When Youre Expecting (2012).mkv”
and returned this:
Rename movies using [TheMovieDB]
Auto-detect movie from context: [/mount/media/Movies/What To Expect When Youre Expecting (2012).mkv]
[TEST] Rename [/mount/media/Movies/What To Expect When Youre Expecting (2012).mkv] to >[/mount/media/Movies/Romance/What to Expect When You’re Expecting (2012).mkv]
Processed 1 files
All of my Movies already have the date so this looks like it might work well. What I cannot seem to find with filebot (since I run from the command line) is how I would add everything you have listed above @Peter_W on the command line. All of the examples seem to point towards the GUI interface. Where would I put your example and how would I call it?
Thanks
The code I provided just expanded upon Chuck’s. If you look at his
/{genres[0]}/
And look at my messy pattern
genres.contains('Sport') ? 'Sport': genres[0]}
You can see that I’ve only added something before the “genres[0]” part.
So in your case it would be
filebot -rename -non-strict --action test --format /mount/media/Movies/"{genres.contains('Comedy') ? 'Comedy' : genres[0]}/{n} ({y})/{n} ({y})"
That would put your previously labeled Romantic flick What To Expect When Youre Expecting, of which you do not find it romantic at all though it is labeled as such by online sources, as a comedy which you prefer.
The output of the above would thus be
Movies/Comedy/What To Expect When Youre Expecting (2012)/What To Expect When Youre Expecting (2012).mkv
BTW. Stating the name as you’ve done in your example (“What To Expect When Youre Expecting”) will make the work tedious I’d assume, since you’d have to change that for each movie. The beauty of Filebot is its automatic handling of it all. It will detect the name, year, genre and a lot of other data too (if you so wish( and traverse through your whole specified Movie folder (if you so chose to). And as you’ve seen by my and Chuck’s examples we both prefer having each movie in their own folder. Plex likes this for example if you decide to add local extras such as interviews, trailers etc. It’s also good to have when adding external subtitles. It can get quite messy otherwise with a lot of files.
@Peter_W Thank You -
I understand that I do not have to feed it a name, I was just doing that for testing!
I appreciate all of this from both you and @ChuckPa - I will play around with it and see what ends up working. Filebot sure makes this a lot easier than doing it by hand!
Expanding on Peter’s suggestion, I did a little ‘testing’ 
Using the GUI, I dropped {genres.contains('Animation') ? 'Animation' : genres.contains('Science Fiction') ? 'Sci-Fi' : genres.contains('War') ? 'War' : genres.contains('Documentary') ? 'Documentary' : genres.contains('Fantasy') ? 'Fantasy': genres.contains('Sport') ? 'Sport': genres[0]} into my renaming rule and tested.
It provided some very nice results. The power of genre renaming with the ease of the GUI.
