Two small, burning questions...

General Discussions
1

Good morning/afternoon/evening all!

I am new to the forums here, but have been using Plex since around 2012. (…and have been a proud plexpass “lifetime” subscriber since around 2014…it has really been worth every penny! :smile: ) Between using the documentation provided on this site, google searches, and just experimenting…any issues have been easily resolved.

But, there are two small questions on my mind - one I thought of recently, and the other has been in the back of my mind since the day I first set up the server.

The longtime question (mainly about TV Episodes):

The first time I set up Plex, I had (and even to this day have) all my media structured in the way that was recommended for the metadata to be downloaded and applied correctly.

                         e.g. "Drive Letter:/TV Shows/Show Name/Season X/Show Name - SXXEXX.ext"

When I first added TV Episodes, I added the folders of each show name:

                        e.g. "Drive Letter:/TV Shows/Show Name"

When I did this, Plex recognized, downloaded, and applied the correct metadata, but did not combine the seasons of any one show. I was left with various "Season X"s across the dashboard under TV Shows.

I had found a workaround by adding each season separately, and for years, have been adding TV shows (as I rip and record them) to Plex one season at a time.

                     e.g. "Drive Letter:/TV Shows/Show Name/Season X"

Everything has been working well using this method, but can be tedious at times when you’re adding a box set.

So my first question is - Is there a correct and easier way to add TV Shows. At which folder do you “tell” Plex to look at?

The second, and most recent, question came about when I started playing around with H.265 encoding. I’ve heard before that H.265 makes the processor “hurt” during transcoding. A day or two ago, I was “prepping” up a tv episode (cutting commercials and encoding), and decided to see how well Plex transcoded H.265. I was really impressed when I streamed the episode to my tv, and it used really little processing power (I had the task manager up on the server). To save space, I would like to start encoding media using H.265. Does Plex support H.265 “all around”? (whether it’s animation, a full length movie, etc)…or should I keep with H.264 for the time being?

Thanks in advance for any and all help! :smiley:

2

well i use to do that to when i first started using plex and now i my TV are like this F:/TV Shows and i have all files there without any folders same with movies :smiley: and so far is working fine

3

Only ever add this folder to your library Drive Letter:/TV Shows
not individual ‘show folders’

If you only have one drive and one TV Shows folder, then you only add it once to your library.
Every time when you add another new tv show or episode(s) into the folder, you tell then Plex to ‘Scan Library Files’.
Plex will then go and take a look into Drive Letter:/TV Shows to see what is new in there.

4

  1. If you don’t want to use the Season folders, PMS may still be able to pick up episodes if they are in the Show folder and are named properly. The filename is more important for identifying seasons than the actual folder structure. Having the folder structure also helps when adding new episodes, so the scanner doesn’t have to double check all the other episodes. For shows in the early seasons, this wouldn’t take very long, but for long running shows like the Simpsons, scanning every file of every season might take a while. If you do this for every show, you can see how the time can grow.

  2. PMS supports H265, but playback depends on the client. If the device you are playing back on supports H265 (mostly newer devices that also support 4k) then there wil lbe very little cpu usage. However, if the device doesn’t support H265, then the video has to be transcoded, which will take a lot of cpu power. You can test thing now by playing back the video on the device you already have, then change the quality setting to be lower than the bitrate of the actual file. This will force a transcode and you can see how your cpu handles it.

5

If I read your post correctly, you have Plex pointed at individual season. That’s not quite the correct method.

You should simply point your TV library to

Drive Letter:/TV Shows

Pointing to each season sub-folder might work for a while, but eventually it will break. You should remove all of the season subfolders using the Edit Library function, and just leave the top level “TV Shows” folder (or folders)

It looks like you have the right structure for your folders and files, so it should work right away. I would make sure empty trash automatically is turned off before you change anything, just in case Plex gets confused. You might have to rescan the library, but I’m pretty sure Plex will automatically do that once you change where the library is pointed to.

6

When I first added TV Episodes, I added the folders of each show name:
e.g. “Drive Letter:/TV Shows/Show Name”

Ah, I misread your post. Thanks @leelynds for pointing it out. You do not add individual shows. You point your library to the parent, so in your case it should be to “Drive Letter:/TV Shows/”. The first name Plex should see is the folder for the show. This is how it knows to associate the files inside as being part of the same show. The way you had it Plex was seeing “Season 01”, “Season 02”, etc as the name of the shows. That is why it did not group your seasons together under 1 show.

It’s probably best to create a new library that is pointed to the correct folder, then delete this first library that is wrong.

7

Thanks everyone! I have Plex pointing to “Drive Letter:/TV Shows”, and everything worked like a charm. Lol, it’s going to be much easier to add content in the future. :smiley:

I also recently tested out .H265 by streaming to a 1st gen Fire TV box, since it doesn’t natively support .H265. I seen where the CPU usage spiked, so it looks like I’ll stick with .H264 for a little while longer lol. Most devices we have at our house are .H265 “friendly”, but until I update the older devices…you know.

8

@thurmansevolution i have changed my configuration now because i start using Sonarr, and Sonarr require folder, however in the TV episode folder i do not have any Seson folders, i use now Sonarr because is look like make the job more easy, autorename on download and you can rename your files with a simple click that matches TvDB or MovieDB, a little more organised :smiley: