So my movie library structure and management has been done very lazily, I mean efficiently, for several years because Plex let me do that by being super forgiving on matching and organization. I didn’t have to be particular so I wasn’t (and it fit an older setup for managing content via files themselves).
In a few recent discussions folks were kinda aghast at my structure.
But it works! For now…
These days I think I need to go ahead and update\cleanup my setup and was hoping to get some clarification on what I should expect before I go messing with it.
Here is how my movie library is currently organized (each letter folder is added to the Movie library):
Movies
1-B
C-D
E-H
Movie.Title.year.HDinfo.trackinfo.source.ext
Movie.Title.year.SDinfo.trackinfo.source.ext
Movie.Title2.year.HDinfo.trackinfo.source.ext
Movie.Title2.year.SDinfo.trackinfo.source.ext
Or variations of that filename format as my habits changed over the years and as I said Plex is pretty forgiving for title matching. Suffice to say I have lots of titles with multiple versions and they are all kinda just dumped in those folders (used to be just one big folder). The filenames usually include multiple track references.
In planning for the future where I likely will need more local assets and other manual management (different topic), I think I should go ahead and use tinymediamanager or filebot to help sort this out so that it conforms more closely to Plex (and other media management) file naming and organization conventions.
So I will move titles into their own folders under the letter folders and make filenames more uniform:
Movies
1-B
Movie Title 1 (I actually don’t like year in the folder name but realize it’s “better”)
Movie Title 1 year HDinfo trackinfo source.ext
Movie Title 1 year SDinfo trackinfo source.ext
Movie Title 2 Year
Movie Titles 2 year HDinfo trackinfo source.ext
Movie Titles 2 year SDinfo trackinfo source.ext
My main concern is how safe is my watch history and DB stored metadata\artwork in making that change? I’ve migrated libraries between different servers and have broken out library directories before (staying in same library) and as long as you follow some steps it’s been okay, and simply renaming files in place is usually okay too, but this is doing both file renames and moving files to a new directory so was a little concerned.
Secondary question is if there’s any naming pattern recommendations that lets me keep info in the filename without it cluttering up other platform version display (editions are a separate thing). Plex mostly ignores stuff in the filename and uses media info pulled from the file but Emby\Jellyfin and others are more particular when multiple versions are involved. Suggestions in this area would make portability of my files more compatible for less work in the future while I’m doing a rename anyways.
Or… alternatively… is the “real” solution to ditch multiple versions and just embrace full transcoding when necessary? I like having my SD\AC3 files along with my 4k\TrueHD but my server can transcode 4kHDR\HDAudio to SD when necessary (mostly - PGS burn-in at 4k still no go) so maybe I should just let that versioning go? It’s not like I need to free up space but maybe there’s a bit of sunk-cost in my holding onto those SD versions that rarely get played these days.
Movie Title 1 (year) [SDinfo trackinfo source].ext
Before starting any renaming/moving/copying:
ensure that
your library is switched to the modern agent.
Refresh Metadata has been performed at least once for all items
This ensures that all items are actually converted to the new agent. So that if you later add a new media path to the library it will not treat those files as new items.
If you encounter any trash can icons on your posters, fix that as well before starting the re-organization.
Oh, and use only one pair of square brackets. It should enclose all the technical stuff which can potentially interfere with matching.
Reason is that only the contents of the first pair of square brackets are ignored by the matching algorithm.
Yeah… FileBot is the premier solution but it might be more than I need. I think I can get away with tinymediamanager as a free and somewhat simpler solution. FileBot isn’t expensive though either… I haven’t decided but definitely don’t want to do it by hand.
I know lots of folks around here use both FileBot and tinymediamanager so I appreciate getting help with it too.
The format pattern options will really help me out.
Edit: Ooo… ${audioCodecList} and ${audioCodecsAsString} will really be useful… thanks for pointing out those format pattern options I wasn’t aware of initially.
Renaming and moving a title from the “bulk” area to a dedicated titled subfolder in the existing library folder was transparent. Plex didn’t see the title as anything new.
Moving a title from an already existing dedicated titled subfolder to the root of the library folder was not - it was treated as a new title even without changing the filename.
I did not have automatic library scan on file changes disabled in either situation and turning that off when moving stuff around is recommended. I didn’t test again with that disabled as that latter change is not something folks would typical do, I just did it to see what would happen.
In testing file names with Emby\Jellyfin (they work similarly) I found they are not as strict as their documentation says but they are still more particular than Plex. Specifically around hyphens and brackets and even more so mixing hyphens and brackets. Plex ignores things in brackets but Emby\Jellyfin won’t and that can really throw off matching (particularly in TV shows).
If you have multiple versions\editions of films, Emby\Jellyfin is more particular than Plex about the file names but more flexible these days than they used to be for matching those up. If you want the selection dropdown to look nice you’ll have to follow their naming conventions specifically and consider all of the filename will display in that case (it’d be nice if Emby ignored things in brackets like Plex does).
As far as Emby vs Plex experience (part of my renaming is to be more compliant for those too), that’d be a whole different thing to review but I’ll make a few small notes.
Consuming media via Roku using Emby felt like “old Plex” (think Plex before the last UI change 10 years ago), otherwise I’d be hard pressed to argue better\worse as differences in functions and display would be very preferential rather than quantifiably “better”. My household still preferred even Roku New Experience over Emby. I use a lot of Home Screen customizations that Emby cannot even come close to replicating for now (should be coming in a future 4.9 release) … so for me personally that is a significant daily QoL impact as my setup means I almost never have to leave the Home Screen and that is a big factor.
Plus Roku back button functions in Emby were non-existent so you couldn’t “jump” anywhere you always had to d-pad around unless you wanted to exit Emby (which I kept accidentally bringing up). I dunno how people say they have fewer remote clicks to navigate in Emby than they do in Plex.
Server admin side, Plex’s “automatic management” functions for managing media are smoother and more seamless than Emby overall, but Emby allows significantly more personal adjustment and control over your content. Also more ways to manage your content - the clients have access to the dedicated metadata manager for example. Though this also means there’s a big delete button right next to the play button - be sure you disable “delete content” permission from any users!
Example: I’m still fighting Firefly and Cowboy Bebop to switch to DVD order and update episode images even days later. Supposedly just selecting DVD order and rescanning and refreshing metadata should do it but not really. While other shows I’ve flipped to DVD order worked as expected (Black Lagoon and Helluva Boss). In changing you do have to wait a bit for it to process.
Just wanted to share some notes in case others come across this thread… next will be deciding when to fiddle with tinymediamanager to actually do the bulk renaming… someday.
I’ll second this, FileBot all day every day. Best money I spent to help organise and validate my media, I could not live without it now.
Outside of the renaming, their additional scripts, especially miss to see what episodes you are missing are game changers.
In addition, an advanced feature, you can also use their extended attributes to validate your local files against the online episode ordering from tmdb or tvdb to see if things have changed since your named them. Recently, Quantum Leap had the season 1 episode order change at tmdb due to them combining the Genesis episode from two into one episode. Using the methods described here, filebot detected it changed and I could then rename to match the new order.
Gal dangit! I’ll have to go check that now. Thanks for the heads up.
They do that with random shows sometimes all the time and it’s annoying when it crop up unexpectedly. Particularly for older shows it’s frustrating.
I know you’ve been a big proponent of FileBot and some of your setups you’ve shared has made me lean towards it as well (such as checking for changes at the sources).
One aspect of Emby\Jellyfin that is nice for this type of situation is you can LOCK a series or title to never change after setting the metadata fetched from sources. You can set Emby\Jellyfin to never refresh in the first place, but you can lock at season and show level individually too.
You’d be amazed how often shows episode ordering change. I’d pretty much guarantee if you had to rebuild your TV library from scratch with a fresh scan a fair number of episodes would be unmatched or worse again mismatched due to naming changes since your initially named them.
Today, I had to fix The Amazing World of Gumball S03 over at tmdb where a misguided user altered the episode ordering of the last three episodes, it was a another FileBot to the rescue moment.
I did figure out how to finally fix Firefly and Cowboy Bebop in Emby…. I had to remove TMDB as a source entirely (not just less priority) and then refresh show metadata and it finally picked up the DVD order correctly and pulled the right artwork. Then I locked ‘em and turned the TMDB sources back on. Evidently this is a known “thing” to work around issues like this one. Luckily I don’t have many DVD order series and oddly I didn’t have to do that with other series - maybe it’s related to single season shows.
Anyways… as we can see… managing these things is annoying no matter what because either you do it yourself or you let the sources handle it but you can’t trust the sources 100% either. All about choosing the annoyances you wanna handle.
