Server Version#: 1.13.4.5271-200287a06
Player Version#:
Have no idea yet where anything is. I am so frustrated with iTunes, that I am looking to find an alternative to it. A friend recommended Plex, so here I am. I have over 1500 movies that I have purchase over the last 10-15 years. I have ripped them into digital .m4v files and for years added them to my iTunes Library. However, over the years, iTunes has changed and I can no longer import the majority of my movies that I LEGALLY own into ‘Home Videos’ under iTunes Media. Currently, all of the movies reside on a fairy new 40TB Synology DS1817 NAS device. This is connected to my wired 1GB Lan. I found and installed Plex Media Server on my DS1817. Now, because of the complexity of this all or maybe I am trying to hard and it just seems complex, I have followed what appears to be the next move and that is to define and add folders contain the various movies that I wish to use with Plex. The movies are there and according to the settings, the Plex Media Server is looking at the folder, but when I bring up the Plex Media player, it does not show any movies at all. ‘There are no items in this library’
What am I doing wrong? I can drag a .m4v movie into the Media Player and it will run, but it just does NOT seem to see the folder or organize it.
the plex server - this runs on your desktop or nas or server and scans your media and keeps track of your media and streams to the various clients available
the plex client - this runs on your desktop or other various devices like roku or shield or mobile phone or tablet
so the client connects to the server, the server then streams the media to wherever your client is.
other than the mobile clients, plex is not suited for playing local media directly, you need to setup a server.
The Plex server (Media Server) is running on my Synology DS1817 NAS drive using software available to it from within the DS1817 Apps. It is there that I set it up and pointed it towards the folders containing the first batch of movies. It gave some kind of message that it would start scanning for the movies.
Now when I look at the server form a Plex client (Media Player), either I get a message that I am not connected or from another client that I am connected, but it shows ‘No Items in the library’ message.
After installing the package,
Did you open your browser to http://ip.addr.of.syno:32400/web and complete the first run initialization? It seems as if you have. I am asking to confirm.
Next, do you have the Synology firewall active? Most folks deactivate the firewall because it is extremely restrictive and not necessary on your home LAN and behind your existing firewall from the ISP. If the firewall is on, and ports haven’t been opened, DSM will prevent apps from seeing your server.
Ports to open in the firewall are listed here.
Lastly, you must make certain user Plex has permission to read the shares containing your media.
Linux is very strict on permissions. While you can see them in the Plex UI and point PMS at them, PMS won’t be able to read them until DSM allows it. Granting permission to each share containing media is done by Control Panel - Shared Folders - Edit the specific share - Permissions tab.
Maybe I should take this a step at a time… “Did you open your browser to…” If you mean this screen then I have attached a partial screen shot of my screen that I get some ANY of my clients when I type in that URL. It shows ‘CozyRiverPlex’ which is what I set up when I installed the Plex Server on the NAS.
As to your next paragraph… The Firewall on the DS is NOT activated. However, my total network starting at my router has a firewall activated, but this is mostly for outside access and some port forwarding. Is there as reason at this point to open any ports to the outside, if for now I am just looking to use Plex within my LAN. I am running a complete Ubiquiti network now. It if fairly new alteration to my LAN, so there might be something that I am not addressing yet, but everything in and out that I have authorized, seems to work just fine.
As far as permissions… This is an area that I am probably weak in. The DS1817 is fairly new as well, and I am sure that there might be areas that I have not fully grasped at this time, but working on it.
When I look at the Media folder on the DS, my users have read/write and apparently, the ‘plex’ user also has read/write, though I just set it that way. I just set Advanced Share Permissions to read/write so will restart DS and client afterwards to see if that solves it. I have gone through the User, Group, Shared Folders and set as many of the possible areas that would allow/disallow access. (I hope I got them all).!
I went into the Home Movies library and clicked on edit to see the folder where the movies were held and did a copy of it so I could show you the path. Backed out of the edit and NOW all of my movies are appearing…
WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?
It is now downloading all of the metadata for the movies. Let’s leave this forum open, but wait and see what happens.
Okay, now that I have a start on this I have a few other question of setup…
One of the biggest problem that we have with iTunes is that you while you categorize your movies by Genre, you can’t place movies in subsequent and organized folders… Here is a BIG example.
For one of my Wife’s birthday, I purchase her the whole set of MASH TV. Well, as you can imagine moving through these to get to movies beyond the MASH spelling takes a long time. I placed them under TV Shows category, but still that is a lot of movies to move through and if you throw West Wing, Centennial and other long TV series the task of moving through them is undaunting. So why not allow a structure like this…
TV Series
MASH
Session 01
Session 02
…
Session 11
West Wing
Session 01
etc.
Before I go adding my other movies to Plex ‘Home Movies’, I would like to figure this out.
You need to create separate ‘libraries’ within plex for different types of media.
Movies = only movies library
TV = only tv shows library
personal videos (ie not hollywood or public movies) = other videos = no metadata
music = music library
You can have a single media folder, but you need to keep tv and movies in a separate sub folders.
/media/movies/moviename (year).ext
or /media/movies/moviename (year)/moviename (year).ext
/meda/tv/showname (year)/season 01/showname - s01-e01 - episode title
/media/music/artist/album/track etc
the articles in the support database linked above explain how your media should be organized/named and how to create different libraries for different purposes.
Do you have a specific article that would explain all of this?
Also, is there a remote device (bluetooth) that you can connect to a PC/Mac that will scroll through your libraries up/down left/right much like a tv remote. I know you can do this all with a mouse, but thinking of being in your hand like a remote would be nicer.
there also many related articles in that section that will help you out.
a library can have multiple folders (like if you have multiple hard drives or network shares)
movie library
c:\media\movies
d:\media\movies2
\nasname\mediashare\movies3
but a library should only have one TYPE of media, as per above.
tv library
g:\media\tvshows
\nasname\mediashare2\tvshows3
etc
there are remote controls available for pc/mac, but most people use some kind of streaming device to actually watch the movies. Like nvidia shield, or roku, or apple tv, or amazon fire devices. these all have remotes included.
I don’t have any experience with pc/mac remote controls, so you will have to figure that out, while related its not really a function of plex itself.
iTunes and PMS are philosophically different at the most fundamental levels.
iTunes organizes everything based on metadata tagging.
PMS organizes based on naming and structure.
For the two to be compatible in any way,
Organize the files per Plex naming standard and structure by media class (Movie, Series, Music, Home Video, Photo)
Let iTunes read that structure without allowing it to rename or reorganize the physical files.
When creating the Plex library sections, do not read embedded metadata tags (advanced tab when creating a library section.
To answer your question:
A library refers to a group of folders of the same media type (movies, series, music, photos, or home video). Because media can be broken into large blocks (such as a different hard disks), each different ‘top level’ location is listed. There is no limit to how many top-level locations which can be listed.
Please consider my TV “Library”. It has 3 top-level folders. In it are some 50 full TV series.
Will FileBot work on the NAS or do you use it from a PC/Mac/Linux first to organize you folders on the NAS and then import or do something to see them on the Plex Server?
The Library name is “Television”.
The folders in “Television” are:
/share/tv
/share/tv2
/share/tv3
In folder /share/tv, you see “Chicago Med” (one of many in that “tv” folder.
The series I currently have in the “tv” folder of the “Television” library are:
[chuck@lizum tv]$ ls
'American Horror Story' "How It's Made" 'Searching for Lost Worlds'
'BBC Documentaries' "How It's Made Dream Cars" 'Star Trek Discovery'
'Big Hero 6 The Series' Killjoys Supergirl
'Black Mirror' Krypton 'S.W.A.T. 2017'
'Chicago Med' 'Last Man Standing (2011)' 'The Expanse'
'Chicago P.D' 'Life After People' 'The Flash (2014)'
clean-mkv List-of-avi.txt 'The Good Doctor'
'Dark Matter' 'Lost in Space 2018' 'The Grand Tour (2016)'
"DC's Legends of Tomorrow" 'MacGyver (2016)' 'The Orville'
'DCs Legends of Tomorrow' 'Madam Secretary' 'The Resident'
'Doctor Who (2005)' 'Mars (2016)' 'The Universe'
Evolution 'Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D' 'The Walking Dead'
FEUD 'Modern Marvels' Threshold
FileBot-Series-Format.txt 'NCIS Los Angeles' 'Timeless 2016'
findall 'NCIS New Orleans' Torchwood
fix_season 'Planet Earth II' 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea'
'Genius (2017)' 'Schitts Creek' Westworld
Gotham Scorpion 'Young Sheldon'
Horizon 'SEAL Team'
[chuck@lizum tv]$
Some of those other names you see are my utility scripts (programs) PMS skips over them
(Yes, even my library isn’t perfectly curated. haha)
The only real difference between Movies and TV Shows (and I’ll probably be corrected) are the agents used to assemble the data about the movie or show. These items need to exist separately if they’re using different types of data.
Movies use movie databases, which have description, ratings and other information.
TV Shows use specialized TV databases which further sorts by season and episode numbers.
File types/extensions can vary in each. They don’t matter. Only your organizational structure and file naming as outlined in the link someone provided earlier.
