Where do direct to DVD documentaries go? And what about music concerts, home videos or music videos?

Plex Media Server
1

I’m assuming documentaries would be considered “movies” unless there is more than one episode?

For the other files, where do they go? And what if they are simply random files?

2

Since Plex depends on IMDB and The TVDB, I would check whether those services consider the video to be movie or TV, and act accordingly.

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3

Documentaries vary how they are categorized. The BBC and Nat Geo and PBS put out so many on their TV stations that TVDB categorized them as BBC Documentaries, Channel 4 Documentaries, National Georgraphic Documentaries etc.

One off documentaries work best as film, and have a place in the Academy Awards.

When a direct to DVD documentary is not listed on TMDB or IMDB or TVDB, then you place it into a different library, not Movies, not TV Shows, but Other Videos where you prefer local metadata because it won’t find any otherwise.

Music videos and concerts go like this:

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4

Thanks that’s helpful.

Other Videos folder? I didn’t realize I could do that. Can you explain how that folder works and how the library operates?

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When I add a new library to my server, one of the basic choices for the type of content in the library is Other Videos. That type of library is where you’d put home videos of your family and other things that no online database will find. The general idea is that each video has its own folder, and in that folder you include some additional art and whatnot. The Plex website articles most likely spell out the metadata you can add to the video or the art / trailers / outtakes you might add to that folder to support the main video.

I put demo videos in there, different codec samples, home repair clips, etc.

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6

So in Plex’s mindset there are 3 types of videos (2 using online databases, and personal Media not in a public databases)

  1. Movies: Any single self-contained video (whether it’s a TV movie, TV Single Documentary, Movies released either in theaters, direct to disk, or VOD) Because there is some overlap some movies are both TV show special Episodes, and Standalone movies depending on where you want to put them.

  2. TV shows: These are a collection of multiple related videos (Could be a documentary series on the discovery channel, Daily episodes of the Tonight’s Show, or a regular TV series like Lost, or Star Trek)

  3. Personal Media - Plex completely ignores these unless they have local embedded metadata.

For Library types 1 & 2 Plex combines several data sources to populate posters, descriptions and other metadata. Because it’s not a collection of files (Just one file here)

Hope that helps clear things up.

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you can add it to either type of library but you need name it properly for whatever type of library but to supply add metadata your self, it will find the file(s) it just not metadata

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Thank you. How do you add local embedded metadata to personal media?

9

Plex can only read embedded data in mp4 files. depending on what OS you use there are various apps to do that. Like MetaZ on macOS

To get the server to read the embedded data . In movie or TV library need to enable 'prefer local metadata" in the advanced library settings. in “other video” libraries which is mostly used for personal media need to go to the servers agent settings and make sure “local media assets” is enabled for the persona media agent under movies.

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You can also inside Plex use the Edit pencil looking thing on the video thumbnail to add Plot, Date, Actors, etc. Is it the best way? I dunno, but sometimes I need to get back to Plexing fast :slight_smile:

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