plex discovery!!!!!!!!

While anally organzing Plex Media Server, I discovered something that I had just like yesterday realized I want to do.



Plex is a media server, super easy to install and use, rigid as fuck in organization, and you can't fudge. There are categories: Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos, Other Video, and each has their own strict organization schema. So strict that I--after many many God so many tries to get around it--gave up and reorganized my media to the schema.

Examples:
For Movies: /Movie Name (Year)/Move Name (Year).extension
For TV: /TV Show Name (Year)/Season Number/TV Show Name - Season Number Episode Number.extension

If you don't use these--just use them. I am saying this as someone who resisted and resisted and resisted and then gave up. It's the only way everything organizes correctly and you get it to connect to IMDB and also be able to create subfolders for trailers and missing scenes etc that are right there on the information page for each movie.

Other Video is pretty laissez faire, but that's because it does't connect with IMDB to get info and etc.


So Plex is super super rigid in organization, so I had to do a lot of rearranging and renaming to save myself stress when I first set it up. Suffice to say, I am now at the place where everything--movies, tv shows, specials, and most especially vids are now appearing correctly and I can devote myself to the most anal fucking thing you can do; tag everything (they call it "Collection" but seriously, the label when editing is 'Tags'). (Well, co-first: I also need to go through all billion of my saved vids and name them all correctly instead of whatever they saved as with proper capitalization, then tag them with vid author as well). Still though: tagging.

Now, tags are all your own, so you can go crazy. Black Panther, for example, is tagged with the following: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers, Black Panther. I am anal, therefore my tags in Movies, TV, and vids are all similar (Agents of Shield in TV is tagged Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Agents of Shield).

When going through all Marvel movies, I opened up Iron Man in Plex and noticed something: on the information page, below the Marvel Collection line that lists the other movies in that collection, a new section was added on the information page called Other Movies in Marvel Collection. It was all the vids I'd tagged with Marvel. So now, all my movies that have vids tagged Marvel show those vids right on the main page.

NOw what I'm trying to work out is how it chooses the tag. It looks like its only matching on first tag (aka if I have the movie Iron Man tagged with Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers, Iron Man, then the Iron Man vids will need to be tagged with Marvel first to match) but I am so going to experiment.

IF anyone else is using Plex, feel free to share info!

Comments

[amalthia]

I use Plex, however I just learned about tags from your post. So I sadly won't be able to help.

[seperis]

They're almost literally the only thing in Plex that isn't rigidly structured. You can use anything!

It looks like if you use the exact same tag name in any of the video categories, that creates a link that will show in the collection name in each. However, on the individual movie page, it uses first tag to decide what goes there. Or so I think, sometimes Plex updates take a while.

[amalthia]

I'm definitely going to have to explore this feature. :)

[arduinna]

Oh, interesting! I hadn't twigged to it only using the first collection tag. Good to know! But a little annoying, as I want clear cross-indexing everywhere, hmf.

If you use the same collection name across media types (it needs to be identical), it will also bring up a list of other media in that collection. So, like, I have a Superheroes tag for movies, and also a Superheroes tag for tv. When I'm looking at the info for a movie in that collection, I see the expected Superheroes Collection list, but also Superheroes in TV Shows in Superheroes Collection, which is pretty awesome. And really useful for something like MCU that crosses media types.

[seperis]

THe first tag thing only applies--so far for me--on the individual movie screen itself. IF you open the collection for Marvel, though, it shows everything using the marvel tag.

Plex user :)

[beaudicca83]

I have been a user since 2013 and I have two laptops in the house with folders, within folders and I had Collections before they had that feature but not used as tags i.e. "By the Numbers" is every movie with a number or ordinal. Currently 106 movies strong. I'm not sure what additional features I'm missing in Plex Pass, but most people seem to say it's not necessary.

Welcome! it's easy to get lost in it... I have 4 external hard drives split between both and I have fun with the categories I create :)

Jules