Naming and Organizing Your TV Show Files | Plex Support (2023)

FAQs

What is the naming convention for TV show extras in Plex? ›

Local Show and Season Extras

You can organize your local extras into specific subdirectories inside the main directory named for the TV show. Extras will be detected and used if named and stored as follows: TV Show (Release Date)/Extra_Directory_Type/Descriptive_name. ext.

To correctly name a movie file, name it as follows: MovieName (release year).ext.

The biggest reason by far for items to not be found during a library scan is due to naming. Plex's scanners are generally quite robust and can often do a good job even with content that doesn't follow the naming recommendations.

Typically, users group them by movies and TV shows, but you can divide them up however you want. If you want to have one collection of movies you share, and another you don't, give them separate folders. You can further divide your library folders however you prefer, such as adding a new folder for each movie or show.

A title should neatly encapsulate the content and tone of a show, like Desperate Housewives and Modern Family. “If a title really contextualizes the tone of a show,” says MTV's Janollari, “that's a big factor in helping you launch a show and market and position it to an audience.”

Is there an alternative to Plex? ›

Typically, you install the Plex server on the home computer where your movies, TV, photos, and music are stored, and you can then stream this content to devices running a Plex app. Using Plex is perfectly legal.

Both the folder structure and each episode filename must be correct for the best matching experience. If you're not sure whether a show is season- or date-based, check The Movie Database (TMDB) or The TVDB and name it as it appears there. By default, the Plex TV Series agent uses the episode ordering based on TMDB.

File naming best practices:

Avoid special characters or spaces in a file name. Use capitals and underscores instead of periods or spaces or slashes. Use date format ISO 8601: YYYYMMDD.

For those unfamiliar with intellectual property laws, titles can't be copyrighted and it's totally legal to name a work with the same name as another one; however, if the title is trademarked, then you can't. Trademark covers a franchise, not a single work/series.

A file name is the complete title of a file and file extension. For example, "readme. txt" is a complete file name. A file name may also describe only the first portion of the file.

How do I organize my movie files? ›

For web streaming, the best video codec is simple to identify – it is H. 264. H. 264 is hands down the best codec for web streaming because it is highly efficient and compatible with most other forms of video technology you need to use for web streaming.

To give you the best possible experience, Plex can automatically adjust the quality of your video based on your connection speed. When auto quality is turned on, videos will start at the quality that you have selected in your app's quality settings, then increase or decrease quality based on your connection speed.

On Android mobile devices (phones and tablets), the Plex app lets you access video files that you've saved to folders on your device's internal storage or SD card. Or, from other Android apps, you can select a video file and choose to open it in the Plex app.

If you are using the Plex web browser GUI to stream 4K content, it is recommended that 4K content is encoded with H. 264 video codec, and the video container is MP4.

To edit the details for a particular piece of metadata: Choose the tab of category you want to change on the left, then click the detail field. Type or paste the changes. For items in the Tags or Sharing area, simply start typing the name.

How do I put all my streaming services in one place on Plex? ›

Once you update Plex to the latest version, you will be presented with a list of streaming services that you can add. If you skip this screen, you can also add them later by going to Settings > Streaming Services on any device. Then choose your subscriptions and select Done or Save Changes if it appears at the end.

We've made the difficult decision to shut down the Plex Cloud service on November 30th, 2018. As you may know, we haven't allowed any new Plex Cloud servers since February of this year, and since then we've been actively working on ways to address various issues while keeping costs under control.

Plex is a live and on-demand streaming service that doubles up as a media server and personal storage service, making it a little different from its competitors in the live streaming marketplace. The Plex TV entertainment service includes live TV, on-demand content, free web shows, podcasts, and music streaming.

The basic functionality of Plex is completely free, which includes playback of anything on your server, as well as Movies & Shows and Live TV (from Plex).

Why Is It Dangerous to Run Plex Over an Unencrypted Connection? By using an unencrypted connection, your traffic is vulnerable to a Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack. This means an attacker can snoop on your network traffic, inject unwanted code into your traffic, and even intercept usernames and passwords.

By default, when your Plex Media Server updates a Library and an item is no longer available at the specified location, the Server will not just remove the item from your library. Instead, the item will be marked as “soft deleted” so that you can restore the item without losing any metadata associated with the item.

Plex allows you to access all your streaming services with Plex Discover. When you set up the Plex server and app, you'll be prompted to select from a big list of streaming services, including the major ones you're likely subscribed to, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Hulu, HBO Max, and more.

Plex does not share, sell, rent, or trade Personal Data collected through its Channels with third parties for their sole promotional purposes or as otherwise outlined in this Privacy Statement.

Plex allows you to tell your music library to use the metadata that's embedded in your music files. However, if you enable that option, that basically means that you're prioritizing local embedded tags over online information as well as committing to having accurate tags for your entire music library.

How do I organize my home like a pro? ›

Stick them in a cloud folder

Even better, you can easily restrict access to the folder containing your home videos to people you give the link to. You can check out how that works in iCloud Drive, Google Drive and Dropbox. The pros are that this is one of the easiest ways to share access to your personal videos.

These extras are sourced from a licensed online provider and will stream for you as needed. Note: Automatic extras requires an active Plex Pass subscription. These extras are not downloaded and stored locally; they are streamed as-needed and thus require an active internet connection to use.

For TV shows, make a subfolder for each season (e.g., “Game of Thrones Season 01”). Name episodes in this manner: “Game of Thrones s01e01”.

In most cases, this metadata is retrieved from online resources (such as The Movie Database, The TVDB, Last.fm, etc.).

Plex does not collect: Content titles of your Personal Content. Filenames EXCEPT those that may be collected under Debugging Information below. Metadata for Personal Content (e.g., information about the specific file, cover art, subtitles, running length, etc.)

The basic functionality of Plex is completely free, which includes playback of anything on your server, as well as Movies & Shows and Live TV (from Plex).

Do home users get Plex Pass? ›

Free Access to Plex apps (Plex Pass).

If the admin of the Plex Home has an active Plex Pass subscription, all members of a Plex Home (both Managed Users and regular accounts) will be able to use our regular mobile Plex apps from the various app stores without doing a separate one-time, in-app activation purchase.

At $4.99 per month, $39.99 per year, or $119.99 for a lifetime subscription, it's cheaper than most paid streaming services, but you aren't really paying for the streaming content. To me, the killer features in Plex Pass are offline viewing and OTA TV with cloud DVR.

Choose Settings from the top right of the Home screen. Select your Plex Media Server from the settings sidebar. Choose Agents. Choose the Library Type and Agent you want to change.

The recently-added Discover section in Plex shows you the new and trending content from all your streaming services, like Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, and more. This way, you can search for something to watch without switching back and forth between different apps.

After a bit of investigation, it was determined that the Plex Media Server stores data in two locations. The first location is in the cloud, and the second is a local SQLite database.

For television broadcasting and video streaming, video metadata is used to provide information about specific video and audio streams or files, also known as essence. Metadata can either be embedded directly into the video or included as a separate file within a container such as MP4 or MKV.