Suggestions for folder/file naming structure for custom collections?

[mbuser18 9]

I am having great difficulty shoe-horning emby (or any other video streaming software) to organize my custom video collections in such a way that makes the navigation sensible and playback features also sensible.  I have tried every single official naming suggestion here in the documentation, as well as my own clever workarounds.  I am not satisfied.  So I am looking for suggestions.  I'll outline the issues...

I have some folders, home videos, that will be like this:

root\homevideos1\<series of videos with numbered system like episodes in tv shows>

root\homevideos2\<series of videos with numbered system like episodes in tv shows>

These are two separate collections.  They are not two seasons of the same show.

I tried using Season naming conventions as a workaround.  The problem now is that emby now shows it as "Season 1" and "Season 2" etc.  I don't want that.  I'd rather have it say 'Trip to Rome" and "Trip to Paris".  So how do I work around that?  I have no idea.

Next, if I use the folder view, which seems to work the best, then it gets complicated with the "Play All" buttons.  I want to play all the sequenced videos like they were a season of a show.

Then there is the artwork.  I'd like the artwork to be recognized as actual artwork.  Sometimes, I am getting just plain images mixed in with the video content, and emby treats it like a separate media.  This is like if I choose the Home Videos content option or even Music Videos.  Also emby, your documentation does not mention how these things are treated differently at a technical level.  You have very broad, vague explanations.  Doesn't matter, I tried them all and it doesn't seem to work.

Overall, this is not an emby problem per se, as all the other tv/media solutions have the same problem.  They will only try to scrape or treat these things as actual movies or shows, and custom stuff is nearly impossible to deal with.

I have some folders that are simple file named like "01-paris" "02-paris", but if i start with just the number, then the folder view will sort them all alphabetically and you will get all the 01s together and then all the 02, and its awful.  However, if i now prefix it with a more descriptive name, the problem there is now I have long names for everything and the title will get cut off before the meaningful part (the part that tells me what the individual video actually is beyond the collection it belongs to".

 

Someone here must have a good workaround to this.

I am now looking into manually naming nfo files myself to see if that works.  Are there any batch nfo creating software that can do custom tags rather than just scraping?

[lightsout 144]

I have a lot of custom stuff as well. Folder view has been by far the best but not perfect. Probably best to put your different video sets in their own folder.

/Paris/01,02,03

Then you could play all of a given set.

[mbuser18 9]

Folder view gets close.  My complaint with folder view is that you keep clicking and clicking until you get to the individual video.  Too many clicks for nested stuff, and then there's still that last click to get to the video no matter what.  And Play All is tricky like that.

The best features IMO is the TV content type.  Those seasons features is the best, but if only they could be customized for non commercial content.  Like easy batch editing, etc.  I'm playing around with it all right now.

My best solution right now....

choose TV for content

Create top level folders as the "Shows" but i have to be creative how I'm grouping these. So now I'm doing something like this....

trips\paris\<numbered sequence of files>

trips\london\<numbered sequence of files>

Fortunately, emby seems to be somewhat flexible with how files are named.  So I don't think i have to label things as "seasons" or even to the s1e1 thing.  I can just number them in any way.

[mbuser18 9]

My method above doesn't really do anything great either.  Geez, this damn seasons thing.  It makes you click an extra time every single time, there is no way around it. 

[Luke 36992]

We plan to add display options to flatten the seasons in future updates. Thanks.