Media structure guidance

[chuga 4]

Hi

 

Currently, under my "movies" folder I have sub folders such as "action" "comedy" and a few others. Not many sub folders though, maybe about 5. In total I have few hundred movies inside these subfolders

 

 

My question is around creating more subfolders as my collection grows (for example I could create a "science fiction" folder which I do not currently have) versus ensuring I have genre metadata populated correctly and using "browse by genre".

 

I suppose some people could put all movies in one folder and only use "browse by genre"?

 

If you use subfolders and genres, how do you decide how many folders do create? Sometimes it is an easy call...for example if you only have one "western" movie probably not worth creating a western subfolder versus just dumping it into "action" folder and ensuring western is in the metadata.

 

Thanks for any help or guidance,

[Starkadius 219]

I think as you mentioned in your post simply putting the movies in one folder and handling the genres with metadata is the most efficient and less time consuming way to go. Many movies have more than one genre assigned to them. For example the old Spaceballs movie is both Sci-Fi and Comedy so how would you go about handling that through a folder structure?

[Kent 91]

I think as you mentioned in your post simply putting the movies in one folder and handling the genres with metadata is the most efficient and less time consuming way to go. Many movies have more than one genre assigned to them. For example the old Spaceballs movie is both Sci-Fi and Comedy so how would you go about handling that through a folder structure?

 

This and also using the Genre Cleaner to combine or customize your genres to your tastes.  Genre Cleaner is a MB3 plug-in.

[WarrenH 16]

Chuga, I use your structure for Movies and TV Series, I never use a genre search as most movies are poorly organised, for example IMDB UK rates Star Wars Episode I as Action, Adventure and Fantasy - not a mention of SciFi anywhere. You can go down further into subfolders in each genre folder, though the more levels you have the more clicking you'll have to do to enter a subfolder.

[Vidman 589]

Umm star wars is fantasy not scifi also you can define your own genres in media Browser to anything you like. ..so the correct statement is that YOUR movies are poorly organised, and as already stated a movie can be one than one genre

Edited December 31, 2014 by Vidman

[Starkadius 219]

Umm star wars is fantasy not scifi also you can define your own genres in media Browser to anything you like. ..so the correct statement is that YOUR movies are poorly organised, and as already stated a movie can be one than one genre

 

Hmm themoviedb and rottentomatoes both list Star Wars as Sci-Fi. Rottentomatoes particularly defines it as Science Fiction & Fantasy. I have found that "themoviedb" for the most part has more accurate genres versus imdb which seems to be lacking...

 

Edit: Now that I look at it more carefully, themoviedb does not even list Star Wars as fantasy. Good thing mediabrowser uses both imdb and themoviedb as metadata sources though because then what one source is missing the other will fill in.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Starkadius

[WarrenH 16]

Umm star wars is fantasy not scifi also you can define your own genres in media Browser to anything you like. ..so the correct statement is that YOUR movies are poorly organised, and as already stated a movie can be one than one genre

 

that was helpful thanks

[CashMoney 94]

I use multiple folders from different drives that are pooled by MB into the one Movies library. Could you not do the same here? Best of both worlds. The library would just list all your movies, but you'd still have access to the folder views for your genres.

[Vidman 589]

that was helpful thanks

You are most welcome:)

[chuga 4]

Thanks for the replies so far

 

I was thinking there might be a rule of thumb, for example, once you get over ~20 movies of a certain genre it might be useful to separate them out in to their own movies/genre subfolder. As discussed, since most movies can be classified into multiple genres, you just pick a "lead genre" as your subfolder and manage the other genres via the metadata. There would be no wrong or right as to the lead genre.

[ebr 14960]

I would also encourage you not to try and organize your movies this way.  It will end up being a huge manual process and will never be as powerful as using the built-in genre capabilities.  All the apps will let you view by true genres and the movies will appear in all of them that apply.

[Abobader 2959]

I would also encourage you not to try and organize your movies this way.  It will end up being a huge manual process and will never be as powerful as using the built-in genre capabilities.  All the apps will let you view by true genres and the movies will appear in all of them that apply.

 

+1

 

The day for users arranging his/her media this way it almost gone, the software (server/clients) doing very well now to display movies type when need it.

[chuga 4]

Thanks

 

So the recommendation is "collections" should really stick to top level categories like music, movies, tv, etc.

 

I should ditch my more specific collections such as "action movies" and put all movie types into the movie folder.

 

Do you recommend I store the movies themselves on my unraid server in same format? Currently my mb3 collections align with the actual movie folders on the server.

 

 

Thanks

[ebr 14960]

Yeah, I suggest you store them flat to eliminate the unnecessary step of having to determine in what sub-folder they should reside.