TV shows: Complex folder structure issues

[AlanBatie 5]

I have enough shows that I've broken them into lettered subdirectories A/Almost_Human etc. The problem is with shows like The 4400 that I put in 0/4400 and Emby thinks it's Hawaii Five-0 for some reason. I'm not going to put shows that start with The in the Ts... and 2001 doesn't have a The anyhow...

[Luke 42528]

33 minutes ago, AlanBatie said:

I have enough shows that I've broken them into lettered subdirectories A/Almost_Human etc. The problem is with shows like The 4400 that I put in 0/4400 and Emby thinks it's Hawaii Five-0 for some reason. I'm not going to put shows that start with The in the Ts... and 2001 doesn't have a The anyhow...

HI, do you use years at the end of your series folders? That would help immensely.

[AlanBatie 5]

I'm going to start putting imdb ids on the problematic ones (uggh, except the format requires using characters that are special to the shell, which is really problematic!); also, I recall there's a way to force the episode number from the file name, but can't find it? Firefly in particular is problematic because it aired out of order

Edited March 30, 2025 by AlanBatie

[darkassassin07 687]

11 hours ago, AlanBatie said:

I have enough shows that I've broken them into lettered subdirectories A/Almost_Human etc. The problem is with shows like The 4400 that I put in 0/4400 and Emby thinks it's Hawaii Five-0 for some reason. I'm not going to put shows that start with The in the Ts... and 2001 doesn't have a The anyhow...

If you're going to break your libraries into lettered sub folders, you absolutely MUST add each of the lettered sub directories as root folders of your library:

So for the structure:

/movies/A/Aladdin (1992)/[movie files]

Add:

/movies/A/

/movies/B/

/movies/C/

Etc

Do NOT just add

/movies/

 

 

 

I've also taken to adding tvdb id's to my folder names, to ensure proper matching:

/Movies/Aladdin (1992) [tmdbid=812]/

Movies and shows with identical titles, or lots of similar titles sometimes get mis-matched even with perfect naming. The various looney toons shows for example. Adding the IDs fixes this. 

 

If you use tools like radarr/sonarr, you can tweak the naming settings to include these for you.

Edited March 30, 2025 by darkassassin07

[Happy2Play 9834]

33 minutes ago, darkassassin07 said:

If you're going to break your libraries into lettered sub folders, you absolutely MUST add each of the lettered sub directories as root folders of your library:

So for the structure:

/movies/A/Aladdin (1992)/[movie files]

Add:

/movies/A/

/movies/B/

/movies/C/

Etc

Do NOT just add

/movies/

 

 

 

I've also taken to adding tvdb id's to my folder names, to ensure proper matching:

/Movies/Aladdin (1992) [tmdbid=812]/

Movies and shows with identical titles, or lots of similar titles sometimes get mis-matched even with perfect naming. The various looney toons shows for example. Adding the IDs fixes this. 

 

If you use tools like radarr/sonarr, you can tweak the naming settings to include these for you.

It can be done

 

But will say all your media requires name year naming scheme.

Edited March 30, 2025 by Happy2Play

[darkassassin07 687]

TBH movies is less critical of the structure, poor example on my part.

Tv shows identification really really doesn't like the extra folders though.

[Happy2Play 9834]

Just now, darkassassin07 said:

Tv shows identification really really doesn't like the extra folders though.

Very true as Emby parser it very finicky here looking at that already nested nature of TV Shows.  But from all my testing having name (year) for your TV corrects all the nesting issues I have come across.

But personally think this should be split as the new issue is nested structure per @AlanBatieposts. @GrimReaper

[Luke 42528]

On 3/30/2025 at 1:40 AM, AlanBatie said:

I'm going to start putting imdb ids on the problematic ones (uggh, except the format requires using characters that are special to the shell, which is really problematic!); also, I recall there's a way to force the episode number from the file name, but can't find it? Firefly in particular is problematic because it aired out of order

For your specific issue the year would be best, although adding external ids to the series folder is not a bad thing, but it just won’t help with what’s being discussed here.

 Episode numbers come from file names.

[AlanBatie 5]

On 3/31/2025 at 10:38 AM, Luke said:

 Episode numbers come from file names.

I have the SxxExx structure, but screwed up and left the Firefly- out of the filename, so never mind that part...

[electronicsguy 0]

On 3/30/2025 at 11:56 PM, darkassassin07 said:

If you're going to break your libraries into lettered sub folders, you absolutely MUST add each of the lettered sub directories as root folders of your library:

So for the structure:

/movies/A/Aladdin (1992)/[movie files]

Add:

/movies/A/

/movies/B/

/movies/C/

Etc

Do NOT just add

/movies/

 

 

 

I've also taken to adding tvdb id's to my folder names, to ensure proper matching:

/Movies/Aladdin (1992) [tmdbid=812]/

Movies and shows with identical titles, or lots of similar titles sometimes get mis-matched even with perfect naming. The various looney toons shows for example. Adding the IDs fixes this. 

 

If you use tools like radarr/sonarr, you can tweak the naming settings to include these for you.

Thank you for this! Yes this was definitely the problem for my TV library. 

What I'd like to know is: can we add individual genre directories as libraries in Emby, but have them all grouped together in a top-level category like "TV"? For example, I tried doing this:

e:\TV\Thrillers ===> Emby: TV\Thrillers

e:\TV\Drama ===> Emby: TV\Drama

etc

 

I want only 1 top-level Emby category called "TV"

But it didn't work. Emby still shows them individually as say " TV\Thrillers". Any suggestions?

[RanmaCanada 543]

7 hours ago, electronicsguy said:

Thank you for this! Yes this was definitely the problem for my TV library. 

What I'd like to know is: can we add individual genre directories as libraries in Emby, but have them all grouped together in a top-level category like "TV"? For example, I tried doing this:

e:\TV\Thrillers ===> Emby: TV\Thrillers

e:\TV\Drama ===> Emby: TV\Drama

etc

 

I want only 1 top-level Emby category called "TV"

But it didn't work. Emby still shows them individually as say " TV\Thrillers". Any suggestions?

Doing this would make things infinitely more complicated for the dev team, and there are far more pressing items for them to take care of. You would be best served to follow the naming guidelines properly.

[Luke 42528]

13 hours ago, electronicsguy said:

 

But it didn't work. Emby still shows them individually as say " TV\Thrillers". Any suggestions?

Hi, shows them individually where exactly?

[electronicsguy 0]

16 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, shows them individually where exactly?

On the main Emby library screen. 

[electronicsguy 0]

22 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

Doing this would make things infinitely more complicated for the dev team, and there are far more pressing items for them to take care of. You would be best served to follow the naming guidelines properly.

I am following the guidelines, it you read correctly. However, I also want my media grouped together on my disk. I want the entire "Battlestar Galactica Collection" in 1 folder, so that I can go and select from there what to play. I shouldn't have to remember that hey "Razor" is part of BSG, or Resistance, or the Plan. Shouldn't have to navigate to these items separately from the top-level. That defeats the purpose of having an intelligent media player.

[RanmaCanada 543]

1 hour ago, electronicsguy said:

I am following the guidelines, it you read correctly. However, I also want my media grouped together on my disk. I want the entire "Battlestar Galactica Collection" in 1 folder, so that I can go and select from there what to play. I shouldn't have to remember that hey "Razor" is part of BSG, or Resistance, or the Plan. Shouldn't have to navigate to these items separately from the top-level. That defeats the purpose of having an intelligent media player.

No you are not following the naming guidelines. At no point has Emby ever said it's an intelligent media player. And yes you absolutely do have to to remember what they are, or you could edit their .nfo or metadata, or the idiots at TVDB could do "their job" and have things identified properly.

This is what you want, I quote..

Quote

 

What I'd like to know is: can we add individual genre directories as libraries in Emby, but have them all grouped together in a top-level category like "TV"? For example, I tried doing this:

e:\TV\Thrillers ===> Emby: TV\Thrillers

e:\TV\Drama ===> Emby: TV\Drama

 

This is impossible. There is far too much overlap between series and their genres. This is also not how TV sorting/naming works. No one supports this. NO ONE.

Again, follow the naming guidelines properly. Anything else is no supported, and probably will never be as again, there are far more important things for the dev team to work on.

[pwhodges 2065]

1 hour ago, electronicsguy said:

I am following the guidelines, it you read correctly. However, I also want my media grouped together on my disk. I want the entire "Battlestar Galactica Collection" in 1 folder, so that I can go and select from there what to play.

In other words, you are want not to follow the guidelines.

You say you want the entire collection in one folder - have you checked out "Collections" in Emby?  You add the material in the way that works, then collect it together as you require.

Paul

[Luke 42528]

5 hours ago, electronicsguy said:

On the main Emby library screen. 

Can you please show a screenshot example?

[electronicsguy 0]

22 hours ago, Luke said:

Can you please show a screenshot example?

Like this:

[howllor 33]

7 minutes ago, electronicsguy said:

Like this:

Add them to the same library instead of separate ones and you'll get exactly what you ask for. So, make just one library called TV, and then you add both e:\TV\Comedy, e:\TV\Drama, and e:\TV\Sci-Fi (etc) to it

Edited May 12 by howllor

[Luke 42528]

@electronicsguyhas this advice helped?

[dcook 315]

On 11/05/2026 at 08:36, electronicsguy said:

I am following the guidelines, it you read correctly. However, I also want my media grouped together on my disk. I want the entire "Battlestar Galactica Collection" in 1 folder, so that I can go and select from there what to play. I shouldn't have to remember that hey "Razor" is part of BSG, or Resistance, or the Plan. Shouldn't have to navigate to these items separately from the top-level. That defeats the purpose of having an intelligent media player.

You can just create a BSG collection and add them, doesn't matter where they are on the disk

[Luke 42528]

@electronicsguy?