The scanners and metadata agents used by Plex will work best when your major types of content are separated from each other. We strongly recommend separating movie and television content into separate main directories. For instance, you might use something like this:
/Media
/Movies
movie content
/Music
music content
/TV Shows
television contentWarning!: Plex will do its best to appropriately find and match content. However, a failure to separate content such as movies and TV shows may result in unexpected or incorrect behavior.
You might have your own image files for movie posters & backgrounds, subtitles, your own movie “extras”, etc. To use these, ensure they are named and organized, and that the Local Media Assets source is enabled and ordered correctly.
Related Page: Local Media Assets - Movies
Note: We use .ext as a generic file extension in the naming/organizing instructions. You should use appropriate file extension for your files, of course. (Some operating systems such as Windows may hide your file extensions by default.)
Movies in Their Own Folders
Movie files can be placed into individual folders and this is recommended, as it can (sometimes significantly) increase the speed of scanning in new media. If you have external media for a movie (e.g. custom poster, external subtitle filess, etc.) you should usually place the movie in a nested folder along with the custom media files. Name the folder the same as the movie file:
- /Movies/MovieName (release year)/MovieName (release year).ext
/Movies
/Avatar (2009)
Avatar (2009).mkv
/Batman Begins (2005)
Batman Begins (2005).mp4
Batman Begins (2005).en.srt
poster.jpg
If using the (non-“Legacy”) Plex Movie agent available in Plex Media Server v1.20.1 and newer, you can also include the IMDb or TheMovieDB ID number in curly brackets to help match the movie. It must follow the form {[source]-[id]}.
/Movies
/Batman Begins (2005) {imdb-tt0372784}
Batman Begins (2005) {imdb-tt0372784}.mp4/Movies
/Batman Begins (2005) {tmdb-272}
Batman Begins (2005) {tmdb-272}.mp4Related Page: Using Subtitles
Related Page: Local Media Assets - Movies
Stand-Alone Movie Files
If you wish, you can also put movie files next to each other in a main folder. The structure isn’t important unless you have custom media (e.g. posters) for a particular movie. To correctly name a movie file, name it as follows:
- MovieName (release year).ext
/Movies
Avatar (2009).mkv
Batman Begins (2005).mp4Movies Split Across Multiple Files
Movies that are split into several files (e.g. pt1, pt2), can be played back as a single item (in most, but not all, players) if named correctly. The split parts must be placed inside their own folder, named as usual for the movie. Name the files as follows:
- /Movies/MovieName (release year)/MovieName (release year) – Split_Name.ext
Where Split_Name is one of the following:
- cdX
- discX
- diskX
- dvdX
- partX
- ptX
…and you replace X with the appropriate number (cd1, cd2, etc.).
/Movies
/The Dark Knight (2008)
The Dark Knight (2008) - pt1.mp4
The Dark Knight (2008) - pt2.mp4Notes:
- Not all Plex apps support playback of stacked media
- All parts must be of the same file format (e.g. all MP4 or all MKV)
- All parts should have identical audio and subtitle streams in the same order
- Only stacks up to 8 parts are supported
- “Other Videos” libraries or those using the “Plex Video Files Scanner” do not support stacked content.
However, to get a better overall experience, we encourage you to instead use a tool to join/merge the individual files into a single video. There are multiple ways you can do this and a quick search in your favorite search engine should give you some options on how to “join” files. An unofficial guide with one free tool has even been posted in our forums.
Related Page: Forums: Joining multi-part movie files with MKVtoolnix GUI