How Do I Know Which Folder Plex Is Reading?

These are of course just the trailers...

It's very piece of cake to get started with Plex, but as you add different types of content and abound your libraries, it becomes more and more than complicated to keep everything tidy and easy to utilize. I accept 150TB+ in Plex organized in a dozen different libraries, learned a lot along the manner, and volition share my notes in this entry.

Over the past decade I went back and forth betwixt Plex and Emby equally my media server of choice merely somewhen settled on the former after I switched my server from my desktop PC to an Nvidia Shield, then to a Docker container in a Synology NAS. It's been a long journey and I hope to advance your ain learning bend.

The ways we are interacting with a tutorial, audiobook, movie, or Telly series are all very different, and information technology takes work to curve Plex to exist a good fit with all these scenarios. If y'all accept to take anything from this post, it's that each type of content needs its ain library with an arroyo that's finetuned to it.

Every bit much equally I endeavour to apply automation and rely on Plex's native features, to reach the all-time results be prepared for some grunt work to get more obscure content organized neatly and in line with how it's meant to exist consumed.

I try to steer away equally much as possible from organizing or tagging content via the Plex UI, as that metadata won't survive if you have to rebuild a library from scratch, which over the years is probable to happen somewhen. Instead, metadata is best conveyed via 1) your folder/file arrangement and naming conventions, 2) by metatagging source files themselves, and/or three) with helper text/json/xml files to be parsed past Plex agents or scripts. Just there's some genre and drove metadata that has to exist input via the Plex UI.

If you're not willing to make that endeavour, well, garbage in garbage out, you'll exit of your libraries what you lot put into them. And the more content you add, the more you'll need it to be organized or the whole matter will collapse under its own weight.

As a caveat earlier we movement on to the meat of this entry, this mail is non virtually streaming or transcoding. I'm using Plex in Direct Play on my LAN and do non care about serving low-quality transcodes to the entire neighborhood every bit some people seem keen to practice. (I'm not judging, it'due south but that I'm not interested nor experienced with this utilise instance).

one. Matching Recalcitrant Documentaries, Tv set Shows, Movies, Sports etc.

Provided you employ the recommended naming conventions (TV, movies), Plex is unremarkably good at motorcar-matching and fetching the right metadata, particularly since the new movie scanner and agent were introduced with PMS 1.20. Even so, some content types can be tricky and tiny punctuation variations can throw the agents off (e.g. you can't put colons in Windows file names), as well as titles in other languages than English. Follow these guidelines to salvage you a lot of grief, depending on the type of content you plan to collect.

1.1. Documentaries Are Not All the Same, Or Are They?

Documentaries can't be all dumped in the same library. Instead, make sure to put standalones (eastward.grand. Tropicália) in a Movie library while series (e.m. Chef's Table) should be in a separate TV library. Some are tricky as yous may think they're standalones but they're actually function of an extended Tv set series of sorts (e.g. content from National Geographic). Look upwards these loose ends in TheTVDB and ~~IMDB~~ TMDB then make up one's mind whether to put them in your TV or Movie documentary libraries accordingly (edit: someone pointed out I fabricated a mistake, information technology looks similar IMDB is used by Plex just for ratings, like Rotten Tomatoes).

After I initially posted this entry someone brought Colima to my attention. I think I'll stick to my approach, but it'due south expert to take options:

"Combined Library Metadata Agent (Colima) in combination with Absolute Series Scanner (Ass) allows you to have movies and tv shows within the same library, something that Plex sadly non supports out of the box. Common scenarios to use this amanuensis for are documentaries, western and Japanese animation libraries."
Colima.bundle README.medico

To automatically enforce Plex's naming convention on TV shows, use a tool such as Sonarr, Filebot, TV Rename, or Rename My Tv Series. Television set shows should match in almost cases if they're properly named, but in the rare case that they won't, find the offending serial in TheTVDB and then force a friction match by ID. With the new Plex TV Series agent, you might need to append "thetvdb-" to the ID.

Yous can do the same ID matching with IDs from TMDB in movie libraries. Picture libraries also piece of work for stand-up comedy shows, which I chose to set up a separate library considering for me it's a different mood, time delivery, and audience than watching a regular movie. This is why I likewise take a separate library for family movies but from a technical perspective y'all don't accept to use separate libraries in these cases, information technology's more of a convenience. (I made that structural choice before the improver of Smart Collections, which nosotros cover later in this post).

1.3. Support for Music: OK, Non Corking

Plexamp is a pretty cool actor for Pass subscribers, but it'southward limited by Plex's express metadata support on the backend. The lack of back up for composer and conductor cripples classical music collections, while the absenteeism of producer and remixer fields may exit electronic and rap collectors wanting (related thread). Regular albums in mainstream genres will get picked upward, often with covers and lyrics, provided you stick to the naming convention.

Dedicated music server Navidrome should eventually accost these shortcomings, only as of September 2021, this "will equire a pretty major refactoring of the database […] and will affect a lot of the UI as well, nosotros don't have a timeline for that yet."

ane.4. Sport Events: Welcome to the Large Leagues

Your mileage may vary with sports depending on whether individual events can exist found in Tmdb or TheTVDB. UFC fights for instance are recognized if you prepare them in a moving-picture show library. Here's a reddit thread discussing successfully handling Formula 1 seasons and hither'due south a thread about NBA/NFL, and another about NBA. A similar approach may or may non work for your sport of pick depending on how mainstream it is.

one.v. Anime, Music Videos, and Other Miscellaneous Content Types That People Somehow Desire in Plex

Information technology's incommunicable for me to track all the ways people use Plex, as at that place are many niches I have no interest in. Some people want to handle family videos, travel pictures, radio shows, podcasts, ebooks, comics, movie trailers, etc., including things that I think are much ameliorate handled by other dedicated content servers such equally Calibre Web or Komga. There'southward a whole subreddit and website merely for preroll videos!

I load Anime in a regular TV Shows library but and so I take a tiny library, if it'south something you're more than serious virtually there an agent called HAMA.

For long music videos I use a Movie library, this works well for most operas and concerts. If you want to collect brusk MTV-fashion music videos, your guess is as good as mine, mayhap look into the Shorts section later in this entry.

2. Getting the Best Experience for Tutorials: Use mp4 Tagging or a Custom Amanuensis

Multi-part video tutorials is the content blazon I establish most tricky to handle, as the big public databases don't have metadata about them. At that place are ii main approaches to this challenge, each with their pros and cons. Once again, yous want to refrain from doing a lot of piece of work via the Plex UI as you'd accept to redo it all over again in case you demand to rebuild your library for whatever reason. With computers, nothing is permanent then plan appropriately.

A showtime round of trial and error led me to using collections with the following settings:

Library blazon: Movies. If you apply Other Videos yous'll accept to merge video parts manually in Plex, which would need to exist redone if you always have to reset said library, which in my feel is leap to happen.
Scanner: Plex Movie Scanner.
Agent: Plex Movie (legacy).
Hide items belonging to collections (stacked content is based on Collections).
Rename files with a tool such as Flash Renamer, following the "- partx.ext" convention.
Grouping parts of the same tutorial under the same "album", by tagging files with mp3tag. This works on mp4 video files and then if you take AVIs or MKVs you'll desire to convert them with VLC or Handbrake first.
For categorization I don't employ tags, which never got whatever love in the Plex UI, merely rather cocky-defined genres.
You can add specific artwork for each video segment (i.east. if you lot have different files inside the same tutorial), which will make information technology easier to choice the right i amidst the 20 parts of a long tutorial. Some media players such equally mpv brand it very easy to save screenshots in i keyboard shortcut.
You might need to generate your own posters as tutorials virtually underwater archery or Roblox origami are non necessarily going to come with something practiced looking for Plex purposes. The expected aspect ratio is i:1.5.

This turned to be a manageable but not entirely satisfying workflow in the backend, and the cease event in the frontend is a decent only non optimal user experience since navigating a large library volition more often than not have to exist done via the Collections tab. At that place must be a better mode!

As an alternative, a neater organization may be obtained by following the TV show/season convention, and even more than command can exist supplied past custom agents. It's a shame that Plex stubbornly lacks support for long-established .nfo files, just people have been complaining nearly information technology for years to no avail so I'm not property my breath. I tested four options and have adopted one that ended up existence every bit close to my ideal requirements as it'south going to go.

Personal Shows Metadata Agent – this is the best option I found for tutorials. Its meta.json format supports genre tags, studio, and cast, only it could be more thorough equally at that place was initially no support for some fields such every bit collections, tagline, or originally available date… I edited the Python source code to add these fields, a tweak that the author then officially added to his repository. If you're willing to exercise the legwork to adapt to the Tv set show structure and naming convention required past this agent, then the result is very satisfying.
Extended Personal Media Shows Amanuensis (forum thread). Similar the previous one, information technology unfortunately doesn't leverage agents that harvest mp4 tags and at that place's no mode to ready cast (actors/directors), Genre, or Studio. This agent relies on following a specific naming convention with optional .summary and .metadata files.
XBMCnfoTVImporter – This plugin is meant recognize the blazon of nfo files used past Kodi, but documentation is nonexistent and then while this is probably a good pick, prepare to bollix in the dark.
AvalonXmlAgent – inspired by XBMCnfoTVImporter, merely with a unlike XML file format. Looks good just doesn't handle season titles. My get-go attempt with it didn't work too well though, I remember I'll stick to the Personal Shows Metadata Amanuensis.
Local Assets-Metadata Double Agent (forum thread) – like in spirit to the in a higher place just with the added twist of letting yous relieve Plex Metadata locally (i.due east. information technology does import/consign).

The amanuensis-based approach is besides what I'd recommend in case you desire to organize your own habitation photos or videos. For photos there'due south an autotagging option only it'south calling a third-political party service – which you may non desire to do for privacy reasons – you need Plex Pass to exist able to use it, and information technology'due south reportedly no match with Google Photos's face recognition.

For the best result with custom cast members, salvage square .jpg pictures of shut-up mugshots in a dedicated web folder. Common cloud services such every bit Google Bulldoze or OneDrive brand this fashion too hard for some reason, I serve these images via a local spider web server on one of my Synology NASes.

iii. Audiobooks: One of the Most Challenging Utilize Cases with Intricate Solutions

Dedicated back up for audiobooks is ane of the top open feature requests but so far, they all the same require that yous jump through similar hoops every bit tutorials for the virtually part, except equally a Music library and using a special-purpose agent. The primary drawbacks of using Plex for audiobooks are that:

On the frontend side, the official Plex clients are not the best to continue track of progress time across devices and other UX niceties specific to listening to audiobooks.
On the backend side, Plex doesn't provide an agent/scanner combo for audiobooks like they're doing for TV shows or movies.

For details on the intricate workflows necessary to get the best effect, see:

Audiobook Guide 1 – macr0dev
Audiobook Guide 2 – Seanap – more recent than the previous one, among differences it now leverages the new audnexus data assemblage API via this amanuensis.
Play audiobooks outside of Audible on Alexa devices
Alternative approach for multipart audiobooks using mp4s in a Shows library.

To listen to audiobooks on mobile devices, check out:

Relate Audiobook Player for Plex – Android only, decent option.
Prologue – I hear adept things virtually it but I wouldn't know firsthand equally iOS just
Bookcamp: app for iOS and Android with Plex backend back up, it's in early access every bit of the cease of 2021 and looks slick. It's a paid subscription. I haven't been able to become it to observe my audiobook library even though my Plex server is accessible from the exterior and I successfully linked the app to my Plex business relationship.

A pregnant limitation of audio libraries is that different Movies and Shows they don't support collections.

There's no built-in mode to tell autonomously movies with a commentary track at the library level because the audio stream metadata is not leveraged for navigation. Some people use MKVToolNix or ffmpeg (using ISO codes) to set the commentary soundtrack to a rare language such equally Icelandic, while others advise Tautulli but that seems clunky at best. Alternatively, you lot could apply sharing labels, which require Plex Pass, or create a "Commentary" tag within Genres or Collections. I elected to do the latter, merely didn't want to maintain it manually through the Plex UI, so for a long time was stuck without an acceptable solution.

That changed in March 2021 when the author of Plex-Meta-Manager (more on that tool further below) added back up for filtering past audio_track_title at my asking, which takes intendance of the commentary track. In your Movies.yml metadata file, take a department like this (be careful with indentation as the dastardly YAML linguistic communication is looking for excuses to fail):

          collections:   Movies with Commentary:     plex_all: true     filters:       audio_track_title: Commentary     sync_mode: sync     collection_order: release     summary: Movies with commentary sound tracks from the managing director or critics.

If you wanted to create collections past audio rails codec (AC3, DTS etc.) every bit someone asked in the comments below, this is also the way to go.

4.ii. Employ Smart Collections to Dynamically Categorize Content Co-ordinate to Search Filters

For all the metadata exposed by the Plex search user interface, you don't need the aforementioned script. Merely configure an advanced search and save it equally a smart collection, a feature added in April 2021 that was a great comeback to Plex.

I've used smart collections to categorize documentaries past genre: Arts, Music, History, Nature, Science, etc.

Smart Collections will automatically add together new content matching their criteria

I have hundreds of documentaries so I wanted to be able to browse them by theme

4.3. Manual collections Are An Constructive Fashion to Handle Unlike Audiences Inside the Same Account

I also prepare collections manually (i.e. not based on filters) by audience, i.e. content for the entire family, that only my wife watches (mystery and constabulary procedural galore!), that I watch together with her, or that we watch with our daughter merely our son is not interested in. That manner, depending on who's in the mood to scout a TV episode or motion picture, we tin can narrow the pick down to that specific audience. And my wife can first watching new shows I downloaded for her without accidentally watching something I intended to watch also. I already have plenty libraries as information technology is without creating libraries by genre or audience!

4.four. Brusque Movies Are a Puzzler

I oasis't started collecting shorts however, but knowing myself, I'll probably get into it at some indicate. The main challenge is that you lot might have hundreds or thousands of shorts if yous get into collecting old cartoons, and yous're probable not to like overwhelming your regular TV or Movies libraries with them. My initial research led to this thread and others like information technology and led me to believe that the chief approaches are:

Use a TV library, as some shorts (mostly cartoons such equally Pixar shorts) are in TheTVDB
Use a movie library for those shorts that are in TheMovieDB
Use manual collections
Employ smart collections based on Genre = Short

four.5. Playback Speed: Only on Devices That Support Browser Extensions

Playback speed, while non strictly about library management per se, is something that people often want to control for audiobooks and tutorials, and to a bottom extent sports, but despite popular need it's yet not establish in any Plex clients. At that place's a third-party Chrome extension – which means information technology also works in Edge Chromium – but that plain won't piece of work from your TV or tablet app.

If you must have playback speed control in mobile devices so y'all're better off using Emby, at to the lowest degree for the library for which yous have that need.

5. Calculation Chapters to Make Long Videos Easier to Navigate Around

Some long tutorials can be cumbersome to navigate, while other types of content, from sport events to concerts may also benefit from having delineated chapters. If you're ripping DVDs or BluRays, ChapterGrabber will help you lot get chapter data from the source, and in that location'due south besides the ChapterDB annal for (some) movies.

When affiliate data is not already available, y'all tin can add together your own chapter data inside videos with software such every bit Handbrake or Drax. In any example this needs to be done in the video files before importing them into Plex.

The ability user approach to this task relies on ffmpeg, best combined with a helper script and then that you can write a elementary text file listing your chapters so writing them back to the video'south metadata. The python dependency makes this overkill if you take only a few videos to "chapterize", but who doesn't like to spend five hours to automate a 15-infinitesimal manual task anyway? If similar me yous're running on Windows, make certain to save your chapters.txt file with Unix cease of line characters (LF), which is easy with Notepad++, otherwise you'll end up with ugly rectangles at the end of each affiliate's title. Here'south a recap of the procedure tweaked to my ain preferences, I practise at least a few at a fourth dimension to become into the groove of things:

[File Explorer] Brand a copy of the video to exist chapterized to your work directly and rename it input.mp4
[Notepad++ and mpv.net] Write downwards chapter timestamps in chapters.txt while speed-watching through the video. Doublecheck at that place are no typos.
[Command prompt] ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -f ffmetadata ffm.txt
[Visual Studio Code or Python-enlightened CLI] run helper.py
[Notepad++] Open ffm.txt and convert EOL characters to Unix
[Command prompt] ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i ffm.txt -map_metadata 1 -codec copy output.mp4
[mpv.cyberspace] Open up output.mp4 and navigate to each chapter to brand sure the timestamp is exactly right and triple check for typos
[File Explorer] Rename output.mp4 and move it to the library folder where it's supposed to get

While yous can set up fine art for seasons and episodes, thumbnails for chapters can't be set manually with local images, they're automatically generated by Plex based on each chapter'due south exact timestamp (related thread). Significant that y'all'll have to tweak your chapter timestamps almost by the exact frame to get the best results. Well, that's not entirely truthful, you could edit the files generated by Plex in the Media folder in the backend, as explained by Noel Plum in the comments below. He'due south been doing it for months without upshot, simply there's no telling whether time to come changes in the PMS code won't mess with that eventually.

With MediaInfo GUI you can quickly check whether any given video file already has capacity, and export that listing to a text file. Y'all may want to do so in club to edit it and reload it back to its video source in case the existing timestamps don't quite work for you (e.g. bad preview thumbnails), or to remove or add to the list. The equivalent with the MediaInfo CLI is:

          mediainfo.exe input.mp4 > metadata.txt

The output volition need to be cleaned upward and reformatted a chip if you want to reinject it as per Kyke Howell's helper script mentioned above, but it'due south not too bad. Alternatively yous can employ ffmpeg to extract that metadata as too shown past Kyle, with the major inconvenience that timestamps are shown as an integer based on a timebase, or y'all could use mp4box from the command line, which will generate a ttxt XML file (which then needs to be scrubbed) with hh:mm:ss timestamps (that's the skilful office):

          mp4box.exe "FilePath" -dump-chap >capacity.ttxt

If demand exist, yous tin also scrub existing metadata and chapters with ffmpeg.

As well, information technology seems you can't forcefulness the generation of chapter thumbnails then y'all'll have to wait for your scheduled process to kicking in. Once they're rendered, here's what that looks like in the spider web UI (according to what I read chapter support varies amidst Plex clients):

This guy is a fountain of grappling knowledge, only besides talks slowly and repeats himself constantly. Trust me, yous want to chapterize him!

6. Miscellaneous Library Customization & Direction Tips

If yous want your library to look ultra clean, consider using custom posters and fanart such as those constitute on The Poster Database. I've used this for my thematic collections but for individual movies I'k waiting for that site to add a Plex agent and direct integration into the Poster tab shown when y'all edit an item. Some people even go through the trouble of customizing episode cards, among other reasons to avoid spoilers ("what, this character in the thumbnail died two seasons ago?!")
You'll probably want to customize which libraries are part of global search and featured in dashboards, i.east. On Deck and Recently Added . That's done in the Advanced Settings of each library.

Collections Automatically Created with a Script, Looking Good with Custom Posters

vii. Library Organization Wrap-Up: Exist Deliberate & Organized

As a summary, to become your content properly organized with the minimum amount of friction, information technology's essential that you:

Cull the right library media blazon for your content, which can sometimes be counter intuitive. This means your source content needs to exist properly organized, and you lot can't driblet everything in one morass of a Plex library.
Organize your content by type and follow the official naming conventions for your source folders and files.
Figure out whether readily available scanners and agents will do the task, or if you lot have to handle metadata yourself. There'south for instance an agent to handle Youtube downloads.
Prepare each library'southward advanced settings deliberately as some of the defaults can have large consequences. This is best done when yous beginning set up your library, though that can be edited later.
Use collections within and across libraries for TV remote-friendly access to categorized content.
Summary of the summary: RTFM, there's more than to Plex than start meets the eye and it's well worth understanding what's going on beneath the hood.

viii. Choosing What to Watch Adjacent with Trakt, Moviewatch

viii.one. Keep Track of Watch Status and Wishlists with Trakt Integration

I of the primary criteria to choose something to watch is to filter out content you've already watched. Plex does go on track of that, simply if yous ever have to reset your library, that status is gone. Do you want to manually recheck hundreds of series and movies? If not, Trakt.tv gives you a way to effectively back up your watched status to a third-party service, as well equally help yous discover other content you lot might like. There'south built-in "scrobber" integration between Plex Pass and Trakt VIP, just that's 2 subscriptions yous need to go along paying. If you have a bunch of distinct Plex and Trakt users, that'due south the way to go.

In my case, I only take i master Plex account and one Trakt account, so here's what I ended up doing to get the most out of the Plex-Trakt combo:

Install the Trakt.tv (for Plex) plugin via the Applications section of the Unofficial App Shop (UAS) in Web.Tools. Contrarily to popular belief, Plex plugins are not entirely dead, I'll get back to that in a minute.
Install Kitana.
Do an initial total sync via Kitana (unless your Trakt account is brand new). At present Plex and Trakt should concur with each other on what you've already watched then stay that mode as you sentry new content.
Create private watchlists in Trakt to add interesting Boob tube shows and movies equally I'one thousand browsing that site.
Connect these watchlists to Sonarr v3 and Radarr to automate their downloading.
- I found that I had to nudge Sonarr into processing a new listing which is easy plenty via its API.
- Radarr will only handle your watchlist via the "Trakt User" list option, "Trakt List" won't work for some reason.
With the Web to Plex browser extension you lot'll run into whether you have a movie/show in your server while browsing Trakt or Imdb.

Find out more most the *arr automation apps in this post. To do the higher up prior to Sonarr/Radarr v3 you had to use Traktarr.

In summary:

Content watched in Plex will automatically exist marked as watched in Trakt.
Whenever you watch something exterior of Plex, just flag it in Trakt and Plex will know.
Trakt watchlists are a skilful mode to funnel content dorsum into your Plex libraries if yous're willing to gear up the *arr infrastructure (once more meet my NAS entry, this is such a powerful stack).

A side benefit is that I was able to resync my Plex and Trakt accounts that had grown out of sync.

The only thing that I was able to do via Kodi that I tin't do in Plex itself is the ability to rate content right after I watched it in the media player. Looks like that's not possible via a Plex plugin.

eight.ii. Make Movie Night Fun Again with Moviewatch

A mutual refrain from people with large libraries is that it takes them forever to find something to watch as they're overwhelmed past the sheer amount of choice they accept. You lot can play with filters to narrow downward options, merely a very offset-world solution to this kickoff-world problem is Moviewatch, which gives you and your co-watchers a Tinder-like interface to bandy through motion picture posters until there'south an agreement from all parties, at which point you're i click away from launching the consensus movie in Plex.

9. Managing & Extending Plex Beyond the UI: Plugins, Maintenance, Data Analysis

9.1. Plugins: Unsupported But Not Dead

While plugins such as Web.Tools are no longer supported in the Plex UI, they still work in practice. As I just mentioned, one big piece of functionality they allow is free bidirectional integration with Trakt.

Every bit a complement, Kitana provides a web frontend to these plugins (how to install Kitana via Portainer) which comes handy in some cases.

9.2. Maintenance & Backups: Practice It Or Else

Plex Media Server occasionally stops for obscure reasons such as version updates. Scheduling server maintenance may save you hours of setup time if your Plex database becomes irremediably corrupted, which can happen in example of abrupt shutdowns, so information technology'south highly recommended to put your server behind a UPS.

Restoring from a backup is very piece of cake.

nine.3. Programmatic Admission for Large Scale Management

There are several ways to automate functions of the Plex server:

Plex-Meta-Manager is "a Python iii script that tin can be continuously run using YAML configuration files to update on a schedule the metadata of the movies, shows, and collections in your libraries as well equally automatically build collections". I've used it to build a variety of collections such as Movies with commentary, Oscar winners, or Imdb 250. This is a game changer if you lot have more than two,000 movies similar I practice.
Annotation that collections kind of span beyond libraries, even if they have different types, so you lot can for instance have a Star Trek collection that includes movies and TV shows.

If you use the same name for collections in dissimilar libraries, Plex will cross-reference them beyond libraries. Pictured here, *Top Rated* beyond the main picture show library and the family moving picture library. You lot could utilise this to tie soundtracks to movies, or file Television set series and movies in the aforementioned universe.

Plex-auto-genres: in the aforementioned spirit that the previous script, less involved but less powerful.
Gaps: "Find the missing movies in your Plex Server."
PlexAPI, a ready of unofficial Python bindings whose goal is to "match all capabilities of the official Plex Web Customer", including navigating libraries, performing library deportment such as scans, remote control, and listening to notifications. A collection of scripts that use this library can exist plant in this Github repository.
Python-PlexLibrary, a "control line utility for creating and maintaining dynamic Plex libraries and playlists based on 'recipes'."
An API that I oasis't tested yet.
Webhooks that require Plex Laissez passer.
RPA software that captures how you interact with a website or desktop app, such as Power Automate. I'd pursue this only if all else fails, merely it'due south an option.

Drove automatically generated with Plex Meta Manager

ix.4. Querying the Plex Database for Avant-garde Analytics

Plex stores its information in an SQLite file, which has this schema that you tin query like and then. I've used this to visualize my library in Microsoft Power BI as per the screenshot beneath. If you're going to practice this, work off a re-create of the database simply to be safe.

Plex information in Power BI – two of my favorite things together!

A low-tech alternative is to use ExportTools to generate a CSV.

Finally, many people use Tautulli to monitor their Plex server (I practice and then via a Docker container on my Synology NAS), though it'due south focused more on analyzing viewership than library content.

Getting the Near Out of Your Synology Networked Attached Storage: Did You Know It Can Exercise That? You'll acquire how to run Plex and its friends (Sonarr, Radarr, Overseerr, Tautulli, etc.) in Docker and much more.
Things I Institute Out the Difficult Way to Become the Most of the Nvidia Shield. The Shield is an excellent Plex player and a decent entry-level Plex server.

I started a thread on Reddit mentioning this mail, lots of practiced feedback in there that I reflected higher up through many iterative edits.

simpsonliffeent1970.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.oliviertravers.com/plex-complex-libraries-ultimate-media-server/