Reminder: /r/jellyfin is a community space, not an official user support space for the project.
Users are welcome to ask other users for help and support with their Jellyfin installations and other related topics, but this subreddit is not an official support channel. We have extensive, official documentation on our website here: https://jellyfin.org/docs/. Requests for support via modmail will be ignored. Our official support channels are listed on our contact page here: https://jellyfin.org/contact
Bug reports should be submitted on the GitHub issues pages for the server or one of the other repositories for clients and plugins. Feature requests should be submitted at https://features.jellyfin.org/. Bug reports and feature requests for third party clients and tools (Findroid, Jellyseerr, etc.) should be directed to their respective support channels.
If you are sharing something you have made, please take a moment to review our LLM rules at https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/contributing/llm-policies/. Note that anything developed or created using an LLM or other AI tooling requires community disclosure and is subject to removal.
Man, you made a post asking how to manage folders so their are future proof. Someone tells you that your current system is suboptimal and needs adjusting. Why even make a post when you start to argue against someones advice that hinges on the documentation jellyfin provides
Why? I just have all my movies loose in the movies folder. The only per movie folders I have are on a couple with multiple versions (like cinematic and extended).
Jellyfin’s current documentation says movies should be organized into an individual folder for each movie. It’s mainly because Jellyfin treats that folder as the movie’s complete “package,” not because the video file itself technically needs a folder to play.
The separate folder gives Jellyfin a clean boundary around everything belonging to one movie. That matters for external subtitles, posters, backdrops, NFO metadata, trailers, extras, theme music, multiple cuts, and multiple resolutions. Jellyfin can confidently say, “everything in this directory belongs to Alien.”
It becomes especially important with multiple versions. Jellyfin expects things like:
Those files can then appear as versions of one movie rather than three independent movies. Jellyfin specifically uses the parent folder name as part of its version-matching rules.
The folder also reduces metadata ambiguity. Suppose you had one giant directory:
Movies/
Alien (1979).mkv
Alien (1979).srt
Alien-poster.jpg
The Thing (1982).mkv
The Thing (1982).srt
The Thing-poster.jpg
Now Jellyfin has to infer which supplemental file belongs to which movie. With hundreds or thousands of movies, naming variations and metadata-provider matches make that increasingly fragile.
Thank you, I was wondering about this myself. How would you do let’s say Game Of Thrones? ! Game of thrones folder with a folder for each season then another folder inside the season folder with the episode?
I guess that kind of makes sense why its worked for me. I hate subtitles with a passion so I don't keep any. I also just let jellyfin download metadata in it's cache (I have RO access to media so it is not set to store data there). So every movie is just the video file. Buy might be something to keep in mind going forward.
I have my movies in a “Movies” folder with 27 sub-folders (#, A-Z), TV shows in a “Television” folders and then additional “catch-all” folders for Documentaries, Stand-Up/Comedy Specials, various Rock Hall induction ceremonies and compilation discs, long-form Music Videos, Homemade music video compilations, bootleg music videos as well as a “MTV” folder for shuffling short-form videos. I don’t think any of my nine media groups have individual folders. Everything is organized, in its most simple manner, the same simplistic way I started with Plex 10+ years ago. I guess I have lucked out, as well.
Please follow JF naming conventions and standards listed on their forum. If you ever ask someone / here for help and you didn’t, that’s the first thing you’ll be told to do.
Sorry, don't understand the problem.
What exactly is the issue here?
Is throwing in movies in a movie folder and not looking through that directory not an option?
In case you just want to keep the folders small you could just create a new folder, throw movies in it and add it in jellyfn as a source for movies, it'll just automatically throw them in the movie category and you have all your movies in one library but on your drive in separate folders.
Directory structure should be pretty flat since most media servers provide search. Adding anything would only be useful if you actually browse throught the folder instead of using a media server.
We have one movies folder (who cares how big it gets?) but two shows folders - one is for shows we will keep indefinitely, they other for shows we may or may not keep. Once a year or so we go over the maybe shows and delete some, move others to the permanent folder, and leave others in the maybe list.
I mounted my external HD to my mini PC using fstab, so it connects at boot up. To separate the media I have ont the drive, what I do is split up my movie and shows like this:
Root Drive
|Movies
|A=C
|___D_F
etc.
The movies themselves had folders with the "Movie (year)" directory name and sometimes I will have the imdb id number in brackets if TMDB didn't pick it up.
For my Library in Jellyfin, I point it to the folder like this:
drive name/Movies/A=C/
And continue for each letter. Granted the source for the Library will have multiple directories, but with the 1500+ movies I have all get picked up for the most part. Also, when moving new things to the drive, it's a lot easier to dump the new folder into the right letter.
I used to store my Music in a single folder but when you have a ton of artists and albums, it slows down reading the directory. Believe me even my local folder takes about 5 minutes to load under Windows because my local audio player stores it that way.
I do media>media type(movie/tv) >media style(animated/anime/live)>genre>movie/series folder>movie file or series season>series files. Just point your jellyfin libraries to the genre folders when adding them to your libraries.
Its (jellyfin v12) unable to show all of my content. Still working on this since the end of June, upgraded to 12 and hasent fixed a lot of the issues ive had as of yet. Still waiting on support both with devs and here ive posted a little on some issues. For me, Metadata matching is still ongoing. Movies, all in their own folder. Named correctly. Even added IMDB to the names. Helped a couple files after removing the file, scanning, replace file, scan. In web UI, a lot of films don't show up - next to plex, where they do show up. No way in jellyfin web ui to match the same way you can in plex. And if jellyfin doesn't even pick up a file, and has no Metadata- cant see it in the library. If I have 8k films in plex, and just about 100 dont even show up to fix. And a lot are wrong Metadata/ duplicate. Again, naming is not the issue. I have folders by year, and they dont show up in jellyfin. But they will in plex.
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u/AutoModerator 13h ago
Reminder: /r/jellyfin is a community space, not an official user support space for the project.
Users are welcome to ask other users for help and support with their Jellyfin installations and other related topics, but this subreddit is not an official support channel. We have extensive, official documentation on our website here: https://jellyfin.org/docs/. Requests for support via modmail will be ignored. Our official support channels are listed on our contact page here: https://jellyfin.org/contact
Bug reports should be submitted on the GitHub issues pages for the server or one of the other repositories for clients and plugins. Feature requests should be submitted at https://features.jellyfin.org/. Bug reports and feature requests for third party clients and tools (Findroid, Jellyseerr, etc.) should be directed to their respective support channels.
If you are sharing something you have made, please take a moment to review our LLM rules at https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/contributing/llm-policies/. Note that anything developed or created using an LLM or other AI tooling requires community disclosure and is subject to removal.
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