General Guidelines for preparing library?

[silsurf]

Hello,

I am preparing my library to be used in this manner:

MacOS Netwrok->WD MyCloud->Plex->AppleTV4->Infuse Pro

Is there guide for best practices on setting up my files? I am using FileBot to get the titles in order, but there are some files that I am not sure what to do with. .iso images and VIDEO_TS folders. Can these be used in Infuse Pro or does everything have to be in a container such as .MKV?

Also, my library is organized in directories by decade and genre. Do I have to just place all the movies loosely in the SHARED MOVIES folder in PLEX?

And things that defy definition, animated shorts and odds and ends that are not officially released films, what is best to do with those?

Thanks for the help

Henry

[silsurf]

I would love some feedback on this. I am not going to start the process of copying media over until I feel confident I have the right things lined up. Mostly concerned about whether I have to put all the media into the existing MyCloud Home Plex Media shares in order to use InFuse 6 properly, or if I can create my own folders within the MyCloud Home share to further organize the collection?

And, can inFuse handle the .iso’s and video_ts’s or do they need to be in .mkv containers?

[NC_Bullseye]

There is such a vast number of variables in how to set things up that personalize things for what you prefer it’d be difficult at best to give one ironclad format.

For one thing, you have Plex included, is this for a specific reason since Infuse doesn’t require plex to function well? If you don’t need plex then things can be very simple and easy to set up.

How big is your library? Number of movies, TV show, other?

Pardon my being lazy but I’ll just provide a link to what works for me as to how to set up the video files since I just gave that in another thread. The problem was a different one but my post will show how I set things up.

So Many Delays Infuse Is Becoming Unusable

It may help to cut back the redundancy. I have my NAS as the main share, from that I have 3 favorites The first is “TV Shows” The next is “Movies” The last is “Test” Inside the TV shows are folders 1 thru F, G thru M, N thru S, and T thru Z I then sort all the tv shows into those with this file/folder structure. [image] I then have the Movies divided into about 8 sub folders grouped by first letter like the TV shows. This has been working great for me and it also makes finding things e…

I will say that if you’re using the “WD MyCloud” it will probably be easy to arrange but if you’re using the “WD MyCloud Home” you may be in for a struggle. The “Home” version has been the root of many users problems due to the way it needs certain internet connections and the way it handles network traffic. I’d strongly suggest you do a search on the forum for “MyCloud” and browse through the threads.

As long as you stick to the recommended file naming convictions and other guidelines set up in the users guides your problems should be minimal.

[james]

In general, it doesn’t really matter how you have your files organized. There are some file naming style guidelines available in this guide which might be worth glancing over.

Metadata 101

If you are using Plex, Infuse will be able to utilize the metadata stored in Plex…so if everything looks good there you shouldn’t have any issues.

However, Plex does not support ISO or Video_TS files, so if you have a lot of these you will want to set up a direct connection in Infuse (via SMB, NFS, WebDAV, etc…) in order to have access to these.

[silsurf]

Thanks, I will look into all of the above. I thought I needed Plex in order to use inFuse? Would it be preferable NOT to? I guess I had read that using PLEX as the media server and using inFuse as the player was really the best of all worlds?

I have about 200 Movies and perhaps anopther 200 individual TV shows. Then about 100 movies of my own creation.

[silsurf]

I had read that PLEX was the way to go, thgat was the only reason. If there is an easier solution without PLEX, I would love to hear about it. I have no more than 300 movie total between features, tv shows and personal movie format items. Most are already converted to mp4, mkv, etc. But an handful are in VIDEO_TS or ISO formats.

[NC_Bullseye]

@silsurf

I would love to hear about it.

Infuse works great on it’s own without Plex but some videophiles wish to have some customizable features.

I’d strongly suggest that if you don’t currently have a need for Plex you try Infuse on it’s own, you can always go back in and add a plex server share in Infuse without a problem.

For the size of your library you’ll be able to easily set things up and if needed, tweak a few things without any problems.

For your personal videos you can create custom xml files and graphics that Infuse will work with fine. This isn’t mandatory but is easily accomplished.