If you have a huge library of TV shows and movies, Plex is one of the best ways to manage and stream it to all your devices. But large libraries can be cumbersome if they're not properly organized. Before you start streaming—or sharing your library with others—take a moment to refine your collection.
Plex is designed to make it simple to manage and browse your library. Most of the time it works as intended, but every once in a while you may find a movie that's missing its poster art, has been misidentified, or references the wrong video file. Fortunately, Plex also gives you the tools you need to dive into your library and clean it up.
How Metadata Works in Plex
Metadata refers to any data relevant to a movie or TV show besides the video itself. This can include the title, release year, cast list, description, trailers, and movie poster for the movie. Plex will automatically pull this information into your library, making it easy to browse titles without leaving the app.
This information comes from a variety of sources including IMDb, The Movie Database, The Internet Video Archive, and even Wikipedia. You can customize which databases Plex pulls from, but the default settings should work for most people. However, in order to pull this information into your library, your files will need to be formatted and organized properly.
Sort Your Files Into Folders by Library
Plex allows you to add a single library to multiple folders, a handy way to add movies across several hard drives. However, it's still good practice to keep every library in its own folder. Typically, users group them by movies and TV shows, but you can divide them up however you want. If you want to have one collection of movies you share, and another you don't, give them separate folders.
Support documents from Plex recommend using a folder system like this:
/Media
/Movies
movie content
/Music
music content
/TV Shows
television content
You can further divide your library folders however you prefer, such as adding a new folder for each movie or show. Movies that consist of only a single file can all be in the same folder, but TV shows, or any movie that comes with extra data—like posters or subtitles—should be given their own subfolders.
Plex will scan any subfolders in any folder you include in a library, but making sure that TV shows and movies are separate ensures that What We Do in the Shadows the movie won't end up in the same library as What We Do in the Shadows the television series.
Name Your Files Properly
The best thing you can do to make sure your Plex library looks good is to name and organize your files in a way that Plex likes. It might sound tedious, but it's a habit that will pay off in the long run. When Plex scans your library, it uses specific naming conventions to look up data about your movies. This is how it can tell the difference between Aladdin (1992) and Aladdin (2019) and give each the proper artwork.
Naming schemes depend on what type of media you're naming. It's worth diving into Plex's documentation for both movie files and TV shows for some of the more nuanced exceptions, such as if a movie is split across multiple files, or for handling TV shows with standalone specials, like Doctor Who.
Most of the time, however, you'll want to format movie files with their name first and release year in parentheses. For example:
Blade Runner 2049 (2017).mkv
Avengers: Endgame (2019).mkv
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003).mkv
Including the full name of the movie and the year it was released will help ensure that when Plex scans your library, every movie gets its proper metadata.
For TV shows, things get a little more complicated. First, while it's not strictly necessary, it's often best to create nested folders for every show, season, and possibly episode, if the episode is broken up into multiple files. The individual files should then be named with the show name, plus SXXEYY, where "XX" is the season number and "YY" is the episode number. For example:
/TV Shows/Rick and Morty/Season 04/Rick and Morty s04e01.mkv
Importantly, you don't need the episode title in every file name, so long as you have the show name and the format of the episode. Episode titles are metadata that Plex can pull from various sources.
Not all TV shows fit neatly into the above format, so Plex has naming conventions for other formats, like miniseries, specials, or date-based late night talk shows.
Edit Metadata Manually
If you do the above correctly, scanning your media with Plex should automatically result in a well-organized library of accurate metadata. But every once in a while a movie will be missing a poster, or a TV show will get split up. When that happens, you can manually edit metadata.
The easiest way to do this is to open up the Plex Web App and find the piece of media you need to fix. When you hover over the thumbnail, you'll see a pencil icon in the lower-left corner. Click this and a small window will pop up with boxes you can edit. Including, but not limited to:
Title: Editing a film or series title will change the name of the movie as it's displayed in your library.
Sort Title: This is an invisible title you can tweak to change how files are sorted. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End would be sorted before Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest despite coming after it in the series. By changing the sort title, you can put them in the proper order without changing their names to something like Pirates of the Caribbean 1, 2, and so on.
Summary: These short descriptions can give you an idea of what a movie or episode is about. But since they come from third parties, you can end up with spoilers in your descriptions. Edit them out.
Poster/Background: There are two images that will show up in your library—the poster for the movie/episode, and a background image that will appear in some apps. Plex pulls multiple versions of each that you can choose from, or you can upload your own if you don't like any of them.
There are plenty of other pieces of data you can change, but these are likely to be the main ones you'll mess with.
Video Streaming Services: What You Should Know
Like What You're Reading?
Sign up for Tips & Tricks newsletter for expert advice to get the most out of your technology.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newslettersAbout Eric Ravenscraft
![Eric Ravenscraft](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/authors/04C1TqrZSnTqKzbOjkXB3t3.fit_lim.size_200x200.v1560221559.jpg)
Read the latest from Eric Ravenscraft
- Cast Away: How to Connect Your Android Phone to Your TV
- How to Stream Games on YouTube Gaming
- YouTube Music or Google Play Music? Google's Music Services Explained
- How to Use Discord to Stream Jackbox Games With Your Friends
- Which Controllers Work With Stadia, PS Now, xCloud, and Nvidia GeForce Now?
- More from Eric Ravenscraft