[SOLVED] Media File Organization on HDD

[robert600]

I have a lot of media files … mostly movies. They are currently stored in sequentially numbered folders (each folder is about 23 GB in size so I can copy these folders onto a BD-R). I have an excel file with a master list of all these movies. So … to watch a movie … I start the excel file – find the movie name and retrieve the number of the BD-R, pop the disk in the br drive, select the movie with my software player and all is good. Works ok because I’m playing the movies with my pc anyway so opening an excel file is no big deal.

I’m now going to be using a media player (built into a ubp) and I’m thinking of using a portable hard drive to feed it files and will therefore have no need to turn on my computer so reading the excel file will not be convenient. So … I’m wondering about the best way to organize the files on the hard drive. The media player interface is quite primitive so I’d prefer it to display maybe 30 files at a time at most. One movie folder with 1200 movie files would not work well. About all I can think of is to have folder A, B, C, etc and put the movies in the appropriate folder. I no longer care about the size of these folders (only about the number of files in them) since I will no longer be backing them up to BD-R. Does anyone store their movies this way or is there a better way to organize things?

 

[popatim]

My movies are stored on a server by name in a Movies folder which has subfolders for the various Genres (Action, Sci-fi, Romance, Kids, Family, Comedy...)
I don't burn to a bd-r to watch them, I just doubleclick them and let MediaCenter, VLC, or PowerDVD play them (depends on what i am watching them on)

 

[robert600]

My movies are stored on a server by name in a Movies folder

Yes, I'd like to get there at some point but for now at least (since I want the 4k upscaling and the hdr) I'll have use the x800. The interface of media player is quite sad really (I'm used to pc players). At some point, I'll get a pc that can output 4k but for now ... it's the blu-ray player or nothing. I was sort of hoping that one of it's apps might be plex or something like that but I can't find anything too useful. Netflix lol. At least the usb on it can see my 4TB HD so ... things could be a lot worse.

 

[popatim]

You're TV doesn't upscale as well?

 

[robert600]

You're TV doesn't upscale as well?

I don't believe so ... it's a projector Viewsonic PX727 -4K. It has 2 hdmi in ports. One is 4K ... the other is 1080. If I plug my hdmi from laptop into the 1080p port ... I get 1080 output from the projector (I don't see any setting for upscaling). If I plug that same cable into the 4k port ... I get "no signal detected' message from the projector.

 

[robert600]

Yes, I'd like to get there at some point but for now at least (since I want the 4k upscaling and the hdr) I'll have use the x800. The interface of media player is quite sad really (I'm used to pc players). At some point, I'll get a pc that can output 4k but for now ... it's the blu-ray player or nothing. I was sort of hoping that one of it's apps might be plex or something like that but I can't find anything too useful. Netflix lol. At least the usb on it can see my 4TB HD so ... things could be a lot worse.

I just discovered that it will connect to a DLNA server. This is probably a better way for me to go instead of constantly shuffling my portable hard drive back and forth.I still have the same problem with the limited interface and file organization though.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

lol, i upload everything i have to youtube, make it private if you want and let google host my movies and tv-series.... if they block something I just make it private so at least I can watch it.

my apple tv streamer has Onedrive apps so I can also access my video folder (each title has it's own folder using that title) i can also watch it, but youtube has nicer stuff like subtiltes (which I also attach to my videos) and stuff like that.

so for me, it's youtube or onedrive. i can't be arsed to mess with hosting video. ugh. what a nightmare that all is and costly too.

 

[hang-the-9]

If you are not using physical disks you need to find, just dump the files in a single directory or maybe by folder with the movie genre. But then you may be stuck with finding a movie that way. Is Kung Fu Panda under "cartoon" "children" "animation" or "comedy"?

All my movies are in a single directory named by the movie title. USB drive connected to my router, with two other drives as backups, one external and the one in my computer I do the video encoding on.

Sometimes people do things in a much more complex way than is needed. Partitions, 60 directories, odd naming schemes (I name my movies by the actor, then by year that I first saw it, then by last letter of the title or something silly). File name is the movie name, end. My shows with multiple disks are sorted by show name, season and episode number, then the episode title which you can find on Wikipedia. So my simpsons boxed sets are in the drive as "Simpsons S01 E01 Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.MP4" You want the trailing 0 so if something has more than 10 things in it, the sort is correct. Otherwise Season 12 will come before Season 2 in some sorting options.

Some movies I put in the year, but usually not. Say things like Star Trek where there is the old movies and new movies, I have them in as Star Trek 1979 01 and Star Trek 2009 01, along with the sub names like "Into Darkness". Pink Panther, same thing, and so on.

 

[robert600]

All my movies are in a single directory named by the movie title. USB drive connected to my router, with two other drives as backups, one external and the one in my computer I do the video encoding on.

Sometimes people do things in a much more complex way than is needed. Partitions, 60 directories, odd naming schemes (I name my movies by the actor, then by year that I first saw it, then by last letter of the title or something silly). File name is the movie name, end. My shows with multiple disks are sorted by show name, season and episode number, then the episode title which you can find on Wikipedia. So my simpsons boxed sets are in the drive as "Simpsons S01 E01 Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.MP4" You want the trailing 0 so if something has more than 10 things in it, the sort is correct. Otherwise Season 12 will come before Season 2 in some sorting options.

Some movies I put in the year, but usually not. Say things like Star Trek where there is the old movies and new movies, I have them in as Star Trek 1979 01 and Star Trek 2009 01, along with the sub names like "Into Darkness". Pink Panther, same thing, and so on.

Yes, good idea idea about sticking a 0 in for proper sorting. I discovered that with my excel file for my MBU folders (since there are more than 100, I actually had to stick 2 0s in (MBU001, MBU010, MBU100 etc.)

Yes, good point about the year ... remakes are becoming so popular!

"USB drive connected to my router".
You can connect a usb drive directly to a router? I had no idea this could be done. Can you explain this a bit more?

"All my movies are in a single directory named by the movie title."
This is what I can't do. The interface of the X800s media player is very primative. Using the "down arrow" on the remote to scroll down through 1200 or so movie titles would be problematic. I need to use sub-folders. Even using alphabetized folders is proving inadequate (who knew so many movies started with the letter S lol). So for those I guess I can break them further down (e.g. folder SAtoSL and folder SMtoSZ).

 

[robert600]

Is anyone familiar with the presentation order of subfolders in a folder. I'm putting my movie folders into alphabetized sub-folders in my 'movies' folder. When I click on the "movies" folder, the subfolders are listed as expected (A down to Z).

Here's my problem: There's a few movies that start with numbers (300, 2012, 2001, etc.). I'm dropping them in a folder called "Numbers" but when I click on my "movies" it shows up between folders N and O. Is there an elegant way to rename the "Numbers" folder so that it would show up at the bottom of the list? Is there a character that comes after Z on the sorting list? I guess I could always rename it "ZZ Numbers"?