As a recent convert from Plex to Jellyfin, I’m going through my library correcting metadata, etc. and wondered what great ideas I could glean from the community.
I don’t use collections (should I?) because, at least on Plex, I could never completely agree with myself on what should be included in a collection and what shouldn’t.
At present I tend to just sort movies alphabetically (and then in order of release, i.e. 47 Meters Down comes before 47 Meters Down: Uncaged) and I use the sort title for that. But what do you guys suggest with things such as the Star Wars movies, or Indiana Jones movies — movies that don’t have similar titles, e.g. “Star Wars”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, “Return of the Jedi” — would you have them scattered alphabetically around your library, or would you use the sort title to call them “Star Wars 1”, “Star Wars 2”, etc. so they’re all grouped together (albeit breaking the alphabetisation)?
Any other hints and tips would be appreciated!
Maybe are you overthinking the process ?
I just dump movies in “movie” folder. Series in “series” folder. Etc…
Then you can choose how to sort them in Jellyfin.
Jellyfin also takes care of the collection part for you.
I got all star wars, Indiana Jones, alien, batman movies all nicely sorted and displayed in my “collections” tab. Had nothing to do myself.
Maybe I am. It’s just things like, for example, Batman.
You have the Michael Keaton version and the Robert Pattinson version, so it’s just ensuring the ‘89 version displays before the ‘22 version (as an example).
Then you have The Dark Knight which would show under “D”, whereas Batman Begins appears under “B”, so not together. I got around it by just numbering them sequentially under the Sort Title. But it does break the alphabetical display.
Yes, I’m anal about my library 🙂
If you’re talking about filesystem sorting, Jellyfin docs publish the opinionated layouts:
- https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/movies/
- https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows
- Other media have similar pages.
If you follow these naming and layout guides, the metadata auto-detection will work most optimally and you’ll rarely have to manipulate metadata manually id you’re dealing with well-known content.
It wasn’t so much that — that’s very similar (if not identical) to Plex conventions, so that’s already taken care of and my metadata, images, etc. are all being picked up just fine. It was just the sorting order of my movies to ensure that sequels follow on from each other even if not alphabetical.
For example, “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”. Or “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, “War of the Planet of the Apes” and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”.
Oh yeah, for that collections are handy yeah. I believe they sort by release year by default which isn’t always perfect but is usually pretty decent.
Otherwise you’re into editing name metadata or something else to hack an existing sort order to your preference. I mostly don’t sweat this and just find the thing I want to watch from the main library.
