Plex Media Server Russell Bateman November 2013 last update: tol-eressea.site:/plex-server

Table of Contents

Plex Media user's guide

Installing Plex Media Server

Determining if Plex is installed and running

How does Plex know where your server is (IP address)?

Adding a new Plex Media Server (bringing it up)

Updating Plex Media Server

Restoring to older version

How to get DVD or Blu-ray content using Handbrake

Examples of organizing media content

Television example 1: Inspector Lewis

Television example 2: Fires of Faith

Movie example: Errand of Angels

Movies with multiple parts

Getting ready to rip media content

Movies

Television

Episode-naming phenomena, specials, out-takes, bonus material

Subtitles and other things hard-to-ponder

Steps to getting "after-market" subtitles

Content type (TV or movie?)

Updating Plex' record of your content

Fixing an incorrect match

Fixing an incorrect match (2)

Naming privately provided movie trailers

Blocking further changes by Plex

Fixing an incorrect match (television)

Splitting identical or similar titles

Handling DVD/Blu-ray "extras"

Sharing your Plex server with others

Manage libraries others see

Help others sign up for and use your content

Appendix: Plexifying (ingesting) ripped content

To change or set the image for the series

Appendix: Handheld displayable formats

Appendix: Migrating (moving) Plex media content

Appendix: Getting lists of your media

Appendix: Firefly: DVD order agent

Appendix: Creating collections of content

Appendix: Images for Plex metadata

Appendix: Plex metadata notes

Appendix: Music

Appendix: Miscellaneous

Appendix: Plex Media Server log files

Appendix: Plex Media Server and router status

Join up with Plex. I enrolled for $75 because I wanted in—grandfathering my paid membership (PlexPass) for less and for the later benefits that would establish. However, you can install and use the Plex server software free as well as view the content of friends' servers for free.

For me, Plex is two things: MyPlex, how I see Plex servers, and my own Plex server itself. I use the former to view the content on the latter. My PlexPass gets me both. I also use MyPlex to see content on a nephew's and a son's server.

After paying, here's what I did to get Plex running on my Ubuntu Linux webserver:

1. Go to http://www.plex.tv/ and click on Downloads.

2. There's a button that says, Show Plex Pass Downloads. You'll want to use that because you get more features.

3. I chose to download 64-bit Ubuntu (Debian) package, plexmediaserver_0.9.8.6.175-88ffbb2_amd64.deb.

4. Because there's not a Debian repository with a reliable, latest version of Plex Media Server, you can't use apt-get install. Instead, use the Debian package directly. I installed it:

   root@taliesin:~# dpkg --install plexmediaserver_0.9.8.6.175-88ffbb2_amd64.deb
   

To see my Plex server via browser after it's installed and running, I go to http://tol-eressea.site:32400/web/.

Trouble or the unexpected? See my last experience here.

root@tol-eressea:~# dpkg --list | grep [p]lexmediaserver
root@tol-eressea:~# ps -ef | grep [p]lex
root@tol-eressea:~# service plexmediaserver status

Once you're running the server software, you must access your server via a browser and finish the job. Click here to see my experience bringing a second new server up (but it's the same for a first server).

root@tol-eressea:~/Downloads# dpkg --install plexmediaserver_0.9.11.5.774-760cb52_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 309102 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack plexmediaserver_0.9.11.5.774-760cb52_amd64.deb ...
plexmediaserver stop/waiting
Unpacking plexmediaserver (0.9.11.5.774-760cb52) over (0.9.9.13.525-197d5ed) ...
Setting up plexmediaserver (0.9.11.5.774-760cb52) ...
plexmediaserver start/running, process 32405
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-16) ...
ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.54ubuntu1) ...

To benefit from advances or new features, you'll now need to Update Library of each group of content. Examine this illustration: see Update Library in the upper-right of the page. There is an illustration of this below at Updating Plex' record of your content. However, I long ago abandoned seeing a need to do this.

Restoring a previous working version...

To install a (the) previous package, simply run dpkg just as above and the package manager will remove the one that's there and (re)install the older one. At least with a Debian package, the only way to do this is if you have the earlier, working version. So, always keep a working package in reserve in case the new one you install does not work.

1. Please see Steps Steps to rip DVDs or Blu-rays with Handbrake.

2. Copy the resulting media file to Plex server on the path you've set up, something like hostname:/plex-server/Movies/movie-name. To see how to set this up, examine Plex support, scroll down to Media Preparation and read topics such as Naming your Movie media files, Naming and Organizing TV Shows and Naming and Organizing Music media.

There's a lot to digest between these steps, but they are to explain how to get content to the Plex Media Server, not how to organize it.

3. Go to Plex server in a browser and perform a deep scan to ensure the new content is picked up by Plex. It's rare that you have to type in Summary data as Plex' deep scan will usually bring something in including multiple images for the thumbnail, summary, dates, etc. You may wish to adjust it for spelling, grammar, content, etc.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_(TV_series), but especially:
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0874608/; for episode numbers, examine and follow the links for Seasons, e.g.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0874608/episodes?season=1&ref_=tt_eps_sn_1.

Here's what the content looks like copied to my Plex server:

russ@taliesin:/plex-server$ ll
total 40
drwxr-xr-x  7 russ russ  4096 Sep 15 18:31 ./
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root  4096 Nov  8 06:46 ../
drwx------  2 russ russ 16384 Aug  3 18:17 lost+found/
drwxrwxr-x 17 russ russ  4096 Nov 25 07:44 Movies/
drwxrwxr-x 97 russ russ  4096 Sep 25 04:47 Music/
drwxrwxr-x  6 russ russ  4096 Nov 29 15:37 TV/
drwxrwxr-x  2 russ russ  4096 Sep 15 18:24 Videos/
russ@taliesin:/plex-server$ cd TV
russ@taliesin:/plex-server/TV$ ll
total 24
drwxrwxr-x  6 russ russ 4096 Nov 29 15:37 ./
drwxr-xr-x  7 russ russ 4096 Sep 15 18:31 ../
drwxrwxr-x  3 russ russ 4096 Nov 29 15:39 Endeavour/
drwxrwxr-x  8 russ russ 4096 Nov 29 16:36 Inspector Lewis/
drwxrwxr-x 15 russ russ 4096 Nov 27 22:39 Inspector Morse/
drwxrwxr-x  3 russ russ 4096 Nov 28 18:58 Messiah/
russ@taliesin:/plex-server/TV$ tree Inspector\ Lewis/
Inspector Lewis/
+-- Season 1
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s01e01 - Whom the Gods Would Destroy.m4v
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s01e02 - Old School Ties.m4v
|   `-- Inspector Lewis - s01e03 - Expiation.m4v
+-- Season 2
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s02e01 - And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea.m4v
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s02e02 - Music to Die For.m4v
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s02e03 - Life Born of Fire.m4v
|   `-- Inspector Lewis - s02e04 - The Great and the Good.m4v
+-- Season 3
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s03e01 - Allegory of Love.m4v
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s03e02 - The Quality of Mercy.m4v
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s03e03 - The Point of Vanishing.m4v
|   `-- Inspector Lewis - s03e04 - Counter Culture Blues.m4v
+-- Season 4
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s04e01 - The Dead of Winter.m4v
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s04e02 - Dark Matter.m4v
|   +-- Inspector Lewis - s04e03 - Your Sudden Death Question.m4v
|   `-- Inspector Lewis - s04e04 - Falling Darkness.m4v
+-- Season 5
`-- Specials
    `-- Inspector Lewis - s00e01 - Reputation.m4v

6 directories, 16 files

For this television series of three episodes and bonus short features, I went to Fires of Faith. This didn't avail much more than the DVD had to offer. Using Plex' Naming TV Show 'Specials' page example for Heroes, I decided on the following arrangement which imitates Heroes and its special for the peculiar numbering while using information on names for bonus material from the DVD cover and the names of the episodes.

russ@taliesin:/plex-server/TV$ tree Fires\ of\ Faith/
Fires of Faith/
+-- Season 1
|   +-- Fires of Faith - s01e01 - Yearning for the Word.mkv
|   +-- Fires of Faith - s01e02 - Martyrs for a Book.mkv
|   `-- Fires of Faith - s01e03 - The King James Bible.mkv
`-- Specials
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e01 - The Bible and America.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e02 - Other Translations.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e03 - The Bible Today.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e04 - The Translators.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e05 - Martin Luther.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e06 - King Henry.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e07 - King James.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e08 - Religion Today.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e09 - Tyndale's Legacy.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e10 - Favorite Passage.mkv
    +-- Fires of Faith - s00e11 - Bible Literacy Today.mkv
    `-- Fires of Faith - s00e12 - The Making of Fires of Faith.mkv

To see what I did after this, please see Appendix: Ingesting ripped content.

russ@taliesin:/plex-server/Movies$ tree Errand\ of\ Angels/
Errand of Angels
`-- Errand of Angels.mkv

Local Media Assets - Movies

russ@tol-eressea:/plex-movies/Musical Performances/Fleetwood Mac--The Dance$ ll
total 1956890
drwxrwxr-x  2 russ russ          4 May  9 08:04 ./
drwxrwxr-x 23 russ russ         23 May  7 23:00 ../
-rw-r--r--  1 russ russ 1114410072 May  9 08:04 Fleetwood Mac--The Dance - prt1.mkv
-rw-r--r--  1 russ russ  887265763 May  9 08:04 Fleetwood Mac--The Dance - prt2.mkv

russ@tol-eressea:/plex-movies/Movies/The Lord of the Rings--The Fellowship of the Ring$ ll
total 4419698
drwxrwxr-x   2 russ russ          4 Mar 25  2016  .
drwxr-xr-x 463 russ russ        466 Nov  1 12:22  ..
-rw-r--r--   1 russ russ 2074522525 Mar 25  2016 'The Lord of the Rings--The Fellowship of the Ring, part 1.mkv'
-rw-r--r--   1 russ russ 2446534409 Mar 25  2016 'The Lord of the Rings--The Fellowship of the Ring, part 2.mkv'

A solution might be: How to combine two MKV files into a single video.

Season 1
Foyle's War - s01e01 - The German Woman.mkv
Foyle's War - s01e02 - The White Feather.mkv
Foyle's War - s01e03 - A Lesson in Murder.mkv
Foyle's War - s01e04 - Eagle Day.mkv

Season 2
Foyle's War - s02e01 - Fifty Ships.mkv
Foyle's War - s02e02 - Among the Few.mkv
Foyle's War - s02e03 - War Games.mkv
Foyle's War - s02e04 - The Funk Hole.mkv

Season 3
Foyle's War - s03e01 - The French Drop.mkv
Foyle's War - s03e02 - Enemy Fire.mkv
Foyle's War - s03e03 - They Fought in the Fields.mkv
Foyle's War - s03e04 - A War of Nerves.mkv

Season 4
Foyle's War - s04e01 - Invasion.mkv
Foyle's War - s04e02 - Bad Blood.mkv

Season 5
Foyle's War - s05e01 - Bleak Midwinter.mkv
Foyle's War - s05e02 - Casualties of War.mkv

Season 6
Foyle's War - s06e01 - Plan of Attack.mkv
Foyle's War - s06e02 - Broken Souls.mkv
Foyle's War - s06e03 - All Clear.mkv

Season 7
Foyle's War - s07e01 - The Russian House.mkv
Foyle's War - s07e02 - Killing Time.mkv
Foyle's War - s07e03 - The Hide.mkv

Season 8
Foyle's War - s08e01 - The Eternity Ring.mkv
Foyle's War - s08e02 - The Cage.mkv
Foyle's War - s08e03 - Sunflower.mkv

Season 0
Foyle's War - s00e01 - Writer, Anthony Horowitz.mkv
Foyle's War - s00e02 - Writer, Anthony Horowitz.mkv
Foyle's War - s00e03 - Recap of Seasons 1.-6.mkv

For ripping full subtitles, please see here.

1. Go to YIFY Subtitles.

2. Type the name of the movie you're looking to subtitle into the edit field at the top of the screen. (Note: in some browsers, this field is occluded by the top of the page. Just type accurately. After your first set of subtitles, that field will begin to display correctly.)

3. Having typed in "The Lord of the Rings" Yify starts to display all the possibilities and I can choose the movie I'm looking for.

4. Next, I can select the language I want.

5. Then click the download button and save the .zip file.

6. Downloading and exploding the .zip file gets you a .srt file which you can copy to your Plex server content:

   ~/Videos/plex $ ll the-*
   -rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ  43407 Jul 29 17:27 the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-english-yify-1538.zip
   -rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ 125233 Dec  2  2013 the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-yify-english.srt
   ~/Videos/plex $ scp the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-yify-english.srt \
           taliesin.site:/plex-server/Movies/The\\\ Lord\\\ of\\\ the\\\ Rings--The\\\ Fellowship\\\ of\\\ the\\\ Ring/
   the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-yify-english.srt
                                             100%  122KB 122.3KB/s   00:00
   

Maybe you'll need to refresh your movies before this will work. From your browser, you'll see...

...that Plex offers you an "unknown" subtitle file. Unless you have many, this is what you want. Or Plex may tell you the language. It's supposed to.

By and large, I find subtitle work to be richly unrewarding.

If it's on thetvdb.com, put it in TV. If it's on imdb.com, put it in Movies. Otherwise, you'll need to make a Home Videos section that you define the metadata yourself.

I wanted to separate out my episodes of Alton Brown Good Eats because my copies were "loose," taped off-air years ago, and I didn't want to research the whole season and episode thing.

• http://thetvdb.com/

Agents. Look for the top illustration and text, then scroll down to TV Show Agents.
• Naming Home Series Media

Another option, if you've got lots of commercial television series that are more than certainly in the television database, is to create a separate television library to put your less well known or personal stuff into and turn off Plex' helpful attempts to ingest.

The idea I've followed is that I know better than Plex and I don't want it mucking about with my lesser known television series.

russ@tol-eressea:/plex-movies/Movies$ tree "Roots and Wings"/
Roots and Wings/
+-- Behind the Scenes
|   `-- Behind the Scenes.mkv
`-- Roots and Wings.mkv

The list of recognized subdirectories was available here at one time, and consisted of:

• Behind the Scenes
• Deleted Scenes
• Interviews
• Scenes
• Trailers

The name of the media file does not appear to make any difference to Plex.

Problems?

You've loaded in and done an Update Library to get Plex to ingest your new uploads including lots of extra materials. However, none or only some of the extra material is shown. Click the ... icon and choose Analyze.

1. Browse to www.plex.tv.
2. Authenticate.
3. Launch.
4. Click your avatar at upper right of window, then click Account Settings. A vertical menu appears at left.
5. Click Manage Library Access. This gives you a list of all friends and family who have access.
6. Click GRANT LIBRARY ACCESS.
7. Enter your friend's Plex Media username (if you know it—unlikely) of e-mail address.
8. Click CONTINUE.
9. Check the box of each library you wish to share.
10. Click CONTINUE.
11. Click SEND.

The above will cause an e-mailed invitation to be send to your friend who will then need to sign up for Plex Media and/or accept your invitation.

1. Browse to www.plex.tv.
2. Authenticate.
3. Launch.
4. Click your avatar at upper right of window, then click again the bigger version of your avatar to get to My Profile and My Friends.
5. Locate the friend whose access you wish to modify and click his or her avatar.
6. Click LIBRARY ACCESS, then click Edit.

See notes on this at Signing up for Plex. Also, see notes for other, end-user activities on that page.

Please see notes about this topic here.

I'm following Move an Install to Another System.

Steps

from "Moving an Install[ation] to Another System"

—easier if migrating between the same OS platform.

Preparation of old (source) system and new (destination) system

1. Disable automatic emptying of trash.

   On your source Plex Media Server, you'll want to disable automatically emptying the trash automatically after every scan preference for the server. See Plex Media Server → Managing the Server → Library.

   Click on Settings.

   

   Then uncheck the emptying of trash setting and save changes.

   

2. Install Plex Media Server on the destination system.

   Install the Plex Media Server on the new computer/system. If the set-up wizard in the browser launches, just exit out. See Plex Media Server → Installation and Basic Setup

   (The best is just to install it using my personal instructions at the top of this page.)

3. Stop the Plex Media Server on the destination system if running.

   russ@tol-eressea:~$ sudo bash
   root@tol-eressea:# ps -ef | grep [p]lex
   plex  1239  1230  0 09:31 ?  00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/start_pms
   plex  1243  1239  0 09:31 ?  00:00:01 ./Plex Media Server
   plex  1582  1243  0 09:31 ?  00:00:08 Plex Plug-in [com.plexapp.system] /var/lib/plexmediaser...
   plex  1678  1243  0 09:31 ?  00:00:02 /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex DLNA Server
   plex  1775  1243  0 09:31 ?  00:00:02 Plex Plug-in [com.plexapp.agents.localmedia] /var/lib/...
   plex  1777  1243  0 09:31 ?  00:00:01 Plex Plug-in [com.plexapp.agents.imdb] /var/lib/plexme...
   root@tol-eressea:# service plexmediaserver stop
   plexmediaserver stop/waiting
   root@tol-eressea:# ps -ef | grep [p]lex
   

4. After installation is complete, be sure to quit or exit the Plex Media Server so that it is no longer running.

Copy from source system

5. You'll want to make a copy of all the content in the directory listed below for your operating system except for the Plug-ins subdirectory.

   Warning: Do not include the contents of the plug-ins directory when copying the content location mentioned for your operating system.

   Tip: In many cases, you may find it faster to "zip up" (or tarball) the contents here before transferring them to the destination system. The larger your library, the more useful this may be for you as it could otherwise take a very long time to copy thousands of individual metadata files.

   In general, the location for the various Linux versions of Plex Media Server will be found on the following path. Please make a note of it.

   $PLEX_HOME/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/

   In my case, $PLEX_HOME is the documentation's representation (since this environment variable isn't set for me) of /usr/lib/plexmediaserver. (But, don't stop here, read on!) The way to find this is to locate the most unordinary filename element I knew would be in the Plex Media Server filesystem. I chose "DLNA" then I looked for a suitable path:

   root@taliesin:/plex-server# locate DLNA
   /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex DLNA Server
   .
   .
   .
   /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Logs/Plex DLNA Server Neptune.log
   .
   .
   .
   

   Here, I had lots of paths located, but I happen to know that /usr/lib isn't a metadata path since it's where the software binaries and other, permanent data are kept. That's not the stuff I'll need to copy since the installation on the new server will put it all there. Instead, I know that /var/lib/plexmediaserver is the path I want because it's where Plex has kept all my variable data (hence /var) and that's what I want to preserve from my source host to the new destination.

   So, what did I do here exactly? I went to the path /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support and began copying the subdirectories from this location to tol-eressea. I could not copy them directly; instead, I have to copy them to my user's home directory first:

   # scp -rp Cache russ@tol-eressea:/home/russ/plexmediaserver
   # scp -rp "Crash Reports" russ@tol-eressea:/home/russ/plexmediaserver
   # scp -rp Logs russ@tol-eressea:/home/russ/plexmediaserver
   # scp -rp Media russ@tol-eressea:/home/russ/plexmediaserver
   # scp -rp Metadata russ@tol-eressea:/home/russ/plexmediaserver
   # scp -rp Scanners russ@tol-eressea:/home/russ/plexmediaserver
   # scp -rp Preferences.xml russ@tol-eressea:/home/russ/plexmediaserver
   

   Note: The Media appear to be images, thumbnails, subtitles, etc. e.g.: art1.jpg, art2.jpg, art3.jpg, Subtitles.xml, index-sd.bif, thumb3.jpg, thumb2.jpg, thumb1.jpg. This subdirectory takes forever to copy.

   The Metadata appear to lots of Info.xml and some other files like c5cc8a84436166c653adaa8b1eecdcd10940eeaa and com.plexapp.agents.themoviedb_a76702420550cb61dd9f69e34e83ebcc6f3ac038. This subdirectory takes forever to copy, but nothing like how long it takes to copy Media.

   The Cache appear to be stuff like

   Cache/PhotoTranscoder/ff
   +-- ff1db11c17ff63cf743b7876b6bc6b2c60a9ec4b.jpg
   +-- ff4e12b8622acdc0195ee9160fe614ef87c3fe38.jpeg
   +-- ff60d01cc068c945e4e2d14773ccad5eebcc6cee.jpeg
   +-- ff615d2afcf7661d9391d7a16c14cfb8575c740e.jpg
   +-- ff6fc9b4337208d42596f9ecf670c80c6cc4ab2b.jpg
   +-- ff8d4e62186876cb168fc24cb590ef533b000c35.jpg
   +-- ff8e92c3221ee2f2bc89f17eee3f9f13ba39c2ce.jpg
   +-- ffb45a6f8c9e03ce661722213b8a136b89c7b4e8.jpg
   +-- ffc42370cf0e7785b675544a58674a8020a313d0.jpg
   +-- ffc44063006098a0902341e99c1ec593eacffd93.jpg
   +-- ffc61697306659e2f194756239fe991eb4b11e60.jpg
   +-- ffc73c86143753586ae3554382af2855137267a5.jpg
   `-- ffdda6a70526faba48aedf51fdb3499b08b87955.jpg
   

Place on destination system

6. Using the copy of the content you previously made, place it in the location specified for your operating system.

   Note: You'll need to replace any of the existing files and subdirectories that will be there from the installation you performed earlier.

   Tip: If you zipped the content earlier, you'll want to unzip it on the destination system before placing it in the appropriate location.

   In general, the location for the various Linux versions of Plex Media Server will be found under:

   $PLEX_HOME/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/

   Make sure that the directories and contents are all owned by plex:plex.

   root@tol-eressea:/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server# rm -rf \
   Cache/ Logs/ Preferences.xml "Plug-in Support"/ "Crash Reports"
   root@tol-eressea:~/plexmediaserver# mv * \
   /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server
   
   

Copy over media content, i.e.: the big copy

This is going to be successful, so...

7. ...copy over the masses of movies, videos, television series, music, etc. you're going to want on your new server. Your tools are, in order of utility:
   1. scp -rp directory hostname:destination-path
   2. rsync --progress -avhe ssh directory-or-file-to-be-copied user@hostname:destination-path
   3. Create a tarball and use scp to copy it over.

Update Plex Media Server configuration

8. Start the Plex Media Server.

   Once you start/launch the Plex Media Server on the destination system, you should notice that the contents of the plug-ins subdirectory that you did not copy over are now being populated.

   root@tol-eressea:/# service plexmediaserver start
   plexmediaserver start/running, process 6070
   

9. Launch Plex web application.

   Open your Plex Web App and you should see your libraries, though your content is unlikely to work yet. See Plex Media Server → Using Plex Web App → Opening Plex Web App

   I opened my browser to tol-eressea.site:32400/web/index.html#

   Uh, guess what? It actually came up with much of the same stuff I had seen on my old one:

   Old:

   

   New:

   

   ...including that I had actually been watching a movie while waiting for the big file copy above.

10. Edit your libraries.

    In order to update the content location for your media, you'll need to Edit a library and then add the appropriate folder for where your content is located on the destination system. Leave the existing/previous folder location in there for now.

    You'll need to do this for each of your libraries, but you should probably complete the process for one at a time. See Plex Media Server → Libraries → Editing Libraries.

    Here's what I did, following the page at this link a little bit, but carefully using my head (because the last thing I want is to get this content screwed up somehow):

    1. Click on a library, like Good Eats (see illustrations above).
    2. Click on pencil Edit Library (pencil icon).
    3. Since I know the actual filesystem path is changing from taliesin:/plex-server/Good Eats to tol-eressea:/plex-television/Good Eats, I click on Folder (on the left-hand side).
    4. Seeing /plex-server/Good Eats (the old path), I change it to plex-television/Good Eats. This put is on my larger disk mirror where I want all the television and maybe some other stuff.
    5. I click the orange Save Changes button and Plex begins to ruminate for a while.
    6. Using the big, white back arrow icon, I return to the index page to do the same thing for other libraries including Videos and West Films. For example:

       

    Once I get this done, I need to copy over all the television to plex-television and movies to /plex-movies, which will take a long time, and the set up the other libraries I had on taliesin, to wit: TV, Movies and Mormon Cinema.

11. Update the library.

    After adding the new content folder, an update for the library will probably start. If not, simply do an Update library. The Server will examine the contents of the new location and associate the content with the existing media items in your library. See Plex Media Server → Libraries → Library Actions.

    Of course, the update did start without me asking. This is the bit that I dread: Plex is real enthusiastic about making a pig's breakfast out of my carefully laid metadata usually. I don't want that to happen. It's why I'm being so fastidious about this.

12. Remove old content location.

    Once everything is completed and you've verified that things are working correctly and you can access your content, you can remove the old content location for your libraries. To do so, Edit the library and remove the old/previous folder location. See Plex Media Server → Libraries → Editing Libraries.

Done

To get this, go to ukdtom/plex2csv.bundle. You can follow the doc there through or you can just follow my instructions here. Note that this plug-in is updated from time to time.

Please note that, despite what you may have read elsewhere on this page, the real PLEX_HOME is /var/lib/plexmediaserver. This path is used in the instructions for this bundle.

1. Download from here.

2. You now have a zip file that you must put into the Plex Media server plug-ins subdirectory. On my Ubuntu Linux server installation, this path is /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins.

3. Once you've copied it there, unzip it.

4. Rename it because the product of unzip isn't the right name:

   # mv plex2csv.bundle-master/ plex2csv.bundle
   

5. Bounce your Plex Media server:

   # service plexmediaserver restart
   plexmediaserver stop/waiting
   plexmediaserver start/running, process 16228
   

6. Create a place for the output to go. It must be somewhere the Linux plex user has privileges. The easiest is:

   # cd /tmp
   # mkdir PlexExports
   # chmod a+rwx PlexExports
   

   Please note that if you screw this up, you'll never see any indication that this plug-in is working, neither files on this path nor lists of libraries in your browser. And it won't give you an error. Simply put, you must get this instruction 100% and you must note this path exactly in all its spelling in the step below where you tell the plug-in where the files are to be put or you'll wonder why you wasted your time.

7. Now bring a browser up on your Plex Media server.

8. In the left column near the top, find Channels. If you can't find this, click the Home icon and look again.

9. This will display all the channels you can get like PBS, Apple Move Trailers, Vimeo, etc. If you don't have any channels, you won't see any. Anyway, click the orange Install Channels button. You should see "Export 2 csv" in the list. Click on it. You should see something like this (I happen to have the Plex PBS channel installed too):

   

10. Now click on the new icon.

11. Click on the gear icon at the upper right.

12. Enter the filesystem path to where you want it to put lists it creates, i.e.: /tmp/PlexExport. Do not screw this up as there will be no error to help you if you do. (See earlier note on this.)

13. You may wish to uncheck Wrap lines depending on what you plan to do with the CSV file.

14. I bumped my Max lines length, but the previous step makes this unnecessary, I think.

15. I set all the levels to Simple, which isn't the default, because I wanted only the minimum. Even this is more than I want. You can read about all the information you can get at the website link above.

16. I don't use Home mode, but I entered my log-in information—no one can see it anyway.

17. Click Save.

18. You should see all your libraries listed. I have many beyond just Movies, TV, etc., something like this:

    

19. Click on whichever one you want to give a list.

20. Go to the export output directory, /tmp/PlexExport.

21. Go underneath there to directory Plex2csv.

22. You should start seeing files like:

    root@tol-eressea:/tmp/PlexExport/Plex2csv# ll
    total 120
    drwxr-xr-x 2 plex plex   4096 Jan 10 10:15 ./
    drwxrwxrwx 3 root root   4096 Jan 10 09:30 ../
    -rw-r--r-- 1 plex plex   7668 Jan 10 09:41 Foreign-Simple-20150110-094106.csv
    -rw-r--r-- 1 plex plex 103778 Jan 10 10:15 Movies-Simple-20150110-101507.csv
    

23. Launch an editor on one of the files. The very first line is the header telling you what fields you're seeing. All the fields in the subsequent lines, one for each piece of media, will follow this order and be comma-delimited:

    "Media ID","Title","Sort title","Studio","Content Rating","Summary","Rating","Year","Genres"
    "5079","2010","","Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer","PG","A joint American-Soviet space expedit...","6.3","1984","Drama - Adventure Film"
    "3786","47 Ronin","","Universal Pictures","","Based on the original 1941 movie fro...","6.4","2013","Action - Adventure"
    .
    .
    .
    

24. If you wanted only a list of the titles, try using Python's CSV parser (I'm doing this all on one command line) to excerpt only the second, delimited item:

    root@tol-eressea:/tmp/PlexExport/Plex2csv# head Movies-Simple-20150110-101507.csv \
          |  python -c 'import csv,sys;[sys.stdout.write(line[1]+"\n") for line in csv.reader(sys.stdin)]'
    Title
    2010
    47 Ronin
    American Gunmaker the John M Browning Story
    Amistad
    Anxiously Engaged
    Astérix et Obélix--Mission Cléopâtre
    Avalon
    Avatar
    Baptists at Our Barbecue
    

    Or that and pipe it to wc to count the movies:

    root@tol-eressea:/tmp/PlexExport/Plex2csv# head Movies-Simple-201... | wc
        257     893    5261
    

Just in case you're disgusted by the single-line Python utterance, here it is in good Python (the reason it's 1 instead of 2 is because a Python list is 0-based), but you'll have to put it into a file:

parse-title.py:

import csv,sys

for line in csv.reader( sys.stdin ):
  print line[ 1 ]

Execute it thus:

root@tol-eressea:/tmp/PlexExport/Plex2csv# head Movies-Simple-20150110-101507.csv | python parse-title.py

There are television shows that appear on-disk in a different order than the original broadcast or that of the databases Plex consults when it ingests the media for these shows. Someone has created a special agent to fix that, i.e.: put them into the intended order (in the case where it's different). The prime example is Firefly. See here.

I believe that the DVD/Blu-ray order of the Firefly episodes is the correct one. The plug-in discussed here does more shows than Firefly including 24 and still others, but I only have Firefly.

On first inspection, even if you find a download link, there are no instructions. You have to squint through a couple of forum posts to get this. I'll put it all right here.

1. Find the link and download the agent bundle as a zip file.

   

2. Unzip it to your Downloads folders, copy it to your server (which may also be your desktop—who am I to judge?). You may be confused as it's not only one file, but a whole filesystem of two Python scripts, a data file and an image in a complex hierarchy. Yup, something made by a programmer for other programmers.

   ~/Downloads/plex $ tree
   .
   `-- DVD Order Agent.bundle
       `-- Contents
           +-- Code
           |   +-- dvdorder.py
           |   `-- __init__.py
           +-- Info.plist
           `-- Resources
               `-- icon-default.png
   
   4 directories, 4 files
   

   The answer is found by looking at the contents of Plex' Plug-ins subdirectory: it's all similar stuff with a .bundle suffix. So, the answer is to copy the top-level directory, DVD Order Agent.bundle (with everything under it, but leaving it all just as it is).

3. Put it on the Plex Media server path for plug-ins. Depending on your host architecture (Windows, Macintosh OSX or Linux), this might be different. On Linux, it's /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins.

   You'll need to fix ownership once it's in the filesystem:

   root@tol-eressea:~# chown -R plex:plex "DVD Order Agent.bundle"/
   

4. You might have to bounce your Plex server to see it show up.

5. How to use it? Well, since it was written in 2010, the Plex browser interface has changed from the forum illustration. Here's how to do it in early 2015. (Click any image to see full size if you need to.)
   1. Go to Firefly on your server, right-click the   ^...   control at the bottom of the left column and choose Fix Incorrect Match.

      

   2. (Please note from the count that I'm still awaiting the ripping of my last episode though I'm writing and illustrating these instructions. Don't be confused.)

   3. This will bring up a menu. Click on Auto Match, then select TheTVDBdvdorder. This is the plug-in you just added to your Plex Media server. By clicking and releasing your mouse button on TheTVDBdvdorder, you launch Plex off on this adventure.

      

   4. Click on the thumbnail for Season 1. You should find the Firefly episodes in a slightly different order than originally, like this:
      1. Serentiy
      2. The Train Job
      3. Bushwacked
      4. Shindig
      5. Safe
      6. Our Mrs. Reynolds
      7. Jaynestown
      8. Out of Gas
      9. Ariel
      10. War Stories
      11. Trash
      12. The Message
      13. Heart of Gold
      14. Objects in Space

Here you will find my collections of images and maybe other metadata aids.

• Locking and unlocking
• upgrading a movie library to use the new Plex movie agent

-rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ 4169474 Jan 11  2007 01 - The Very Thought of You.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ 3356948 Jan 11  2007 02 - Paper Moon.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ 2964900 Jan 11  2007 03 - Route 66.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ 3684627 Jan 11  2007 04 - Mona Lisa.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ 2496785 Jan 11  2007 05 - L-o-v-E.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ 2211330 Jan 11  2007 06 - This Can't be Love.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 russ russ 3560907 Jan 11  2007 07 - Smile.mp3
.
.
.

• Creating a Premium Music Library. At the time I tried this, I was running Plex version 9.15.2.
• Also, the last time I thought about working on the problem, December, 2014, I actually posted a question to the support forum and got a helpful answer, sort of. I was told that the subdirectory format was not as described in the Plex links (like the one above), but should follow this format instead (where Music is the name of the filesystem subdirectory being used as the Plex Music Library):
  

  Music/Artist Name/Artist-Album Name/Track# - Track Title.mp3
  

However, clicking the Update Library control when looking at an empty library yields "The library has no content yet. Click here to add content to the library."

I played around with this several times also trying the documented filesystem format all to no avail. As I don't care at all for Plex' Premium music features, I tried the basic music library option too.

russ@tol-eressea:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg --install plexmediaserver_1.21.0.3711-b509cc236_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 142700 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack plexmediaserver_1.21.0.3711-b509cc236_amd64.deb ...
PlexMediaServer install: Pre-installation Validation.
PlexMediaServer install: Pre-installation Validation complete.
Unpacking plexmediaserver (1.21.0.3711-b509cc236) over (1.20.4.3517-ab5e1197c) ...
Setting up plexmediaserver (1.21.0.3711-b509cc236) ...
PlexMediaServer install: PlexMediaServer-1.21.0.3711-b509cc236 - Installation starting.
PlexMediaServer install:
PlexMediaServer install: Now installing based on:
PlexMediaServer install:   Installation Type:   Update
PlexMediaServer install:   Process Control:     systemd
PlexMediaServer install:   Plex User:           plex
PlexMediaServer install:   Plex Group:          plex
PlexMediaServer install:   Video Group:         video
PlexMediaServer install:   Metadata Dir:        /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support
PlexMediaServer install:   Temp Directory:      /tmp
PlexMediaServer install:   Lang Encoding:       en_US.UTF-8
PlexMediaServer install:   Intel QSV Hardware:  Found
PlexMediaServer install:
PlexMediaServer install:   OpenCL library:      Not Installed
PlexMediaServer install:   Beignet package:     Not Installed
PlexMediaServer install:
PlexMediaServer install: WARNING: Package 'Beignet', required for hardware transcoding of HDR content, is missing.
PlexMediaServer install:          Please install package:  'beignet-opencl-icd'
PlexMediaServer install: WARNING: The OpenCL library, required for hardware transcoding of HDR content, is missing.
PlexMediaServer install:          Please install package:  'ocl-icd-libopencl1'
PlexMediaServer install:
PlexMediaServer install: Completing final configuration.
PlexMediaServer install: Starting Plex Media Server.
PlexMediaServer install: PlexMediaServer-1.21.0.3711-b509cc236 - Installation successful.  Errors: 0, Warnings: 2
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.27-3ubuntu1.3) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.60ubuntu1) ...