Is there a single directory structure and file/directory naming convention compatible with all/most media players / software? YAMJ, PLEX, XBMC, BOXEE BOX, etc...

 

For movies and TV shows I will have the movie itself, poster(movie)/banner(TV), fanart, nfo and subtitle (srt).

 

currently I am working with YAMJ and have all movies (and their associated files) in a single directory and am using EMBER (revisited) to download poster and fanart and create NFOs.

 

Is there a single directory structure and file/directory naming convention compatible with all/most media players / software? YAMJ, PLEX, XBMC, BOXEE BOX, etc...

Unfortunately, No.  That is what is so nice about "standards" ... If yo do not like the one your competitor is using, you can set your own.

Newer media players are more flexible though.

I believe XBMC saves/refers to files within a folder also.  Their image files are of .tbn extension (which YAMJ also supports).  So I'm pretty sure you'll have minimal problems migrating between YAMJ and XBMC.  PLEX, I am not familiar with.

I believe XBMC saves/refers to files within a folder also.  Their image files are of .tbn extension (which YAMJ also supports).  So I'm pretty sure you'll have minimal problems migrating between YAMJ and XBMC.  PLEX, I am not familiar with.

XBMC saves the .nfo and .tbn and .fanart.jpg files in the same directory as the media.  Since I do not have a directory per movie, but instead have mostly ISO images in a top level "Movies" share, all the other files are there too.

 

PANIC_ROOM-fanart.jpg*

PANIC_ROOM.ISO*

PANIC_ROOM.nfo*

PANIC_ROOM.tbn*

PAPILLON-fanart.jpg*

PAPILLON.ISO*

PAPILLON.nfo*

PAPILLON.tbn*

PASSENGERS-fanart.jpg*

PASSENGERS.ISO*

PASSENGERS.nfo*

PASSENGERS.tbn*

PASSENGER_57-fanart.jpg*

PASSENGER_57.ISO*

PASSENGER_57.nfo*

PASSENGER_57.tbn*

PATRIOT_GAMES-fanart.jpg*

PATRIOT_GAMES.ISO*

PATRIOT_GAMES.nfo*

PATRIOT_GAMES.tbn*

 

 

Cool, just so happens my friend (and I now) create a folder for each movie.  YAMJ can re-use files within that folder (or a specified NFO directory), but ends up putting those files under it's Jukebox output directory.

I built my own librarian and set up unraid as the media storage.  For media there are top level shares for movies, concerts, TV shows, and music. Movies, concerts and TV shows are orgainized as one folder per show (movie or concert or tv show).  Each folder contains all the files needed for that item.  An mkv or multiple mkv files for the actual media plus files for fanart, cover art, backgrounds, etc.

 

Music is organized as encoded (DTS) vs not-encoded (e.g. stereo)  at the top level. witin each of those directories music is organized as artist\album\tracks. Cover art is stored along with the tracks in the album folder.

 

Hope that helps

Mine's pretty much the same, except I also broken down shows into Season folders--just so I didn't have huge folders of shows with many seasons/episodes.

 

I let YAMJ do all the scraping, so it doesn't keep art/nfo within the media's folders.  I need to start using an external scraper tool so I can maintain the NFO/art files whenever I rebuild my libraries.

OK, so it seems YAMJ, XMBC and PLEX can all use the same files when all movies are in the same folder:

 

<movienamefile>.mkv          -- movie file

<movienamefile>.tbn          -- movie poster/thumbnail

<movienamefile>-fanart.jpg  -- movie fanart/backdrop - it can be changed in YAMJ setting from .fanart to -fanart

<movienamefile>.nfo          -- movie information

 

regarding TV series I still need to check.