Universal Media Server | Forum

Since you compare yourself to plex and serviio a lot. And UMS does seem to be able to play more of my media better. However, I find myself going back to the others a bunch because of their sorting. For instance, like UMS you can view all your media in its single folder. But they also automagically, with no user input, sort via title into seperate folders and such (among other things, director, genre, etc).

Is there anyway to get UMS to do this (that won't require a weekend of my time to sort my 2k+ movies) that I am just missing?

This is a discussion I had a number of times with various people. This is a function/feature that is a sort of religion debate. I am an old computer "nerd" that is grown up with "files" and "directories". This is something obscure to young people. When I get a file I usually name it to a good name like "cool_movie.mkv" or similar. If I now allow the computer to "scan" all my files then this file will have a completly other name (and possibly location) making me frustrated as h**l. So I'm happy that UMS don't automatically sort all my files into some obscure structure that I didn't choose.Also note that UMS can add media on the fly while other media servers must first "scan" the media to get it in.
That said UMS has some scan capabiliies (look in the share/navigation folder).

The other two examples I gave don't physically move the files (sorry if I took that comment the wrong way about stuff being in different locations). You just get multiple options when browsing the media from say your PS3. So instead of going down a list of everything you have, you can choose to view by title with each letter having it's own folder. So on and so forth (like the option to view via genre or actor or director). Serviio may not instantly add stuff, but Plex does have the option to update your library when a new file is added to the folders you have it sharing. Though by default that is not an option that is enabled.

It may not seem it, but I have been a big PMS user who followed subjunk over here. UMS is always installed as an option, as it does seem to provide better results in terms of image and sound quality. But I find myself going to serviio/plex more because of all the different options in terms of sorting (which again, the files on the server itself aren't actually moved at all). I guess in the end I'm saying, I love UMS, but like a car rattle, ever since I discovered the different ways serviio/plex can display your media, I'm kind of taken a-back.

Which, speaking of rattles..... My 2013 SHO is in the shop yet again......

I recently added an A-Z option which adds A-Z folders and adds the files based on their starting letter IF the folder is "large". You can control the limit (look in the GUI) or set the limit directly in the UMS.conf. Set "atz_limit=<x>" where X is the number of files that has to be present in the folder before A-Z sorting is done (default this is "infinity" or 10000 which is "large" enough to make this not occur).

As for browsing based on director,genre,xyz etc. This is in my opinion a plugin that most likely interacts with some internet based db (like imdb.com,tvdb.com etc. serviio does this, plex uses tvdb and moviedb).

This can of course be written. We got the MovieInfo plugin that could be extended to do this rather than just add a movieinfo folder...

While I'm at it. Way back there was a MediaMonkey plugin as well. MM renamed and moved your files all around the place (real fun). But it could/should fetch various kind of meta data .In it's latest version it has DLNA functionality too.

I'll give the a-z thing a try. Didn't know if created the folders.

HI there,

Try out the latest MovieInfo with this feature implemented.
http://code.google.com/p/sharkhunter-shb/downloads/list

We are definitely working on implementing the best things from Plex into UMS and this is one of them

Until support for various sorting options is built into UMS, you can achieve this right now using the interfaced plugin, whereby you organize your library through the Plex media server and host the library through UMS.

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