A Quick Plex Media Server Indexing Primer for a Digital Criterion Collection
Hi all.
A couple of things first: (1) I am very much a Plex amateur and have taught myself a few things here and there, but I am not a Plex expert, so there might (read: most likely) be much more efficient and brilliant ways of doing this, (2) Not sure how useful this would be, but I thought it might be helpful for at least a few people out there, so I am happy to share whatever I know, (3) with regard to (1), I plan on using simplified explanations that may sacrifice simplicity for precision, so please save any pedantry unless there's some egregious misrepresentation.
Objective: share my general process for taking a physical copy of a Criterion film and converting it to a digital file for playback with a media server (e.g., Plex) and especially share some tips for indexing the files such that a clean, consistent, and useful experience is achieved.
[This is for PCs because that is what I'm familiar with. Not sure of the extent to which this stuff translates to Mac]
(1) Rip a MKV file using MakeMKV (and optionally Handbrake for compression)
You probably buy Criterion films for a variety of reasons. One reason I do is that their restorations are spectacular. I want to watch these films with as much fidelity as possible without having to physically use a Blu-ray player. One way to do this is to rip the disc to a MKV file (using MakeMKV), which creates a rip that is virtually 1:1 (or uncompressed) relative to the physical source. Of course, these files are big (~30 GB for a 90-minute film, more or less), so you can use a program like Handbrake to compress the file to a smaller size or even a different file format (e.g., MP4). You'll need a Blu-ray (or a DVD drive for DVDs, of course) rewritable drive to rip either Blu-ray or DVDs. I've used both an external and internal SATA burner and both work well. [For a detailed process of how to configure and use each program, please check out their respective subreddits or Youtube]
(2) Use Plex as a media server to stream the files
Having a digital Criterion Collection is a good option to physically save space. For example, when I moved for graduate school, I didn't want to have to haul around my whole Blu-ray collection, especially to an efficiency studio with limited space. I made a NAS server (Synology DS418play) to store all my rips and use my desktop as a Plex server to stream from the Nas. Basically, within Plex, you point the media library to the drive (local or a network) where you have the films and stream them.
(3) Create folders with proper names
Plex will use its own indexing system to fetch the media, so you need to create a folder with the film's name and name the actual film file in a certain way to properly appear in Plex. Name the folder the name of the film followed by the year it was released in parentheses[e.g., "Anatomy of a Murder (1959)"]. Recently, I've been using a program called FileBot to rename the folder names to include the unique PlexID that is fetched from the movie database Plex uses and will, I think, speed up the loading times. For example, "Anatomy of a Murder (1959)" becomes "Anatomy of a Murder (1959) {tmdb-93}." It can take a bit of tinkering to get FileBot to output the renamed file to the appropriate folder, but once you do, you can assign a hotkey to automate much of the process. Your drive folders will look something like this:
(4) Create filenames with the proper syntax
Another reason I buy Criterion films is for the special features or extras. Unlike Playboy, I buy Criterions for the interviews. Plex is nice because you can have their feature film and all the extras on the same page, making them easily accessible. They should look something like this:
However, the files need to be named according to a specific filename syntax to let Plex know which file is the film proper and which files are extras (and, further, what kind of extras they are). You need to append a suffix that specifies the kind of file. Here are some guides and some examples of appended suffixes: Local Media Assets: Movies: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220677-local-media-assets-movies/; Extras Types: https://support.plex.tv/articles/local-files-for-trailers-and-extras/
-behindthescenes
-deleted
-featurette
-interview
-scene
-short
-trailer
-other
And they will look like this inside the folder:
(5) Make the Plex movie posters just like the physical cover
Plex will auto fetch some artwork for the movie. But I rather have what is on the physical cover displayed. But I want them to be clean and consistent (i.e., not fuzzy and not different aspect ratios). One way to almost guarantee that the artwork (i.e., posters) meets both of these conditions is to retrieve them from our cinematic overlords themselves (criterion.com). They have high-resolution pictures of the covers. The process is as follows:
5.1 find the film page from the Criterion website.
Search for your film and go to its webpage (e.g., https://www.criterion.com/films/210-bicycle-thieves), then right-click the picture to select "open image in another tab" (this is to avoid accidentally saving the wrong resolution jpeg or saving something like a webp file). It should look like this:
Finding a High-Resolution Cover from the Criterion Website
5.2 Save the high-resolution jpeg
Save the jpeg to the corresponding film's folder and name it the name of the film (e.g., "Bicycle Thieves").
Saving the High-Resolution jpg
5.3 Open the file in MS Paint to Resize
Plex uses a specific ratio for how they display their films in the UI. And, of course, it isn't the same aspect ratio as the high-resolution cover. Open the film's jpeg in MS Paint and resize the jpeg to 1000x1500 pixels (width x height) to achieve to correct proportion. Make sure to uncheck the fixed proportion button so that you can get the exact number of pixels. Name this file "poster.jpg" (that is, do NOT name it the name of the movie, but verbatim: "poster.jpg"). This will tell Plex to use this jpeg to display the film's cover. You could skip this step by saving the high-resolution jpeg as "poster.jpg," but I also like to have the original (i.e., original proportion) saved.
High-Resolution Jpeg in MS Paint
Save the New Jpeg as \"poster.jpg\"
6) Enjoy your Plex collection
Getting everything properly named and situated takes a lot of work, but I think it's worth it when it's all said and done. Just rinse and repeat for each film (I know, I know). You should end up with something that looks like this:
Criterion Collection Plex Library Overview
Again, this is just a super quick overview. There is quite a bit of minutia to explore and re-configure.
(TL;DR: here's a quick way to use Plex as a media server to stream the digital film files you ripped from physical media and some basics on naming and assigning properly-proportioned film posters).
[any mistakes are intentional and used for pedagogical purposes]