Naming and organising your files

Collectoh works out what each file is from its folder and file names — and, for music and audiobooks, from the tags inside the files. It copes with messy names (dots for spaces, quality tags, release-group names), but a tidy layout gets the right match first time. The conventions are the ones Plex, Jellyfin and Kodi users already know, so an existing library usually needs no changes.

Three habits help everywhere:

• One kind of content per library, each in its own folder.
• A folder per film, show, album, book or course.
• The year in film and show names, as in Heat (1995). It's the strongest clue there is when matching.

#Films

Films/
├── Heat (1995)/
│   ├── Heat (1995).mkv
│   ├── Heat (1995).en.srt
│   ├── poster.jpg
│   └── fanart.jpg
├── Inception (2010)/
│   └── Inception (2010).mkv
└── The Matrix (1999).mkv

• Name the folder and the file Title (Year). A folder name with a year is what Collectoh trusts first; without one it reads the file name, so loose files in the library folder work too.
• Release names are fine: Blade.Runner.2049.2017.2160p.UHD.BluRay.x265-GROUP.mkv is read as Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
• A folder named with a range of years, such as The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), is a collection folder: each film inside is identified by its own name.
• Plex-style tags such as {tmdb-603} are ignored rather than read as part of the title. To tie a film to a catalogue entry, use an NFO file (below).

#Versions: one film, several qualities

Keep the files together, with the quality after a dash. They become one film with a choice of versions; Collectoh picks the one that suits each device, and you can switch.

Heat (1995)/
├── Heat (1995) - 2160p.mkv
└── Heat (1995) - 1080p.mkv

#Editions: different cuts

A different cut is its own entry with its own watch progress, but shows as one card with a switcher on the film's page. Name the cut after a dash, use Plex's {edition-…} form, or give each cut its own folder:

Blade Runner (1982)/
├── Blade Runner (1982) - Theatrical.mkv
└── Blade Runner (1982) - Final Cut.mkv

Alien (1979)/
├── Theatrical/
│   └── Alien.mkv
└── {edition-Director's Cut}/
    └── Alien.mkv

Recognised cuts include Director's Cut, Final Cut, Extended, Theatrical, Unrated, Uncut, Remastered, Special Edition, Ultimate Edition, Collector's Edition, Anniversary Edition, Criterion, IMAX, Redux and Open Matte. Anything else inside {edition-…} is kept as you wrote it.

#Films in several parts

A film split across files plays as one. Name the parts - Part 1 and - Part 2, or CD1, CD2, pt1, disc 2, after the year: before it, such words belong to the title, as in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010).

Gone with the Wind (1939)/
├── Gone with the Wind (1939) - Part 1.mkv
└── Gone with the Wind (1939) - Part 2.mkv

#Extras and trailers

Put extras in a folder inside the film's folder, or end the file name with a suffix. Extras stay out of the library grid and appear on the film's page, grouped by kind.

Heat (1995)/
├── Heat (1995).mkv
├── Heat (1995)-trailer.mkv
└── Behind The Scenes/
    └── Making Heat.mkv

#DVD and Blu-ray rips

A VIDEO_TS or BDMV folder inside a film's folder, or an .iso named like a film, plays as that film: the main feature, without the menus.

Heat (1995)/VIDEO_TS/
Alien (1979)/BDMV/
Tron (1982).iso

#TV shows

TV/
└── Doctor Who (2005)/
    ├── poster.jpg
    ├── theme.mp3
    ├── Season 01/
    │   ├── Doctor Who (2005) - S01E01 - Rose.mkv
    │   └── Doctor Who (2005) - S01E02 - The End of the World.mkv
    └── Specials/
        └── Doctor Who (2005) - S00E01 - The Christmas Invasion.mkv

• Show folder: the show's name, with the year when two shows share a name.
• Season folders: Season 1, Season 01, S01 or Series 1. Seasons numbered by year (Season 2019) work too.
• Episodes: S01E02 is clearest; 1x02, S01.E02 and Season 1 Episode 2 also work. Inside a season folder, 02 - Title.mkv or Show Name - 02.mkv is enough.
• Specials are season 0: a Specials or Season 00 folder, numbered S00E01 and so on.
• Several episodes in one file: S01E01E02, S01E01-E03 or S01E01-03. Each episode gets its own entry, and each plays the file.
• Two copies of an episode, say 1080p and 2160p, become one episode with two versions.
• Daily shows: use the date, as in The Daily Show - 2024-03-15 - Guest Name.mkv.
• Category folders: a folder holding several shows, such as TV/Kids/, is recognised as a shelf rather than a show.
• Season packs: a folder named like Show.Name.S01.1080p.WEB-DL is fine; the season and release tags are dropped to find the title.
• Extras use the same folders as films (Extras/, Featurettes/ and so on) inside the show's folder. A video Collectoh can't place in a season appears there too, rather than being guessed into the wrong one.
• Theme tune: a theme.mp3 in the show's folder plays quietly on the show's page. Anyone can turn this off for their own account.

#Anime and absolute numbering

Some shows, anime especially, number episodes from 1 across the whole run instead of per season:

Anime/
└── One Piece/
    ├── [SubsPlease] One Piece - 1071 (1080p).mkv
    └── [SubsPlease] One Piece - 1072 (1080p).mkv

1. Set the library's Episode order to Absolute (Admin → Libraries → Edit).
2. Keep TheTVDB among the library's metadata agents: it's the catalogue that knows absolute numbering. See Metadata and artwork.

Fansub names such as [Group] Show - 12 [1080p] are read as absolute episode numbers, and in an absolute library a number counts from the first episode whatever season folder the file is in. Avoid a bare Show - 102 - Title.mkv without the bracketed group: it could be season 1 episode 2, or episode 102, and Collectoh can only guess.

#DVD order

If your files follow a DVD release's order rather than the broadcast one, set Episode order to As on the DVDs. In DVD and absolute order, TMDB still describes the show, but its seasons and episodes are described by TheTVDB, or by NFO files beside the episodes. Specials stay in season 0.

#Music

Music is organised by the tags inside your files; folders only fill the gaps. Collectoh reads the album artist, album, title, track and disc numbers, year, genre and lyrics, and MusicBrainz IDs when they're there.

• Tag your files. A tagger such as MusicBrainz Picard also writes MusicBrainz IDs, which let Collectoh match albums exactly rather than by name.
• Keep the album artist consistent. Tracks group into albums by album artist, album and year.
• Compilations: an album artist of "Various Artists", or the compilation flag, makes a Various Artists album, and each track keeps its own artist.
• Spellings such as "Smashing Pumpkins" and "The Smashing Pumpkins" count as one artist.

When tags are missing, this layout fills the gaps:

Music/
└── Radiohead/
    ├── folder.jpg
    └── OK Computer (1997)/
        ├── cover.jpg
        ├── 01 - Airbag.flac
        ├── 01 - Airbag.lrc
        └── 02 - Paranoid Android.flac

• Multi-disc albums: tag the disc number, use CD1/ and CD2/ (or Disc 1/) folders inside the album, or name tracks like 1-05 Title.flac.
• Covers: cover.jpg or folder.jpg beside the tracks, otherwise the picture embedded in the first track. In an artist's own folder, folder.jpg or poster.jpg is the artist's picture and fanart.jpg a background.
• Lyrics: an .lrc file named like the track, beside it, gives lyrics that scroll in time. Lyrics in the tags work too.
• Music videos: put them in the artist's folder or its Music Videos/ folder, or in a Music Videos/ folder at the top of the library named Artist - Title.mp4. They appear on the artist's page.

#Audiobooks

Audiobooks/
└── Terry Pratchett/
    ├── Guards! Guards! (1989)/
    │   ├── cover.jpg
    │   ├── 01 - Chapter One.mp3
    │   └── 02 - Chapter Two.mp3
    └── Mort (1987)/
        └── Mort.m4b

• One folder per book. Each audio file in it is a chapter, in track-number order, then by name.
• A single .m4b is one book; its chapters come from inside the file.
• Tags come first: album is the title, album artist the author and composer the narrator. Without tags, the folders are used: Author/Title (Year)/.
• CD 1/, Disc 2/ or Part 3/ folders inside a book belong to it.
• Cover: cover.jpg beside the files, otherwise the picture in the first file's tags.

#Books and comics

The layout follows Audiobookshelf's, so a shelf moved from there is already arranged:

Books/
├── Terry Pratchett/
│   └── Discworld/
│       ├── 1 - 1983 - The Colour of Magic/
│       │   ├── The Colour of Magic.epub
│       │   └── The Colour of Magic.pdf
│       └── 2 - 1986 - The Light Fantastic/
│           └── The Light Fantastic.epub
├── Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman/
│   └── Good Omens/
│       └── Good Omens.epub
└── Saga 001.cbz

• Author/Series/Book/, Author/Book/, or a single file directly in the library folder.
• A book's folder can start with its place in the series (1 - , Vol 1 - , Book 2 - ; decimals such as 1.5 - allowed), then a year (1983 - ), and can end with - Subtitle.
• Author folders can be First Last or Last, First; separate several authors with &, ; or and.
• Several files in one folder are one book. The reader opens the EPUB if there is one (then Kindle formats, PDF, then comics); the rest are there to download.
• Formats: EPUB, MOBI, AZW and AZW3, PDF, and comics as CBZ, CBR or CB7.

Books describe themselves: an EPUB's own details, a Kindle book's header and a comic's ComicInfo.xml are all read. Beside the book you can add a Calibre metadata.opf, which takes priority over the file's own details, a desc.txt for the description and a reader.txt naming the narrator. For the cover, a cover.jpg beside the file comes first; otherwise the book's own cover, a comic's first page or a PDF's first page is used.

#Courses

Courses/
└── Programming/
    └── Docker Mastery/
        ├── course.nfo
        ├── poster.jpg
        ├── 01 - Getting Started/
        │   ├── 001 - Course Intro.mp4
        │   ├── 001 - Course Intro.en.vtt
        │   ├── 001 - Course Intro.pdf
        │   └── 002 - Why Docker.mp4
        └── 02 - Creating Containers/
            ├── 001 - Your First Container.mp4
            └── resources/
                └── exercises.zip

• A course is a folder of numbered section folders holding numbered lessons, video or audio — or simply a folder of numbered lessons.
• Put the number first: 01 - , 1. , 003_, Lesson 3, Section 1, Module 03, Week 4 or a Roman numeral (Part II). It sets the order, and the rest becomes the title. Unnumbered names fall back to natural order, so Video 2 comes before Video 10.
• Categories: keep courses in category folders as deep as you like. Collectoh takes the first folder whose contents are numbered folders or media as the course, and the folders above it as its categories; a leading _ (_AI) is dropped.
• Deeper nesting inside a course is folded into the section names. Downloads laid out by Udemy, Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera and O'Reilly are recognised and their names cleaned up.
• Subtitles beside a lesson (.srt or .vtt) show in the player and become a searchable transcript.
• Materials: a PDF named after a lesson (or …-slides.pdf) attaches to that lesson; a resources/, code/, exercises/ or assets/ folder to its section; PDFs, archives and ebooks at the top of the course to the course. .url, .webloc and links.txt files become links.

Courses aren't looked up online. Collectoh reads the folder name — Docker Mastery - Bret Fisher gives a title and an instructor, [Udemy] Complete Python Bootcamp (2026) a provider, title and year — and a course.nfo (or course.json) in the course folder:

<course version="1">
  <title>Docker Mastery</title>
  <instructor>Bret Fisher</instructor>
  <provider>Udemy</provider>
  <difficulty>intermediate</difficulty>
  <skill>Docker</skill>
  <skill>Kubernetes</skill>
  <prerequisite>Basic command-line skills</prerequisite>
</course>

Whatever the file sets is locked, so edit the file rather than the app to change it. It can also hold a subtitle, description, language, release date, tags and a certificate. If a course's structure comes out wrong, open it and choose Structure looks off? to rearrange sections and lessons by hand; later scans keep your changes.

#Games

Put each platform's games in a folder named for it. Short names (SNES, PS1, Mega Drive), full names (Super Nintendo, PlayStation) and the names the No-Intro and Redump sets use (Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sony - PlayStation) all work, at any depth.

Games/
├── SNES/
│   ├── Super Mario World (USA).sfc
│   ├── Super Mario World (Europe).sfc
│   └── Super Mario World (USA).png
├── PS1/
│   ├── Final Fantasy VII (USA) (Disc 1).cue
│   ├── Final Fantasy VII (USA) (Disc 1).bin
│   ├── Final Fantasy VII (USA) (Disc 2).cue
│   └── Final Fantasy VII (USA) (Disc 2).bin
├── PS2/
│   └── God of War (USA)/
│       ├── God of War (USA).iso
│       └── cover.jpg
├── PC/
│   └── Half-Life 2/
│       └── hl2.exe
└── Tetris (World).gb

• The platform comes from the file's extension when only one platform uses it (.sfc, .gba, .nds, .nsp), and otherwise from the nearest folder that names one. A library made of a single platform's folder (PS1) needs no folder inside it. A disc image (.iso, .chd, .cue) in no platform's folder is listed under Other platforms.
• The title is the file name up to its first bracket. Brackets say which copy it is: regions ((USA), (Europe), (Japan), or GoodTools' (U), (E), (J)), revisions ((Rev 1), (v1.1)), and (Beta), (Proto), [h] hacks and [T+Eng] translations. A game's copies become one game with its copies as versions.
• Discs: a CUE (or GDI, CCD or MDS) is the disc, and the BIN or IMG files it names belong to it. (Disc 1), (Disc 2) are one game. A .m3u playlist is left alone.
• PC games are folders: put each game's folder in a PC (or Windows, Steam, GOG) folder. The game is started from the program named after the folder, or else the largest one that isn't an installer.
• Archives: a .zip or .7z of a game counts as the game, as emulators read them.
• Box art: an image named exactly like the game file (Super Mario World (USA).png), or cover.jpg in a game's own folder, is used before IGDB's.

#Photos and home videos

In a Memories library, your folders become albums, nested as deeply as they go. There's nothing to rename.

Photos/
├── 2023/
│   ├── Cornwall/
│   │   ├── cover.jpg
│   │   ├── IMG_2041.HEIC
│   │   └── IMG_2042.jpg
│   └── Birthday/
│       ├── DSC_0147.NEF
│       └── candles.mp4
└── Scans/
    └── grandparents-wedding.jpg

• Dates come from each photo's own details (EXIF), never from folder names. A photo without one, such as a screenshot or a scan, is dated by the file's modified time.
• JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC and camera RAW files (such as CR2, NEF, ARW and DNG) all work; for RAW files, the preview the camera embedded is shown.
• Videos in the same folders appear alongside the photos.
• An album's cover is a cover.jpg beside its photos, otherwise its first photo.

A Home video library keeps your folder tree as it is:

Home Videos/
└── Family/
    ├── 2019 Summer/
    │   ├── folder.json
    │   ├── 2019-07-04 Beach.mp4
    │   └── 20190705_103000.mov
    └── Christmas 2020.mp4

• A video's date comes from its own recording details, else a date at the start of its name (the rest becomes the title), else the file's modified time.
• A cover.jpg sets a folder's cover. A video with no picture gets a still from a tenth of the way in.
• A folder.json names and describes a folder, in either kind of library; a title and summary set this way are locked:

{ "title": "Summer in Cornwall", "summary": "Two weeks at the coast.", "date": "2019-07-20" }

#Subtitles beside the video

Name subtitle files after their video, adding a language and any flags before the extension:

Heat (1995).mkv
Heat (1995).en.srt
Heat (1995).en.sdh.srt
Heat (1995).fr.forced.srt
Heat (1995).German.ass

• Language: a two- or three-letter code (en, eng, pt-BR) or the English name (French). Without one, the library's language is assumed, so it's worth adding.
• Flags: forced for forced subtitles; sdh, cc or hi for subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.
• Formats: .srt, .ass, .ssa, .vtt, .sub and .smi. Subtitles inside the video file are found automatically.
• Anything else between the video's name and the extension stops the file matching, so Heat (1995).English.Final.srt is ignored.

No subtitles? With an OpenSubtitles key set, you can search for them from the player; see Playback.

#Artwork beside your media

• Put pictures in the item's own folder — the film's, show's, season's or album's. JPEG, PNG and WebP all work.
• For files that share a folder, such as films loose in the library folder, use the <file name>-poster.jpg form. It's also how to give an episode its own thumbnail.
• Pictures beside your files come before anything from the online catalogues; see Metadata and artwork.

#NFO files

Collectoh reads Kodi-style NFO files, so a library prepared for Kodi, Jellyfin or a similar tool keeps its details.

Collectoh reads the title, original title, year, dates, plot, tagline, runtime, content rating, rating, genres, studios, countries, tags, directors, writers, actors and artwork links. Because Beside the files comes first in every library's agent order, an NFO's details come before the catalogues'.

A <uniqueid> lets Collectoh skip searching and fetch the right entry directly — type="tmdb", or type="tvdb" for a show:

<movie>
  <title>The Matrix</title>
  <year>1999</year>
  <uniqueid type="tmdb" default="true">603</uniqueid>
</movie>

Collectoh doesn't write NFO files, apart from course.nfo in a course library with write-back switched on.

#Renamed something after a scan?

Collectoh recognises moved and renamed files and keeps their watch history, and a normal scan deliberately leaves an existing item's title alone. If an unmatched item still shows its old name, run a Refresh titles scan from Admin → Scans. If it was matched to the wrong film or show, fix the match instead; see Metadata and artwork.