feature request: Media folder: Scan all subfolders, be flexible

[Raki K]

I just spent a few hours setting up jellyfin on my Synology NAS (as a container)
I really like this app!

Unfortunately, I am removing it because it requires a flat directory of media assets. My assets are organized in subfolders.

Every other tool I have tried or used, on servers, desktops and phones (plex, player apps, windows media player, roon, blackplayer, etc) happily indexes a whole directory structure.

Also, I need the structure for some sanity _outside_ the media server.

Even music, which is close to Jellyfin's needs, does not match the jellyfin spec:

My music is close, but watch:
/artist-1/album-a/track-1.flac  // fine so far... 15K files organized like this!
/soundtracks/movie-a/track1.flac  // oops!  1K files organized like this!

So basically, my feature request is: Keep the current approach as the default (if there are strong opinions about this), and add a "crawl subdirs" option to treat it as a dogs breakfast of stuff.

Love your great work and I will miss jellyfin!

[sjorge]

Feature requests themselves should go on https://features.jellyfin.org/ this forum is for discussing existing feature requests.

Jellyfin certainly scans media in sub directories already, there is a naming guide here:
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows/
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/movies
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/music

Deviating from that might still work fine though, for example I have a higher level that is just A, B, C, ... I just add all those directories to the library instead and it works fine.

[Raki K]

I can report from direct experience that jellyfin is NOT traversing subdirectories.

Specific naming guidelines are not useful. I expect media library software to do the work: I point the software at a directory, the software traverses _everything_

Every piece of media software I have ever touched, server based and client side, works this way. Jellyfin is the first that does not.

This "silly to me" deviation from "how media library systems work" wasted a bunch of my time and took jellyfin off the top of my list of possible solutions.
To my regret.

---

>> Feature requests themselves should go on https://features.jellyfin.org/

Thank you!

I have cross posted there.