New to Home media - some basic questions

[MaxFlax]

I'm new to the idea of media servers, kindly asking for some guidance and any pitfalls before diving into Jellyfin.

I have a quite a number of MP4s used for homeschool.
These run okay on a single computer, but I would like to set them up on a media server so they could be accessed from the Roku TV in our living room or the Kid's playroom.

My anticipated usage is simple, but I'm slightly confused by documentation for Movie Organization and media provider identifers.
Most files are a single word (e.g. English.mp4), a few are longer, for example:
Geography_US_States_and_Capitals Full.mp4
Is that naming okay, or do I need to replace "_" with spaces " ".

I have an older linux machine that could be set up on our home network.
Saw that Jellyfin is available on Roku.
Everything would be on the home network, no port forwarding, no external access.

There was something mentioned about Movies should usually be in the library root directory or in a subfolder for the individual films. The subfolders allow for organization of metadata and images.
For my needs a nested folder structure would be fine.

Can the movie files be organized in a simple folder structure, like this:

Homeschool
|-- CC
    |-- Cycle 2
        |-- English
        |-- Science
        |-- etc.
    |-- Cycle 3
        |-- English
        |-- Science
        |-- etc.


What can be done when the Linux machine runs out of space, can I connect an external hard drive to it and store the additional files there?
How would Jellyfin know about these additional files?

How would all this work with Roku, after adding the Jellyfin app?
I assume I'd have to log on with my Jellyfin account.
Does the Jellyfin app look on my home network for Jellyfin server and media files?
Is there anything special needed to make this happen?

Looks like there's a lot of detailed documentation, just looking for a little help getting started.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[Venson]

Hey @MaxFlax

Welcome to our forum.

1.
> Is that naming okay, or do I need to replace "_" with spaces " ".
Well this is a bit of a special scenario. As you already saw, jellyfin requires a specific naming convention if you want the metadata providers to pick up globally known media like movies. If you only use Home Videos, this is a non-issue and you can just disable all metadata providers in the Libaries settings.
2.
> What can be done when the Linux machine runs out of space, can I connect an external hard drive to it and store the additional files there?
Yes. You can stich Liberiers from as many paths you like.
3.
> How would all this work with Roku, after adding the Jellyfin app?
More or less the same as with the WebUI, just with an Ruku Jellyfin app.
4.
> I assume I'd have to log on with my Jellyfin account.
Yes the account you created on your jellyfin server
5.
> Does the Jellyfin app look on my home network for Jellyfin server and media files?
Partially. The network discovery can be a bit janky at times. It will only provide those files you added into your Jellyfin erver.