Media Library Organizer
Overview
Systematically clean, merge, rename, and verify media libraries so that Jellyfin/Emby/Plex can correctly identify and scrape all content.
When to Use
- Media directory has messy folder names with encoding info
- Same show scattered across multiple folders
- Junk files wasting space
- Need to verify episode completeness against TMDB
Workflow
digraph media_org {
rankdir=TB;
"1. Scan & Analyze" -> "2. Clean Junk";
"2. Clean Junk" -> "3. Identify Duplicates";
"3. Identify Duplicates" -> "4. Merge Scattered Episodes";
"4. Merge Scattered Episodes" -> "5. Normalize Folder Names";
"5. Normalize Folder Names" -> "6. Verify vs TMDB";
"6. Verify vs TMDB" -> "7. Report & Confirm Deletion";
}Steps
Each step has detailed instructions and reusable scripts:
- Scan & Analyze - Survey directory, identify issues, generate report
- Script: scripts/scan-media.sh
- Clean Junk - Remove temp files, empty dirs, orphan fragments
- Identify Duplicates - Find same content across folders by title/year matching
- Merge Scattered Episodes - Combine split episodes into one folder
- Script: scripts/check-episodes.sh
- Normalize Folder Names - Rename to
Title (Year)format
- Script: scripts/normalize-names.sh
- Verify vs TMDB - Compare local episode count against TMDB
- Report & Confirm - Present findings, wait for user confirmation
Common Mistakes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
| Renaming folders breaks PT/BT seeding | Confirm with user if they're still seeding |
| Gap detection only checks internal gaps | Must compare against TMDB total count |
macOS grep lacks -P flag | Use egrep -o instead of grep -oP |
sed with multi-line input fails on macOS | Use awk for complex text processing |
| Merging without checking overlaps | Always verify no episode overlap before merge |
| Guessing Chinese titles from English | Search TMDB/MyDramaList for authoritative names |
| Movie in TV folder or vice versa | Check if content is film or series before placing |