Hi all,
After seeing all the mini-PC deals and the mentions of Plex, I have just begun looking into Plex.
Sorry if it may be a dumb question - but apart from the sheer difference in price and the amount of storage you get, why do so many people choose to use Plex over something like Dropbox? Can't you use them both in a similar fashion?
Thanks
Im not sure you understand what plex is, Plex is for Movies and TV Shows stored locally giving you the ability to stream those movies over your local network or over the internet to any device.
Dropbox is cloud storage.
https://i.ibb.co/DkVMdZ0/Screenshot-2025-01-06-210115.png
This is what plex specifically my plex looks like.
Thanks a bunch.
Couldn't someone upload their movies/shows to Dropbox to watch from there aswell?
Im pretty sure dropbox scans files for copyrighted things and will remove/ban you for it.
Ahh, that would make sense
Since when?
@CascadeHush: idk, as long as i can remember. Theres a reason why direct download sites for Movies/TV shows dont use them and stick to mega.nz
@Axelstrife: There is a difference between storing your own files and sharing them with randos. Dropbox may have some rules around publicly sharing your files stop you using it instead of a proper file hosting site. But as far as just storing files, dropbox should not be looking at your stuff and I've never had them arbitrarily delete a file due to it's content. Frankly, I don't think you know what you are talking about on this issue.
Keep looking into Plex, you're not done
I dont know how it took me so long, but I only just found PlexAmp earlier this year after having been a paid Plex user for the last 5 or 6 years… :/
I had CD's here I had accumulated since the dawning of CD's (about 250~ish), so I just ripped them all to mp3 and started using PlexAmp. I also added all the music I had downloaded from the late 90's (IRC, Limewire and Kazaa days) until about 2013~ish I stopped downloading mp3's. It all sync'd up in minutes and sorted everything in their respective areas. Now I can use it like Spotify, I can just do random, or select a playlist by genre or artist or just pull random songs from anywhere in the library
I've been using Plex for years now and still sometimes I feel like I am only just scratching the surface…
You should go for a Redacted membership.
Troll post I think ???
Slack for simple google search
I tried Googling, nothing really came up. It was just people talking about how to import Dropbox files into Plex.
Plex can also catalogue all your personal media too (I have over 20,000 photos and 5,000 videos of family events)!
It can organise this automatically (all the phones used in the house are automatically downloaded and catalogued for display on multiple devices internally and externally - that is, the grand parents / aunties / uncles all have access via various devices like AppleTVs, phones, smart TVs, etc)
Much easier to centralize, store, access, display and backup than "DropBox" …
Oh wow, that sounds really useful. I normally just dump all my photos into one hard drive and falsely lead myself into believing that I'll organise them one day.
Thanks for the friendly tip.
Dropbox is storage. Plex isn't storage at all, it's a way of managing your media files, accessing them and storing a pile of metadata. It doesn't really care how you're storing them, it's keeping track of what is stored, what you've watched, manage multiple accounts to keep track of who has watched each episode, etc. Think of it like your own personal Netflix.
If you store it in Dropbox, how would you open the files? You'd need a seperate media player. And how would you keep track of all the netflix like info? How would you organise what you have watched and not watched, manage user accounts, know that it would work on any device without any limitations? How would you, say, use Dropbox to play a file on an Apple TV?
Thanks a bunch - its been cleared up a lot for me now.
As I understand it, Plex essentially excels at the ease of access of your stored media as well as providing a more user-friendly experience whilst enjoying your media.
Its still early stages for me, but I'll definitely keep looking into creating a small Plex server and digitising my physical media.
Different jobs. Plex is a replacement for things like streaming services like Netflix/Binge/AppleTV, or for music like Spotify. Dropbox is a cloud NAS. While you can store whatever movies you want there… it doesnt do well at serving up this information is a GUI friendly way.
Think of Plex as that big, bight shop front with all the stuff they have available out on display for you to look through.. and think of Dropbox as that cold, dark, boring storage closet.
Thanks for your explanation.
Does it take long to organise how media is presented within Plex? (E.g. cover art, titles) Or is most of the grunt work done for you?
Most of the work is done for you. You basically load it onto your storage drive into set folders (I have a "Plex" home directory and sub directories for "movies", "TV Shows", "Kids Movies"… etc and then for TV shows I will have a sub directory for the show, and then another sub for seasons.)
Once you have loaded the files, you just go back to Plex and hit the "scan library files" button and it will fill in the rest for you. So long as you have the file/folder name set up correctly, it should auto fill everything for you, including the artwork and show breakdown/ratings/actors, etc. You can dump everything into a single folder, but it juast makes it harder to find later, so I like to keep mine a little bit organised. I put each movie in it's own folder as well, because sometimes I need subtitles and I want to keep them in the same place.
If you get an error (some shows have the same name) you can just either rescan the files that come up wrong or select the correct title from a menu of suggestions (fix match menu option) or just go back and make sure you have the "correct" title and year for the folders and filenames.
I have mine set up like this;
/Plex/TV Shows/*TV Show name* (YEAR)/Season 1/*TV Show name* S01E01.mkv
or
/Plex/Movies/*Movie name* (YEAR)/*movie name*.avi
ie: /Plex/TV Shows/Scrubs (2001)/Season 4/Scrubs S04E03.mp4
because sometimes I need subtitles and I want to keep them in the same place.
why don't you give the subtitles the same name as the title?
Highly recommend Filebot to rename your files, it automatically detects and renames your files for you and as it uses the same DBs you usually pick up naming issues at that point before loading it into your server.
@Cheaplikethebird: I usually do all my renaming at time of receiving. I hate files names like "Rambo First Blood Original 1989 AxE-HaXoR h245 1080p 25bit Dolby [RePACK] WebRIP ACC [websi.te].mp4"
Does it take long to organise how media is presented within Plex?
The only thing I had to do manually was to group movies with sequels together into collections as the titles are often different.
Dropbox is cloud storage whereas Plex is a frontend for your own media library which can be accessed locally or over the internet (ie. your own server).