Organizing your media

Matinee names everything from your folder and file names, then looks the titles up online. A few simple conventions get you a tidy library with the right artwork.

Movies

Give each movie its own folder named Title (Year), with the video inside:

Movies/
├── The Long Matinee (2024)/
│   ├── The Long Matinee (2024).mkv
│   ├── The Long Matinee (2024).en.srt
│   ├── The Long Matinee (2024)-trailer.mp4
│   └── poster.jpg
└── Harbor Lights (2019)/
    └── Harbor Lights (2019).mp4

The year matters: it tells two films with the same title apart.

TV shows

One folder per show, a Season N folder per season, and the season and episode number in each file name:

TV/
└── Crumb Street/
    ├── poster.jpg
    ├── Season 1/
    │   ├── Crumb Street - S01E01.mkv
    │   └── Crumb Street - S01E02.mkv
    └── Season 2/
        └── Crumb Street - S02E01.mkv

S01E02 can be anywhere in the name, so Crumb Street - S01E02 - Dough Rises.mkv works too. Specials go in Season 0.

Music

One folder per artist, one per album, with the tracks inside:

Music/
└── Aurora Static/
    ├── artist.jpg
    └── Signal Fires/
        ├── cover.jpg
        ├── 01 Opening Credits.flac
        └── 02 Velvet Seats.flac

Matinee reads the tags in your music files (artist, album, track number, title) and falls back to the folder and file names. Covers can also be embedded in the files.

Artwork files

Images next to your media always win over anything looked up online:

File	Where	Used for
poster.jpg	movie, show or season folder	the poster
fanart.jpg	movie or show folder	the backdrop behind the title
cover.jpg or folder.jpg	album folder	the album cover
artist.jpg	artist folder	the artist’s photo

Subtitles

Put subtitle files next to the video, named like the video plus a language code:

• Movie (2024).en.srt: English
• Movie (2024).en.forced.srt: forced English, for foreign-language parts only
• .srt, .vtt and .ass all work

Subtitles inside the video file work too. Text subtitles are drawn by the player; picture subtitles from Blu-rays and DVDs are burned into the video while it plays. See Playing.

Trailers

A trailer next to a movie or show shows up as a Trailer button on its page. Name it like the video with -trailer on the end (Movie (2024)-trailer.mp4), call it trailer.mp4, or put trailers in a Trailers folder. Trailer files are never listed as movies of their own.

Extras that confuse the scan

Matinee skips hidden files and folders (starting with .). Keep samples and other stray videos out of library folders, or they’ll show up as titles of their own.