How to install and configure Plex Media Server

The following article describes the quickest way to install and configure the Plex Media Server on your PC or NAS. Plex shows media assets (movies, pictures, music, etc.) to be shared among your devices.

1. Download and install Media Server on your pc or on NAS where can be found multimedia content (movies, music and images)
2. As soon as the installation finish, the icon Plex  will be shown in the taskbar, near the system clock.
3. Click with the right button of your mouse on the icon and make sure the item “Start Plex Media Server at login” is checked (it allows Plex automatically start when Windows stars).
4. Click, to open the application, twice on Plex icon with the left button of your mouse.
5. Click on Accept
6. Enter the name for the server (es. Video library of John) and click on Next.
   
7. Click on Add Library, and select what you want to share between Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photo, Home Videos.
8. Suppose we want to share movies. So you select Movies with the mouse.
9. Choose in the field “Name”, the name for the category. In this case you will write Movies.
10. Select the English language.
11. Click on Next.
12. Click on Add Folder to select the folder where to find movies on your computer/NAS.
    
13. Click on Add Library.
14. If your movies are stored in a single folder (as would be desiderable), click on Next, otherwise repeat from step 12.
15. The next step asks you to install channels (YouTube, Netflix, ecc). For now we will neglet this option. Then click on Next.
16. Congratulations, configuration is completed. Click on Done.

How it works
Under the item “Movies”, all the movies will appear in the folder you selected in step 12.

To watch a movie directly on your PC, click on the poster of the movie and then on the button Play in the top left corner.

Some precautions

Nominate properly your movies
All the movies in your gallery should reflect the following pattern: “movie name (year).extension” (eg. Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).mkv)
This enables Plex to associate all the movie’s informations with the title as the poster, title, plot, year and votes of the network.

 

Auto-update library
Every time you load a movie, picture or music within your selected folders, PLEX will notice the change and update the data.
To enable this option:

1. click on Settings (see “key and hammer”) in top right corner.
2. click on Server.
3. click on Library (from the list on the left).
4. check the item “Automatically update my library“
5. click on “save changes”

If you can not see a movie just added to the folder, force manually the update, by clicking with the right mouse button on the system tray icon near the clock, and click “Update Library“.