When Media Browser was designed we wanted to make stuff as easy as possible for users when it comes to playing movies. We wanted to support movies existing in separated folders and did not want users to have to click in to the folder just to select the actual video file. The extra click seemed superflous.

There are a number of settings in the Configuration Menu that have to do with playlists. In the “Media Options” tab under “Behaviour” there are 4 options that relate to this:

• Allow Nested Movie Folders (default value: enabled)
• Auto Enter Single folder Items (default value: enabled)
• Treat Multiple Files As Single Movie
• Multiple File Size Limit (default value: 2)

The “Allow Nested Movie Folders” setting which is enabled by default enables you to bypass navigating into a folder that happens to only have a single movie in it.

The “Treat Multiple Files As Single Movie” and “Multiple File Size Limit” settings control the maximum amount of volumes a movie in your collection has. This applies to split movie files for example (movie part 1.avi and movie part 2.avi). The default value is 2.

We can best explain the function of these options with some examples. Let’s say we have this structure:

D:\Movies\
       Blade Runner\
            blade_runner.avi
       Rocky\
            part1.avi
            part2.avi
       Rambo\
            part 1\
                 disc1.avi 
            part 2\
                 disc2.avi 

Example 1

Say “Treat Multiple Files As Single Movie” is enabled and “Multiple File Size Limit” is set to 1. Blade Runner will correctly be detected as a movie, however both rocky and rambo will not. Instead, Media Browser will think that part1 is a movie and part2 is a movie.

Example 2

Say “Treat Multiple Files As Single Movie” is enabled and and “Multiple File Size Limit” is set to 2. Blade Runner and Rocky will be detected as movies, however Rambo will not. Media Browser will think that “part 1" is a movie and "part 2" is another.

Example 3

With “Auto Enter Single folder Items” enabled, Rambo will correctly be detected as a movie. Media Browser will look at the total count of all video files in the “Rambo” folder and all subfolders. Since it is 2 which is less or equal to the “Multiple File Size Limit”, MB will treat it a single movie. This setting is enabled by default.

But there is a catch.

If you have a folder containing ONLY 2 movie folders and they both only have one volume, MB will get confused and think the parent folder is a movie. This will result in media not being shown correctly.

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Known side effects

• With “Auto Enter Single folder Items” a TV Series with only 1 season will go directly to the episodes view instead of displaying the Season folder
• If you use Boxsets and you have a Boxset with only 2 movies in it, this boxset will exhibit the same behaviour as in example 3 if you're using the Internet Providers functionality in Media Browser. When using local metadata, Media Browser will ignore movie playlists for the Boxset folder because it detects that a mymovies.xml is present in a subfolder. (as of Media Browser 2.2.4)

Limitations

• Currently, MediaBrowser does not support playlists for ISO’s or ripped media in folder structure form. ie: VIDEO_TS