How to organize TV shows and movies on Linux with Tiny Media Manager
Tiny Media Manager is an excellent application for Windows, Mac, and Linux that allows users to manage TV shows and movie files with ease by downloading metadata, cover-art, ratings, and more. In this guide, we’ll go over how you can organize your TV and movie files on Linux with Tiny Media Manager.
Install Tiny Media Manager
The TinyMediaManager application requires Java 1.8 to run on Linux. Before you attempt to download the app, please follow our in-depth guide on how to install and set up the Java Runtime environment on Linux. Also, for best results, try to use the official Oracle Java release and not OpenJDK.
Once you’ve got the Java Runtime up and running on your Linux PC, it’s time to move on to installing Tiny Media Manager on Linux. To start the installation process, open up your terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, with the terminal window open, use the wget download command to grab the latest release of TMM on your Linux PC.
wget https://release.tinymediamanager.org/v3/dist/tmm_3.0.5_linux.tar.gz
Let the TMM TarGZ file download to your Linux home directory via the wget command. When the downloading process is complete, use the commands below to extract the TMM TarGZ file fully.
mkdir -p tiny-media-manager
tar xvf tmm_3.0.5_linux.tar.gz -C ~/tiny-media-manager
With the Tiny Media Manager files extracted, it’s safe to delete the TarGZ file. Using the rm command, remove the downloaded TMM TarGZ.
rm tar xvf tmm_3.0.5_linux.tar.gz
Next, move the terminal window into the new “tiny-media-manager” folder with the CD command, as all of the contents of the TMM TarGZ file are in there.
cd tiny-media-manager
Inside of the “tiny-media-manager” directory, you can run the Tiny Media Manager app by executing the “TinyMediaManager.sh” script file.
./tinyMediaManager.sh
Alternatively, open up the Linux file manager, double-click on “tiny-media-manager,” and double-click on “tinyMediaManager.desktop” file to run the app.
Add media collection to Tiny Media Manager
The first time you run the Tiny Media Manager application on your Linux desktop, a pop-up will appear. This pop-up is a setup wizard and is designed to take you through the initial setup process for the app. Follow the wizard, and use it to set up your preferred theme, font, etc.
After going through the initial setup wizard for Tiny Media Manager, follow the step-by-step instructions below to learn how to add your media collection to the app.
Step 1: find the “Settings” button in the app and click on it with the mouse to access the “Settings” area of Tiny Media Manager.
Step 2: Find “Movies” on the side-bar in the “Settings” app and click on it with the mouse. Then, locate the “Datasource & NFO” option and select that with the mouse.
Step 3: Inside of Movie’s “Datasource & NFO,” find the “Source” box, and click the “+” button. Then, use the UI to add your movie media folder to Tiny Media Manager.
Step 4: Go to the “Settings” side-bar, locate “TV shows,” and click on it with the mouse. Then, select “Source” with the mouse to go to the TV source area.
Step 5: In the TV source area, find the “+” button, and click on it with the mouse to bring up the open-file dialog box. Use the open-file dialog to add your TV show folder to Tiny Media Manager.
Step 6: Click the “Close” button to exit the “Settings” window in Tiny Media Manager.
Once you’ve added both your TV shows and Movies folder to Tiny Media Manager, select the “Movies” or “TV shows” tab, followed by the “Update sources” button. By clicking the “Update sources” button, Tiny Media Manager will scan your files and add them to the app’s database. Please be patient during this process, as it will take a bit of time.
Organize media files in Tiny Media Manager
Managing media files in the Tiny Media Manager application is refreshingly simple, as the app takes care of all of the hard work. To organize your media files with the app, select “Movies” or “TV shows”. After that, press Ctrl + A to select all media in the list. Then, click the “rename” button.
Clicking the “rename” button will cause Tiny Media Manager to automatically re-name all media files, and sort them in to nicer, more organized folders.
Get media info
Aside from organizing media files, Tiny Media Manager can also find cover art and media information for TV shows and Movies. Follow the step-by-step instructions below to learn how to get media info in Tiny Media Manager.
Step 1: Select either the “Movies” or “TV shows” tab in Tiny Media Manager with the mouse.
Step 2: Press Ctrl + A to select all of the media on the list. Or, select individual ones by clicking on them with the mouse.
Step 3: Select the “Search & Scrape” button, followed by “Search and scrape selected movies” or “Search and scrape selected TV shows.”
Step 4: Use the on-screen UI to select the correct media info for your media.
When the app finishes finding media info, there is nothing left to do, and no need to save anything. Tiny Media Manager will automatically write the info to the file’s location.
