Video Category

DSM admin or users belonging to the administrators group can categorize videos into movies, TV shows, home videos, and TV recordings as shown in the left panel of Video Station. Of all the categories, Video Station provides default libraries for movies, TV shows, home videos, and TV recordings. Videos can also be placed in libraries customized by DSM administrators with the rights to set access permissions on both default and custom libraries.

Before organizing your video files, you need to add video folders for each category and library. Afterward, you can browse the videos by different classifications, and manage the videos by adding them to favorites, watchlist, or custom collections for quick access.

Create Custom Libraries

While the default libraries can be accessed by anyone by default, you as DSM admin or users belonging to the administrators group can create custom libraries and assign access permissions to certain users.

Custom libraries will appear in the left panel of Video Station in parallel with the default libraries in alphabetical order of the video type: Movie, TV Show, and Others.

To create, edit, and delete custom libraries:

Go to Settings > Library, and click Create > Create library.
Do the following and click OK.
- Name: Enter a name for the newly-added library.
- Video Type: Select which type of videos you want to put in the folder.
- Permission Type: Select Public if you want the library to be accessed by everyone. If you wish it to be seen by some particular users with access rights to Video Station, click Private > Assign permissions, tick the checkboxes to grant access to the users, and click OK.
If you want to modify settings of the library or delete the library, click Edit > Edit library or double-click the library on the library list, or click Delete > Delete library to remove it. Please note that by removing the library, all indexed metadata of the videos in this library will also be deleted.

Add Video Folders

You as DSM admin or users belonging to the administrators group need to create video folders for default libraries (movie, TV show, home video, TV recording) and custom libraries first to store your videos before managing files with Video Station. While placing video files, please make sure they are stored by the corresponding type.

To add video folders:

Go to Settings > Library (for movie/TV show/home video) or Settings > DTV (for TV recording). If this is your first time using Video Station, a prompt will appear taking you to the setup page once the application is launched. Click OK to continue.
Note: You can quickly add videos by hovering the cursor to the desired library (e.g., Movie) in the left panel and clicking the + button.
Under the Library tab, select any of the libraries, and click Create > Add folder to choose a folder from your Synology NAS. Once a folder is selected, neither the folder nor its sub-folders can be selected anymore.
Note: Video Station can contain up to 100 video folders.
If you have selected a correct library to which the folder will be added, click OK; otherwise, you can click the Library drop-down menu to choose another existing library from the list.
Select a display language for video info. The selected language only applies to the metadata of the type of videos stored in the video folder you newly add. The default language is English. If you change the language settings, the video info of the original language will be replaced with that of the selected language only if the metadata of the later selected language is available over the Internet.
Click OK.

Tips for naming video files:

We suggest you follow the video-naming rules to allow proper video sorting, video indexing, and metadata retrieval from the Internet.

Movie:
- Naming format: Movie_Name (Release_Year).ext
- Example: Avatar (2009).avi
TV Show:
- Naming format: TV_Show_Name.SXX.EYY.ext ("S" as a shorthand for "Season and "E" for "Episode")
- Example: Gossip Girl.S03.E04.avi
- For TV specials, specify "SXX" as "S00" so that they will be grouped under Specials.
- To find the season and episode number of your videos, check themoviedb.com.

To edit and delete video folders (not applicable to the TV recording folder):

Go to Settings > Library.
Select the library whose video folders you want to edit or delete, click the folder in the right panel, and click Edit > Edit folder or Delete > Delete folder from library.
Depending on which mode you have chosen, do the following:
- Edit: You can change the location of the folder and its video info language.
  1. Click Select to choose another folder from your Synology NAS if you want to modify the file location. Select the folder you want, and click Select. You may create a new folder if you wish.
  2. Select another display language for video info.
  3. Click OK.
- Delete: Click Yes to delete the selected folder. Please note that by removing the folder, all indexed metadata of the videos in this folder will also be deleted.

Note:

Directly adding or deleting subfolders is not available in Video Station. However, you can configure your folders or files in File Station. See Modify File Structure and Read and Move Files for more information.

Set Video Cover

Users with administrative privileges can set video covers or video thumbnails. This is exclusively applied to videos belonging to Movie and Others video types.

However, you can do the same at Action > Edit video info > Poster when browsing all types of videos. See Edit Video Metadata for more information.

To set video covers or video thumbnails:

Go to Settings > Advanced.
Tick Set images with the below filenames as video cover.
Enter Filenames such as Cover.jpg. The filenames are case sensitive. When there are multiple images under the same folder as the video file, the one with the specified filename will be set as the video cover or video thumbnail.

Re-index Video Files

Video files within the specified video folders will be indexed by default. However, if files matching specific search criteria do not appear in the search results, you may need to perform re-indexing to re-construct the index structure of the files.

You can also re-index the video files to update their metadata periodically.

To re-index video files:

Go to Settings > Library.
Select the folder whose video files you want to re-index in the right panel, and do either of the following:
- Click Re-index all files to re-index all video files without searching video metadata over the Internet.
- Click Search all video info again to re-index all video files and search video metadata over the Internet all over again.

Note:

Please make sure to enable the Video Info Auto Search feature before re-indexing your files. Otherwise, the system might not be able to retrieve metadata from the Internet. To learn how to enable the Video Info Auto Search feature, please refer to this article.

Browse Video Files

Videos of each category can be sorted by different criteria. You can do either of the following to quickly browse your video files.

Method 1
1. Select a video library which contains the files you want to browse in the left panel, and click the All icon at the top-left corner to access all the videos in the selected video library.
2. Click the Sort order icon at the top-right corner.
3. Depending on how you want to sort the files, you can choose to sort them by date or title in either ascending or descending order.
Method 2
1. Select a video library which contains the files you want to browse in the left panel, and click the All icon at the top-left corner to access all the videos in the selected video library.
2. Filter video files by specifying criteria in the filter available on the left panel. For example, you can filter files by a particular director so that you will only see the videos directed by that director.
3. If necessary, enter keywords in the search bar to further refine filter results.
4. You can save the results as a new smart collection, which automatically groups videos that meet specific criteria together. For more information about video collections, please see Manage Video Collections.

Tips for finding the watched status of a video:

The watched status of a video will be displayed with a blue or orange circle right beside the video title.

Blue: Indicates videos you are watching (for TV show only).
Orange: Indicates unwatched videos.
- For this function to work, you must tick Show indicator of unwatched videos under the Watched Status section at Settings > Options.

Manage Video Collections

You can create your video collections by adding videos to predefined favorites or watchlist, as well as to your custom collections for quick access.

To add videos to favorites, watchlist, or your custom collections:

Method 1- via the Action menu
- Movie/Home Video/TV Recording: Select a video clip you want in the main area, click the Action drop-down menu, and click Collection > Favorites, Watchlist, or [Custom collection name].
- TV Show: Select a TV show in the main area. All available episodes and seasons of the TV show will appear. Select the episode you want or click the episode to enter the single-episode view, click the Action drop-down menu, and click Collection > Favorites, Watchlist, or [Custom collection name].
Method 2 - via the Favorites/Watchlist/Custom collection icon
- Movie/Home Video/TV Recording: Select a video clip you want in the main area to enter the single-video view, and click the Add to favorites, Add to watchlist, or Add to custom collection icon.
- TV Show: Select a TV show in the main area. All available episodes and seasons of the TV show will appear. Select the episode you want or click the episode to enter the single-episode view, and click Add to favorites, Add to watchlist, or Add to custom collection icon.

Once the selected videos are added to the lists, the Add to favorites or Add to watchlist icons will be replaced with Remove from favorites or Remove from watchlist, while collection names on the drop-down list will appear with a check to indicate the video is successfully added. You may click to remove the items from any of the lists.

To delete videos permanently:

Videos can be deleted permanently from your Synology NAS:

Click the target video and click Action, or right-click the target video.
Click Delete to delete the video file permanently.
Note: If you click Delete, there will be no chance of file recovery because the video will also be deleted from File Station.

To view your favorites, watchlist, or custom collections:

Go to the Collection tab in the left panel, and click Favorites, Watchlist, or [Custom collection name] to see the videos in each category.

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