My non-video re-org phrase does place files in a hierarchy at a defined location: "D:\Media (My)\$if(<Type>=Music,<Type>,<Type>s)\<Album Artist:56>\<Album:56>\$Left(Disc <Disc#:2>- Track <Track#:3>- <Title>,56)".

Because video files may reside on any of several large external devices, and because I want to catalog them but not move them - that is, they are to stay where they are - it seemed as though the relative path was the most straightforward way to accomplish that. It's fortunate that there is a "trick" to catalog without re-org (~location = ".\<Filename>") - that can be employed for video files only.

Thank you for your input leading to a solution to the conundrum.

I prefer to set full Path (including drive letter) as organize rules, so I always know where files end up as other Masks are relative to where the file is.

Nice. Marvelous, in fact. Using the provided add/edit rule popup window, I was able to choose appropriate collections for the respective rules - or vice versa. Re leaving the video files in place, the video collection rule ended up being the simple entry ".\<Filename>".

Again, thanks.

p.s. Along the way to a solution, I tried putting "<Folder>\<Filename>" as the value, only to create what appeared to be an infinite progression of container folders. Windows must have intervened and ended the progresssion at some level of depth.

Default Collection use Type, which is auto-determined by MediaMonkey. However you can customize (or create your own) Collections to use Extension or perhaps the useful Path Criteria (the latter I use myself).

Thank you for the tip. I would hope to take advantage of it, but am not sure how to do so.

I intend to set up an attended or unattended (re-)scan of the drives and folders on which the videos are kept, in order to add the video files to a video collection. But I assumed that a rule applied to a collection only if the collection was first associated with the target files. Can the rule exclude a file that is determined, simply by virtue of having an .mp4 or .m4v or other suffix, to belong to a collection only as it is scanned and analyzed?

You can limit the rule to a Collection or Playlist, thus you should be able to limit it to just your music files and not have your video files organized.

My library of audiobooks and music are auto-organized by album-artists and albums, which stores them in a hierarchical folder system that works great.

But when it comes to videos, I would greatly prefer that the videos are catalogued but not organized, for two reasons: collectively they are too large for a single storage device; and they, unlike music and audiobooks, are not tagged.

Instead, the videos can stay in their present location. That has been attempted via an auto-organize exclusion, but the exclusion appears to apply to the folders listed but not to their sub-folders, which in my case are numerous. Any suggestions? Could there perhaps be a simple checkmark-type option for sub-folders>

For reference, the auto-organize function for music and audiobook files is:
D:\Media (My)\$if(<Type>=Music,<Type>,<Type>s)\<Album Artist:56>\<Album:56>\$Left(Disc <Disc#:2>- Track <Track#:3>- <Title>,56)