Server Version#: 1.18.6.2368
Player Version#:n/a
I started importing my movies yesterday. I can not find a way to stop Auto Collections that have a single movie in it. I believe (guess) it is caused because some of my movie files a metadata Plex is taking as a Collection Tag.
-I have too many movies for editing file data to be practical
-Collections is Disabled in “Edit Movies” Library
-“Use Collection Data from Movie Database” is De-Selected for both Plex Movie and The Movie Database options in Agent Settings.
What am I missing to stop irrelevant Auto Collections?
I deleted 120+ Collections one by one last night, is there a way to batch delete the 150+ Collections I have now?
Only the last two screenshot are relevant, and they are already set up correctly.
If your files are mp4/m4v, you want to inspect their embedded metatags.
As soon as a video file has an ‘Album’ meta tag, Plex will put it into a collection which is named after the content of the Album tag.
1st screenshot is to show why “inspecting meta tags” is not practical (3,000+ movie files)
2nd screenshot is to show I have another 150+ (after deleting 120+ last night, one at a time) Collections that I obviously would like to delete as a group vs one by one again
If I have the options set correctly, what else could be causing the system to auto-add Collections I don’t want? Until this is fixed I do not want to waste time adding my last movie directory, much less move on to TV Shows and then Music.
You cannot use Plex to inspect metatags in your files, neither manipulate them. You need to do that outside of Plex.
If you download mp3tag.de (or similar software), you can indeed remove this tag from each of them in one/few sweeps.
Afterwards, it is probably best to scrap the whole movie library in Plex and recreate it.
I have exactly the same problem. I disabled the collection function in library settings. also deleted the collections themselves. it will disappear for few hours, but after few hours (triggered by library auto scan), they just keeps coming back, like zombies.
Make sure to disable Use collection information from The Movie Database in the advanced library settings. Setting Collections to Disabled only determines if/how Plex will display collections in library view. It does not stop them from being created in the first place!
Scenario 2:
Make sure those files don’t have an embedded Album tag if you’re dealing with mp4/m4v files and Local Media Assets enabled for that library’s agent.
Unless a container requirement exists - and really messing up your Recently Added Movie List is something you’d like to avoid - a mass exodus-remux to MKV files with MKVToolNix might be an option.
Scenario 1 Should (I know it doesn’t) stop automatic collections. It is what any reasonable person would expect. It is also Much Easier to edit Plex to ignore all file information except the file name than…
Senario 2 making us edit metadata for every single file we have and add in the future. I typically add a group of files at a time, it can easily add 30 minutes to hours even using mp3tag to remove metadata. (on top of the time it takes to rename the files to start with - a step that is reasonable for organization).
The Collections: Disabled setting needs to actually mean disabled - or, if there is a reason for it to behave the way it does that I don’t see, there needs to be an Ignore Metadata option added to settings.
As for: Setting Collections to Disabled should stop collections from being created automatically
It is what any reasonable person would expect.
and
The Collections: Disabled setting needs to actually mean disabled
All it needs is looking at the actual setting that is labelled How to display collections (nothing more, nothing less).
As for not requiring to edit metadata
or, if there is a reason for it to behave the way it does that I don#t see, there needs to be an Ignore Metadata option added to settings.
There is no need to do that.
You can e.g. disable Local Media Assets entirely for that library (in particular if you don’t use local extras, posters etc.) – alternatively all it takes is to move it to the end of the agent sources. See… https://support.plex.tv/articles/200241558-agents/#toc-1
Thanks everyone. I followed the advise, but it did not worked in my case. But somehow deleted the library and rebuilt them, with the option “collection” - disabled, did the job (before you add any contents).
BTW I’m using PMS 1.18.8.2527 version.
