Automatically show as Collections based on a folder structure?

General Discussions
1

Dear Plex devs

I understand the current folder structure for movies as the following:

/Media
   /Movies
      movie content

Unfortunately, current method of manually tagging each movie to be part of a collection is very labourious.

Would it be possible to recognise movies in a collection organised through a folder structure as below, to automatically show in Plex as Collections?

/Media
   /Movies
      /Collections  
            /Collection name e.g. "Transformers (film series)"
                  movie content

Thanks and regards
Michael

2

@mcored said:
Dear Plex devs

I understand the current folder structure for movies as the following:

/Media
   /Movies
      movie content

Unfortunately, current method of manually tagging each movie to be part of a collection is very labourious.
ā€¦

I so not see it as being particularly laborious at all.

All you need to do is use the web app and set it to folder view and then in each folder hover your mouse over the first item and the click the circle in the upper left corner then scroll to the last item and shift+click anywhere in the last item and then click the pencil icon on the upper right of the screen. In the edit menu go to tags and enter the collection you want all those files to be in. Repeat that action for each folder you want as a collection.

It took me about three times longer to type this than it takes to actually do it for a folder with 50-60 items and I am a fairly fast typist.

1 Like
3

@Elijah_Baley said:
All you need to do is use the web app and set it to folder view and then in each folder hover your mouse over the first item and the click the circle in the upper left corner then scroll to the last item and shift+click anywhere in the last item and then click the pencil icon on the upper right of the screen. In the edit menu go to tags and enter the collection you want all those files to be in. Repeat that action for each folder you want as a collection.

and you donā€™t even need to switch to the folder view to do this :wink:

4

Sorry guys, I have over hundreds of collections and what you are suggesting is simply a manual input.

1 Like
5

@tom80H said:

@Elijah_Baley said:
All you need to do is use the web app and set it to folder view and then in each folder hover your mouse over the first item and the click the circle in the upper left corner then scroll to the last item and shift+click anywhere in the last item and then click the pencil icon on the upper right of the screen. In the edit menu go to tags and enter the collection you want all those files to be in. Repeat that action for each folder you want as a collection.

and you donā€™t even need to switch to the folder view to do this :wink:

Well it makes it easier if you have already placed your files in a folder structure that matches what you want for initial collection groupings. In the regular view movies are not necessarily grouped so the you can select all the ones you want with just a couple of clicks. I am all about ā€œeasy.ā€

ā€œMake everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.ā€ Albert Einstein

6

@mcored said:
Sorry guys, I have over hundreds of collections and what you are suggesting is simply a manual input.

considering the massive shitstorm passing through when people complained about those auto-created collections from The Movie Databaseā€¦ yes.
Listenā€¦ I donā€™t disagree that having a folder representation of collections doesnā€™t make sense at allā€¦ it could be nice to e.g. store your local media assets such as posters / background images there ā€“ maybe in the future even collection extras.

however things are a little more complicatedā€¦ what about movies you want to assign to multiple collections (e.g. for cross-overs or stuff like a Pixar collection and a Toy Story collection). Considering the manual follow-up/clean-up to get this sorted, I prefer the manual approach a lot.

7

@tom80H said:
however things are a little more complicatedā€¦ what about movies you want to assign to multiple collections (e.g. for cross-overs or stuff like a Pixar collection and a Toy Story collection). Considering the manual follow-up/clean-up to get this sorted, I prefer the manual approach a lot.

I guess the confusion was probably because of user curated collections. I am not talking about those ones at all. May be this shouldnā€™t be called collections if thatā€™s the case. I am only talking about ā€œfilm seriesā€, in Transformers example, only the movies listed here: Transformers (film series) - Wikipedia so a film series will only have those 5 movies (to-date) and nothing else.

So I were to ask the question again:

    /Media
       /Movies
          /Series
                /Series name e.g. "Transformers (film series)"
                      movie content

These could still appear in Collections, thatā€™s fine. Users can manually input additional tags if they wanted to.

8

additionā€¦
Personally I believe an actual improvement could be achieved by upping the collections matching w/ The Movie Database. The reason people were so annoyed wasnā€™t that Plex did find a collectionā€¦ it was more about the unexpected addition of collections when you own only 1 movie of a set.

This can be fixed by extending the inline-collection configuration. Thereā€™s already a feature request asking for either a threshold (e.g. show only collections with more than 1 items) or maybe to add an additional option to the existing inline collection settings.

The big upside of a proper collection integration w/ The Movie Database is that they have the descriptions, posters, backgrounds etc. available right there.

THAT would make life super easy w/ collections :wink:

9

This is very interesting. Personally I would have liked Plex identifying a single movie as being part of a collection so I then know to follow up on a sequel. :smiley:

1 Like
10

I believe the intention was for those 1-item collections still to show up in the dedicated collections view. Just not to see them inline with your movies.

So you could still track / follow up on the sequels.

ā€“
Edit: hereā€™s the feature request btw (in case you want to like it ;))
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/304176/collections-minimum-threshold

11

It would be really nice to have custom collections that automatically update based on the folder. This would be really helpful for people who have a large collection of home videos and are continually adding videos into a predefined folder structure. It could also apply to Movies if you really wanted extra control.

For Example:

Home Video

  • Vacations(collection)
    ----2018(collection)
    ----2017(collection)

You could do this manually, but if you are adding several videos a month or week youā€™d have to continually update tags manually every time you add a new file, you would inevitably miss-tag or not tag a file resulting in incomplete collections. Being able to create custom collections based on relative file path would be a great power user feature.

Is this possible with regular tags? I think the feature would really only benefit power users who want to create customized library structures for a large, growing filebase.

1 Like
12

I agree. I have been creating collections for my youtube downloaded content and it would be great for plex to automatically update the collection base on the directory that the content is located.
This dir = collection.
That way as I add new videos they are added to the collection and I do not need to go in and manually update all collections periodically.

1 Like
13

If your files are using the mp4 format, use embedded meta tags.
Plex will read the content of the ā€˜Albumā€™ meta tag and assign the video to the collection named after the Album.

14

Can I re-open this request please?
I used the manual process discussed above (select all movies in a folder, edit, add to collection) and that was fine, but now when I add new files to that folder, I have to repeat the process or tag each one manually. What a ball-ache.

1 Like
15

Iā€™d like to revisit this too - the manual process isnā€™t one I want to get into for the 130+ folders Iā€™m trying to collection-ify. If someone hasnā€™t already, Iā€™ll get working on a script this weekend

1 Like
16

I totally agreeā€¦ there should be a way to automatically generate collections from folders, at least as an option. Itā€™s just too much manual work when it comest to anything other than movies. I have a ton of tutorials I collected along the years. A gazillion files in a gazillion folders. Everything nicely organized in a folder structure. But in order to have that in Plex I have to go through the same process again.

1 Like
17

We just need a checkbox on the Library type details, like this:

[ ] Smart Folder - automatically add folder name as a collection tag

4 Likes
18

I donā€™t think anyone caresā€¦ as long as you pay for a Plex Pass the devs are happy. :man_shrugging:

1 Like
19

The suggestion doesnĀ“t work when the movies are all in separate folders. Then folder view does nothingā€¦

20

I suppose that is true. I never keep my movies in separate folders as, for me, I gain nothing and it just complicates maintenance for me.