While I very much appreciate the way that filters work with the library view of Plex Web (both latest PMS internal as well as app.plex.tv), there’s an inconsistancy in how long those filter stay active.
If I view any of my libraries, I can choose filters:
I can choose to activate a filter from a wide range of DB fields, be it genre, collection, etc…
If I choose to activate a simple filter like genre = Adventure then of course this filter becomes active and I only see a subset of movies or TV shows.
This filter stays active while browsing the library, clicking into movies, clicking into an actor image on any movie page… as long as I stay within that library, the simple filter stays active.
Proof:
- Activate any genre filter.
- Click into any movie page.
- Click to see any actor/actress page.
- Go back to main view by clicking at the library name above the set filter or by the library on the left side overview of all libraries.
Even if you visit another library and come back to the library with its filter set, the filter is still active.
With an advanced filter set, the experience is completely different.
As soon as you leave the main view of the library, the smart filter reset.
Of course, I can save the advanced filter as a playlist or collection, but using the advanced filter just as itself (a filter), is almost impossible in many, many use cases.
I give you just a simple example and I am pretty sure, you can imagine many other use cases where the simple filters are just not enough.
I want to set a group of filters for a big movie library with all age ratings except a few and check the movie pages of all of these movies, so I have to get into each of these movies to check if a trailer is present and if that trailer has the correct language. After that, i want to correct the age rating field of this film to a value that removes it from the filtered view of the main library.
By now, I have to either sort the view by age rating and still have to find all age ratings individually, or set a simple filter for each age rating individually or re-configure the advancd filter after each movie. Having a collection would not work either as there’s no easy way back into the collection after you entered one of the movie pages (plus, this is not what collections are for). Having a smart playlist would be the easiest way because I can get back directly to the playlist ovrview after visiting any playlist’s movies, but I still need to re-enter the correct playlist.
As you can see, I can find my work-arounds, but this is not the point.
From my point of view, there’s no apparent reason why there’s this inconsistency between how long filters are active versus advanced filters.
If you agree with me that this is a bug or if you simply find that there’s room for approvement, I would be glad to get the same user experience no matter if I choose a simple filter or a smart filter as a view for on of my libraries. And I would be happy if some nice Plex soul could bring this to the attention of your developers.
Thank you.
