First as all collections generally are related to titles or artist names, that could and likely do always begin with a capital letter. Collections starting with lower case letters should appear after those with upper case letters (they currently sorted intermixed (case insensitive)) and afford the opportunity to create collections like role - Brainard, Professor or actor - Sellers, Peter (since the actor filter has the name instead of the sortname). In addition special character prefixes sorted per the collating sequence Collection names beginning with # would appear before the common titles/names. Collections beginning with ^ would appear between the common titles and the lower case collections. Useful using the above where ^roles could contain all the role- collections and ^actors could contain all the actors- collections. Lastly collections prefixed with ~ would come after the collections beginning in lower case. Currently from limited testing special characters (# ^ ~) when in the collection sort name prefix all seem to sort themselves to the top of the collection list.
The most common approach to place items to the top/bottom of a list is prefixing their sort title with a special character or digit (beginning) vs. ZZ... (end). I’m not entirely sure why you want to distinguish upper/lower case titles or why there’s a need to place items between upper/lower case elements?!
Maybe you could elaborate your use case a bit further (unless it’s just me who keeps wondering )
I use the XBMC importers and TMM to scape my plex data. I am not limited to placing scrapable items from Plex into the Movies Folder. If I need to make up a name I name the “unscrapable” item “{movie} & {my or the creator’s title}”. The display name for these items that ONLY appear in collections (hidden on the main library screen with the provided option is set to the Original Name where the "{movie} & " prefix has been dropped. So in the case of a music video the name is the song name. Shorts that are not in imdb or tvdb can use their actual title as they do not appear in the main movie listing where their original name entry is hidden because they are all in one or more collections, When doing this the movie set name is the primary collection folder. When a movie is not part of a current movie set (the “primary” collection), I create a pseudo collection using “{movie} ({year}})” that in my opinion is likely to avoid any conflicts with scraped movie set names. I can also in the NFO file override scraped movie set names when I choose. I attempted to create #MusicVideos to display at the top where the Music Videos are capable of being separated from actual movies. #Shorts is another I utilize and #Features (like how to draw videos) is another I occasionally utilize because I want my grandchildren to find easily (one is autistic). To enhance the music video entries I would like to create collections such as artist - {last name, first name) for music videos. Being able to nest these in a ^artist collection that appears after the main library entries and before the various artist - groups (should they be shown when nested solves one issue (it also provides a place for the artist’s picture). Nesting the music video "artist - " collections with artists in my music library completes the scenario when music videos and recorded music exists for the same artist. I tried the global music video offering, it failed to meet the requirements. One cannot create an artist without an actual recording to store music videos in the Music library (another Plex limitation). A second issue is that actor names are not searchable using sort-name ordering. Likewise movie roles in the metadata cannot be searched or filtered at all. actor - collections rolled (nested) up into a ^actor collection solves the actor issue. role - collections rolled (nested) up into a ^role collection is another use of this mechanism. For my music videos I can to some degree use the filtering of plex to find videos because I load the artists in as actors with the role of “artist” in the NFO files I create using TMM.
A side benefit of the xbmc importer is that the tag feature can be turned into collection assignments. Personally the tagging is not a function I see as nearly as valuable as being able to store multiple collection assignments for a single item like a movie and to be able to have a scraper properly rebuild the library from source. In other words, my source media data can almost completely reconstruct the plex database for me. Yes I did turn scraping of tags off in TMM when scraping data into the NFO files the XBMC importers use to provide metadata to Plex.
Yes I have in my opinion significantly expanded the presentation option for movies and extra materials inside the movie library itself.
The prior was probably a crappy explanation that focused on what I was doing instead of what I intended. The most interesting of which at this time is I want to provide greater visibility to music videos for which the existing functionality is lacking. My solution based on the current environment has the same problem as the other solutions offered by Plex. Music videos have great difficulty being tied to both a movie and the artist in the music library. I solved the connection between any video and a corresponding movie that I want. I could create metadata for the Music Video sub-library using artist - {last name}, {first name}. If collections ever become nested then a collection ^ Artists or ~ Artists could contain metadata for the Music Video sub-library. Creating another artist - {last name}, {first name} collection in the music library will effectively link the two so I can solve the second issue. As of now since collections cannot be nested it would be nice to be able to have the artist - {last name}, {first name} collections sorted below the main entries for Music Videos. so one has a list of music videos followed by sets of metadata. This solution is still lacking. The last thing to make this solution complete would be to have collections be a GLOBAL structure with entries possible from any one or more libraries. A Global set of artist - - {last name}, {first name} collections would allow search of ALL artists from a single list, even if they only have only music videos with no recorded music or recorded music with no music videos. Artists with both are the only ones without a problem in the current or new system. A second alternative to this is to have Artist be a global “library” of Artists where music videos and recorded music can both create Artists in the global library of Artists. Potentially movies generate and link to entries in the Global Library of Artists. Personally I believe elevating Collections from a sub library structure that links across libraries using a common name to being a Global Library of Collections that can link to any other library offers more flexibility than the Global Library of Artists. Once one has a Global Library of Collections with the potential to nest collections then all metadata could become collections and the database in the background no longer is required to be filtered. etc. Metadata would become a graphically navigable set of collections. I believe this is a major change from the current architecture. However; having database that can be expanded and navigated graphically could be a potentially more user friendly solution. For this to be the most viable being able to control entries with minimal prefix sizes and simplified sorting rules could make this option even more viable as a replacement for the current metadata structure. The user would be free to create any additional metadata categories they desire. Switching metadata categories on an off in the Global library of Collections is also possible. Providing direction on the use of sort names or display names is also possible.
You can split this description because it vastly expands on the original request or you may agree with me that these two concepts combined with nested Collections becomes a potentially new graphically navigable metadata database the eliminated the problems of having artists performing in movies forced into separate artist lists that may not match up to artists with recorded music and vice versa. The came potentially applies to music videos (such as live concerts) that are not associated recorded music. Plex seems to believe all artists will be present and defined in the recorded music library. Clearly that is not true especially if you open up the movie metadata to all artists whose music is credited in a movie’s sound track. It even fails when considering music videos shipped with movies themselves which is where my exposure to this issue occurred.
Providing a naming convention for user entries so they do not conflict with plex system entries could be based on special character prefixes for the user entries where plex entries require no special characters but are always LOWER CASE.
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