Collection / Smart Collection Filters : Change Order?

[tjs4ever]

Hello, I’ve created a new smart collection to group my Halloween episodes into one playlist that I want to play on shuffle. For the most part this is working, I have a very long list of filters setup such as:

episode is Full Bars
episode contains costume
episode contains spooky
episode contains knightmare
…to give an example…

I’m getting a lot of false positives, specifically due to some of the titles used for Dragon Ball and DBZ episodes. I want to add another filter :

show does not contain Dragon Ball

but unfortunately I have no control over the order when adding a new rule group.

Can I submit a feature request to have an up/down arrow added so that the order of the rule groups can be edited? As it is now my only option is to create a whole new collection, exclude/include specific TV shows first and then filter based on episode name second. Either an up/down arrow or allowing the rules to be dragged/moved with a mouse would be super helpful to me.

Alternatively, if there is some XML or other config file that I can edit manually, I could probably figure that out if someone can direct me to where to find my collection info saved on disk.

Thanks,
~TJ

[tom80H]

I wonder… does the order actually matter in that case?
From what I read, you actually want to put the current filter criteria into a rule group and add another criteria on the top level – don’t you?

advanced filter (all)
  rule group (any)
    episode is Full Bars
    episode contains costume
    episode contains spooky
    episode contains knightmare
    ...

  show is not Dragon Ball

There’s an existing suggestion discussing an option to drag/move rules and rule groups (not just changing their order but e.g. moving them up/down across different levels of rule groups. If that’s what you’re looking for, please comment/vote in that thread in order to help us avoid distracting or cannibalizing votes.

Feature Request - Copy and move rules in smart playlists

I have a few large playlists that have a lot of filters on them. For instance, I have a playlist that shows all the movies from several actors, studios, and franchises. It’s my bit “Watchlist” The only problem is that sometimes i want to make a change like move a selection of rules into their own group. Currently, this means I have to create a new group, then recreate all the rules in question, then delete all the old ones. Being able to drag and drop, or check boxes to move different rules…

[tjs4ever]

I voted on the copy and move rules feature, but mine is a different ask.

The order of the rule groups matters because any new rule group you create is forced to be a child rule group and is constrained to the ‘match all’ or ‘match any’ settings of its parent rule group. I will try to give an example:

The existing Halloween Collection looks like this:

-Rule Group 1 : Match Any of the following rules:

–Episode Title is Full Bars

–Episode Title contains horror

–Episode Title contains nightmare

–Episode Title contains Halloween

What I want to be able to do: Insert a new Rule Group either at the very top, or at the very bottom. I think either would work. The new rule-set would look like one of these two examples:

Example A:

-Rule Group 1: Match All of the following rules:

–Show Title does not contain Dragon Ball

—Rule Group 2: Match Any of the following rules:

----Episode Title is Full Bars

----Episode Title contains horror

----Episode Title contains nightmare

----Episode Title contains Halloween

Example B:

-Rule Group 1: Match Any of the following rules:

–Episode Title is Full Bars

–Episode Title contains horror

–Episode Title contains nightmare

–Episode Title contains Halloween

—Rule Group 2: Match all of the following rules:

----Show Title does not contain Dragon Ball

Currently what happens if you try to edit an existing collection and add a new rule group:

-Rule Group 1 : Match Any of the following rules: (click ‘add new rule group)

—(new rule group 2 is added here. It is inserted in a place that doesn’t allow for a lot of flexibility)–

–Episode Title is Full Bars

–Episode Title contains horror

–Episode Title contains nightmare

–Episode Title contains Halloween

Tldr; I would like to be able to move the rule groups around, the order of operations matters when doing complicated filtering.

[tom80H]

@tjs4ever

The order of the rule groups matters because any new rule group you create is forced to be a child rule group and is constrained to the ‘match all’ or ‘match any’ settings of its parent rule group.

You can add new rule groups on the same level as existing rules / rule groups.

Here’s an example of a multi-tier advanced filter I’m currently using with one of my smart collections. Screenshots should highlight how I can pick the level where I want to get my new rule groups added.

I was pointing to the other suggestion because with the drag & drop / moving of rules within an advanced filter, you could also shift existing rules / groups from the top level further down. This could be helpful if you want to add a new rule group above the current highest hierarchy.

For rules / rule groups on the same level, their order doesn’t matter. The filter will evaluate all criteria.

• If the given hierarchy is set to require all criteria to be met, the filter will have to cycle through all criteria on that level and they all have to be true.
• If the given hierarchy is set to require any criteria to be met, the filter will cycle through all criteria on that level until it finds one that’s true.