It would be helpful if we could create a list of movies that we wish to have added to a Collection…before we actually own the movies themselves. That way when we acquire the movies on the list they are automatically added to the collection.
For example:
Someone might wish to build out a collection of movies that contains all the “AFI’s 100 Best Movies.” They might have some of the movies now but are planning on acquiring the rest in the future.
Smart Collections can do exactly that. You can create a smart collection based on a Label or a Collection name. You have to have at least one of the movies to start this, but there’s not much point creating a collection until you do.
Then, when you add a new movie from the list, you just give it that Label or Collection name.
You can do it with titles, too, but that would be the hard way:
I use @beckfield suggestion but use the “Tag” feature instead of Label for Marvel, Disney, Star Wars and DC Animated collections. When I add the movie to my library I just add the appropriate tag for the collection I want it included - which autocompletes if it exists already - and I’m done! Works great.
@beckfield’s suggestion offers some additional flexibility with smart collections though… 
Hi Backfield,
Yes, my AFI collection actually has been created exactly the way you described. The problem is that I have to KNOW that the movie I’m adding is an AFI 100 movie, or Best Picture, or Best Actor, Top Grossing, Summer Blockbuster, Tear Jerker, etc. and then add the appropriate tag.
See, what tends to happen is that I end up finding good deals on DVDs at thrift stores or the like. So, I end up adding movies in batches instead of one at a time. Then, I have to go through all my Collection lists to find out if a specific title requires a specific collection tag. It isn’t the most difficult thing (first world problem), but it would be much easier if Plex stored those lists for me and did all of this automatically some how.
EDIT:
Oh! I hadn’t thought of the using the filter to be the list, as you show at the end of your post (sorry, I missed what you were getting at there).
Hmm, need to ponder…
EDIT #2:
Thinking aloud here - some movies have the same title but different years. I know you can make the filters look at both, but that is getting a bit messy in the current UI.
Also, some lists are going to be like 500 movies long, such as Academy Awards Nominees. This is a huge list to create in the current UI.
What you’re describing might be more useful as part of the Auto Collections feature. Plex already does automatic collections based on movie series (like Beverly Hills Cop or Bill & Ted) as listed at the metadata sources, but it might be able to be built for “lists” style collections as well but that might get tricky to manage.
Oh right, that would seem to somewhat easy retrofit to the existing automatic collections. The metadata source could be just properly formatted text files with the list of movies. The files could be placed in a specific Plex folder by the user.
I think this idea all the more since it would allow us to more easily backup our collections too.
There’s been the occasional suggestion asking for a way to import certain criteria or “collection definition”. Though they’ve never gained much attention.
