Every plex client I’ve used seems to just list extras in a single list. After ripping a few dozen extras from the feature discs, it’s fairly hard to find anything. I’m not sure what the solution is from a UI perspective, but the current method doesn’t work for more than a few extras. Perhaps grouping by the native categories (behind the scenes, deleted scenes, etc), or a way to change the sorting order (flagging favourites, rating extras, or something else).
That would be great! I’m currently uploading The Lord of the Ring Trilogy, and that series has a large number bonus contents. A grouping or at least a own page for bonus contents, would be fantastic.
I actually like that idea… especially on a tv, there’s a lot of scrolling to get to every single extra. Also keeping in mind the limited screen estate on a mobile app.
Groupings could be applied in a smart way, e.g. if there’s more than X extras, show a placeholder per available group that allows to drill-down and see all items in that group. Alternatively Plex could show the first X extras and a Show All link/button like they do for that kind of drill downs on the current generation mobile apps.
Edit: this might get handy with the new tv-show agent supporting local extras for shows/seasons/episodes which will require some level of rework on clients
Final Edit: I’d still like for the extras to stay in 1 line/hub – otherwise it’ll explode the UI
I have come up with an interim solution which works for me:
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Create a folder at the Seasons level and name it something that Plex doesn’t recognise. That means NOT the standard “/Extras” or “/Behind-The-Scenes” etc as Plex will swallow that up. I call my Extras folder “_extras”.
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Put your non-Specials files in this folder and prefix them with an extreme season number prefix eg S100Exx. I class Specials as episodes that continue the story, and Extras are everything else.
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Plex will read these files as being in Season 100 and show a new “Season 100” folder in Plex. Rename this to “Extras” or whatever you want.
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The Plex entries in this folder will just be “Episode 1”, “2” etc so you have to edit each entry by hand to the name you want Plex to display, and copy/paste the description from TVDB if you want it.
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If these files should be played by Plex as part of the Show (which shouldn’t be the case as these are Extras and not Specials) then set the Aired Date to an appropriate date (or taken from TVDB) and Plex will pick that up when using “play next”.
It is very common for Extras to be broken into logical groups that do not fall into the simple types of Extras that are supported. Multi-part featurettes are quite common and require verbose naming to preserve both the order and to keep them logically in the same place within the UI. Additionally, they take up a large amount of space within the UI, where space is often at a premium. Some simple additional organization, along with a change in the UI, could bring both more usability and functionality to grouped multi-part extras.
Example:
Using “The Dark Crystal” as an example, there is a series of scenes contained on the source media grouped under a category called “Language Test Scenes”. Not only is this presented in eight parts, but it also has some semblence of a required ordering, as it starts with an “Introduction” segement, which is common in a large number of these grouped multi-part Extras. The parts of this series of Extras are named:
- Introduction by David Odell
- Emperor’s Deathbed
- The New Emperor
- Aughra & Jen
- Podling Village
- Aughra & The Skeksis
- Fountain of Youth
- Presenting Kira
In order to keep these grouped from other Scenes and to preserve the order, we must use a naming system which adds verbosity and causes the UI to cut off the relevant parts of the title. In this example, I have prefixed the name of each of these with "Language Test Scenes, Part X - ", which allows me to preserve both the grouping and ordering, but renders the original titles useless, as they can no longer be seen.
Request:
Allow subfoldering for groups, and reflect these subfolders in the UI. Using the above example, if I had a folder called “Language Test Scenes” under my Scenes folder, I could simplify the naming, plus reduce cluttering of the Extras shown in the UI. Entering a group in the UI could be implemented to allow some sort of “Up” navigation to return to the full list of Extras, along with a “Play All” that would play all of the Extras in a group, in order. Additionally, once a subfolder has been entered, the individual titles should be able to be independently selected. This functionality, alone, would bring a lot of the menuing capabilities available in the native media (with the obvious exception of interactive, non-Extra content).
Notes:
This feature would work even better with my other feature request, for editing Titles and Sort Titles for Extras (https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/316356/feature-request-movie-extras-metadata-for-display-and-ordering), allowing to show the names as presented on the media and all sorting information with the subfolder to be managed through metadata over filenaming convention.
Thank you for taking the time to look. If this feature request interests you, please remember to upvote this post.
