[Feature Request] Media Server: Sorting contents within a movie playlist by alphabetic name or year

[EquinsuOcha]

Background: Using Plex Media server on a Mac-Mini, attached to a Drobo 5N. Very large movie database on Drobo.

Application: Looking for sorting functionality within a playlist.

Current Functionality: All playlist can only be sorted manually, by moving each individual item within the hierarchy.

Requested Enhancement: Ability to sort movies either by name or year (ascending and descending) within the playlist.

Examples:

Created a playlist for The Marvel Cinematic Universe.

• Added movies that are recent, but as new movies are added to the playlist, they move to the bottom
• New functionality would make it easier to watch movies in chronological order (Blade to Iron Man to Avengers to Guardians)
• New functionality would make it easier to watch a series in numeric order (Blade 1, 2, 3, and X-Men 1, 2, 3, Origins, etc)
  

Additional Example:

Created a playlist for Westerns

• Added movies to the playlist, but by default they are ordered by how they were added
• New functionality would make it easier to sort by era (John Ford era [1940-1960], vs Spaghetti Westerns [1960-1980], vs Modern Westerns [1980-Present]) by placing them in chronological order.
  

[OttoKerner]

You could achieve something like that, if the movies could be “filtered” from the full list.

For instance, for the ‘Marvel Universe’ example you could do the following:
edit each movie that belongs into the list (you can select several movies at once and edit them together)
then add them into a Collection named “Marvel Universe”:

then filter your library for this collection and change the sorting order to ‘Release Date, ascending’
then click on ‘Add to playlist’ (no particular movie must be ‘selected’ when you click on ‘Add to Playlist’):

The result is ‘smart’ playlist, which updates itself as soon as new movies are added to the ‘Marvel Universe’ collection and which is always sorted after release date.

As a bonus, all other movies in this collection are offered on the preplay page of any movie which is a member of this collection:

[OttoKerner]

More complex things like your ‘Decade’ grouping are possible with the use of ‘Custom Filters’

[EquinsuOcha]

That is brilliant. Thank you!