For the last couple years I’ve placed my movies in a general folder like Fitness and then placed additional folders within like Cardio, Plyo, Chest, Legs etc. and placed the individual videos within them. When browsing within the iOS app i would select folder view within the main Fitness folder to quickly select which type of video i cared to go to like today i want a cardio workout.
However, today i see the folder view in the app is now on the left and i can choose between Movies and Folders. I choose folders and they nicely appear but for some reason i cannot click on the folders to get into the individual videos. The folder now has a play button that just gives me an error “Unable to Evaluate Play Request: This type of metadata is not supported for PMKMetadataPlayRequest Code: -1”.
So i’m left with scrolling through the videos in mass to get to what i want. I would really not want to now rename all the individual videos or manually add a collection them one by one.
Anyone able to help resolve this? it works fine in the web browser just not in the app. i’ve deleted the app but no success after reinstall
Thanks for letting us know… I usually never use folder view – but I can confirm there’s something odd about that view on the latest Plex for iOS client.
As for structuring your movies… have you considered assigning them to collections instead?
E.g.:
Library: Fitness
Collection 1: Cardio
Collection 2: Plyo
Collection 3: Chest
Collection 4: Legs
Collection n: …
This way you could also have trainings addressing multiple areas in multiple collections. That won’t fix the issue with folder view – but it’ll give you a much better usability anyway
Same here. This is no good. I have all my libraries sorted with subfolders because the content is not all the same. Who do I request/complain to regarding a fix? Thx.
Not sure I get your point. Usually… „different content“ can be managed in separate libraries (e.g. Movies, Shorts, Kids Stuff). For further grouping within a library there’s Collections. The big benefit of Collections is that you’re not limited to assigning your video to one of them only… (e.g. no need to know if a movie is filed in an actor/director/genre/region/year/decade/… folder when it can obviously be in any of them (just an example… applies to most folder structure scenarios presented by users).
And of course there’s still the regular metadata based filtering in your regular library view.
TLDR; I have a hard time to understand the purpose why users want to stick with folders… they seem to be such a poor and outdated mode of organizing media. But hey… that’s just my 2ct
You are in control if and how collections are displayed in line with your other items.
This can be set for the library (advanced library setting Collections) and overridden per collection (if you want to have an exception for one of the collections).
Options are:
Option
Description
Example (what is showing in your library view?)
Disabled
Collections won’t show in your regular library at all (instead you will see the individual items)
The Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions
Hide items which are in collections
Collection entry is showing in your regular library; items in collections will be hidden (accessible inside the collection)
The Matrix Collection
Show collections and their items
Collection entry is showing in your regular library alongside its items
The Matrix Collection, The Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions
In the collections view, collections are listed by their name (or sort name, if one is set).
Folders allow me to keep multipart videos together, For example, tutorials named like this:
“00_01-Welcome_to_Paris.mp4
01_01-Getting_Here_and_Where_to_Stay.mp4
01_02-Cell_Data_Money.mp4
01_03-Stuff_You_Should_Know.mp4”
Other tutorial filenames also begin with “01” etc. so, when I can only see filenames and not folders, all the “01” files display next to each other and none are related. I don’t see the point of that view. How would I go through lessons in order? Using folders removes this issue.
Not trying to push you into anything.
Depending on what this is about it can make sense to organize those tutorials as personal video tv-shows, using their season/episode structure (on top of collections if/where needed).
Even in a regular personal video library, you can group those files as collections, sorting their content alphabetically.
Thanks tom, that made the library a lot nicer, was lost in locating this but once found a cleaner view appeared.
I also realized the titles for each collection for some reason removed the first word like “The” and “A” from some of the sort titles, this caused them to not display the collection titles alphabetically. Weird, but whatever, easy fix thanks again.
If you’re importing a library into Plex that’s already organized in a hierarchy of subfolders, leaving it that way is much easier. With a bunch of short clips/unlabeled videos only organized by folder, I don’t want to take the time to put them into collections when they’re already organized as is.
(On a related note, I do understand that folder view is less used than the default view, but displaying thumbnails in folder view like is done on desktop would be a great improvement as requested here: [Request] Posters for Folder-View)
Is it possible to set up Plex to automatically add videos to collections? I wouldn’t mind getting away from using folders but as it is now I find the collections a bit lacking.
I have a workflow setup to automatically download videos (Podcasts) to my server. The shows are separated into folders and the file names are episode names. Plex media show agent or scanner or what is what (never remember the difference) does not work as they do not have season and episode numbers so I have to rely on a movie library. If I do not use folders they are all mixed up and I cannot see which episode belongs to which show. When I have watched an episode, a different script removes them from the library.
Adding them to collections just introduces a manual step in the process as far as I have understood which makes it very cumbersome. Is there a way to automatically add files to collections based on different conditions (i.e. file names as they do not have metadata)?
Since folder view does not work and I do not know how to apply collections to my automatic workflow, plex has become almost useless since 90% of my viewings are these podcasts. I hope this can be fixed quickly or I can get a tip how to setup collections in a way that would work for me (I also don’t like to rely on folder structure).
This has unfortunately killed my music library on my phone - Found folder view which has moved again but now it lists the top level folders and I can’t descend in to them
thanks again.
