Just started playing with collections again after having tried it some years back when it created hundreds of collections based on single movies. Found that I can stop it from doing that and can use it to group movies into a single title in the main view so I’m giving it another go.
Issue: I created a number of groups like Alien, Bond, etc. It created little 4 image posters which is fine. But I noticed when I moved a folder and it re-added Fast & the Furious set, it auto tagged them and the collection poster was pulled in along with info. Learned that it was from matching TMDB groups. So I renamed a few groups with the same name as it has in TMDB (eg: Alien to Alien Collection). None of them automatically updated with TMDB info. I tried refreshing the metadata and that didn’t do anything.
How do I get these collections to match to TMBD? Looked back through the instructions and did about half an hour of searches and haven’t found the answer.
if you manually typed something in that field then it got locked. For it to overwrite with what it find on TMDB it must be unlocked.
if the lock icon on the left of the collection field is orange then is is locked. Click it so it is grey/black again , save and then refresh metadata for those movies.
Thanks for the suggestion. However all the title’s tags were updated when I change the collection name. But I went back through and made sure my “Alien Collection” tags in each title weren’t locked just in case.
I refreshed the entire movie folder metadta and that didn’t link the collection. I then went in and selected all the titles in the collecting and refreshed the metadata there and it didn’t do anything.
Can plex link a collection to tmdb if the tags are added manually vs. automatically? I’m assuming it can, I just can’t make it happen. I can’t find a “fix match” equivalent for a collection title.
Once the collection is made manually , afaik, it won’t add to the collection or change the poster if that is what you mean.
let’s to this.
delete the collection
then for each movie in that collection, even if the field is empty, make sure the lock is NOT orange and save.
then refresh metadata for each movie or library.
Deleted, readded collection, unlocked field, refreshed metadata for movies and entire library
I tried to add items individually by editing the collection tag. I also tried add items using the drop down menu “add to → add to collection… both individually and all at once to see if it made any difference. All tags unlocked
I have it set at 4. The collections I’m trying it with have 4 or more titles in them. I’m seeing exactly what JaysPlex7 is seeing where he can’t get Saw to pair but Alien (in his case) was done automatically so it is linked to TMDB.
“Once the collection is made manually , afaik, it won’t add to the collection or change the poster if that is what you mean.”
I don’t want it to change the collection, I want the collection to link so that it gets the metadata like the summary and is linked to the poster and background options.
I deleted the collection, validated there was no lock (or entry) on the collection tag. Refreshed the library metadata, no change. Refreshed the individual title, no change. Added the “Alien Collection” tag to all of the again and they grouped but did not link to TMDB. Refreshed metadata again and no change.
To validate that there was nothing weird with my titles, I moved the 4 Alien titles out of my monitored library, refreshed the movie folder so they were removed, then added them back into the folder. It auto-tagged them as Alien Collection and created the folder linked to TMDB.
I then deleted that collection so they separated. I re-added the “Alien Collection” tag and it regrouped them but once again, did not link the collection to TMDB.
Repeated the process of deleting the collection, moving the files out of the monitored folder, refresh and add them back in. But this time I only added in 3. My threshold is set to 4 so no group was created but also none of them had a collection tag added. Added a 4th and after a few minutes that triggered the collection action, tagging all 4 and linking them to TMDB.
Next I tried Mission Impossible. Deleting the collection, and only removing 1 of the 6 movies. I left the blank Collection tags locked for the remaining 5 to see what happens. I added back the one and after a few minutes it triggered the Collection but had only the 1 movie in there. So it saw that I had more than 4 of the titles in there and created the collection even though it couldn’t actually group them.
So it confirms that adding a title to the collection triggers the whatever the collection check is for the title and runs it against the rest of the library, but we are missing a way to trigger that for existing titles.
To test further, I repeated the steps, leaving the 5 locked but with the “Mission: Impossible Collection” manually entered so a manual, locked tag, collection was made with the 4-poster collection poster. Interesting, when I added the 1st movie back into the monitored folder and refreshed, the manually created folder immediately updated to the linked TMDB folder. It said 5 movies for about 30 seconds and then refreshed to show 6.
I repeated this but making the locked tag “Mission: Impossible” without the “Collection”. Interestingly this time it actually added itself to that collection, with the same tag, without Collection. And of course the whole group remained unlinked to TMDB.
I left the same shortened name for the 5 but left the tag unlocked. Adding the first movie back immediately grouped it with the other 5, did not change the group name and left the group unlinked to TMDB. The added movie named itself to match the others instead of TMDB and no titles updated even though they were unlocked.
So this proves that the issue of a collection not linking to TMBD doesn’t have anything to do with the collection tag being locked, as long as the name is correct on existing titles. It also highlights that once your collection is created because it is beyond the threshold (4 in this case), it doesn’t matter if the Tag is unlocked as the next item added will just group with the existing collection and not update it to the TMDB name.
So the primary issue/fix is that we don’t have a “Fix Match” type option (that I’m aware of) or any way to trigger a collection to link to TMDB (when we want it to do so).
As Jays and I showed, it doesn’t tag itself with existing collections, whether you have done collection tagging or not. The only way it does it is in the very specific circumstance of you having your library settings just right at the time that a movie it recognizes and haven’t done anything to the other movies. If you change anything at any point it doesn’t work. Have those titles as part of another group (like MCU but you want GotG group now that the 3rd is out), it doesn’t work.
If it worked automatically, I wouldn’t have created the collections I just did as I didn’t have an Aliens collection until last week as I hadn’t revisited the collections feature since I tried it years ago and it created a crap fest of collections I didn’t want. Having it only work to trigger a link to TMBD in the very specific circumstance of a movie being added and the other criteria being met is silly. Means any existing collections can’t trigger it without a lot of goofy manual moving of potentially hundreds of individual files/folders out and back into their monitored folder. Having it linked to TMBD is not worth that level of headache, especially when it is fragile as it is.
And frankly, I don’t want it to work automatically much of the time as it can do things I don’t want it to do. Like I don’t want it to group up my Star Trek movies into the 3 different groups on TMDB but I am good with it grouping Fast and Furious. Or where my threshold is 4, because I don’t want it grouping anything less automatically but there are some sets of 3 I do want to group. I can’t link those groups to tmbd because I didn’t do all sets of 3 automatically.
Net is right now it only links if you have a very specific set of actions happen in a specific order. Seems silly and more frustrating than useful for people with large, not new, libraries.
Expected “automatic” action for manual grouping would be: “Create group or change name of existing group - if group name matches TMDB, it is linked. Refreshing metadata triggers it to look for the link if it didn’t automatically”. Again, a ‘fix match’ type option would be helpful as well.
But back to my original question, what I’m understanding is that the answer is: “You can’t. Matching to TMDB does not work with your already existing media. It can only happen automatically if your settings are right at the time you add ‘new’ media to your monitored folders”.
SwiftPanda16 - Thanks for giving this a go. I’m a bit perplexed since, as noted in an earlier post, this is one of the many things we did, refreshing the metatdata at the library and title level with unlocked titles and didn’t get that result. Only removing and adding one of the movies back was triggering it.
I’ll do some more testing this evening and see what combination of things is stopping it from happening in my tests. with Aliens and M.I. sets. Won’t resolve the issue of things under the pre-set threshold that you want but would be far more useful than having to move around titles in folders to trigger it.
I’ve tried many different things. The absolutely most consistent method is to
Delete the collection (... > Delete)
Unlock the collection field for the movies
Refresh metadata
Step 1 is important. The “unlinked” collection must be removed completely, otherwise Plex will just put the movies back into the “unlinked” collection instead of creating a brand new “linked” collection.
Highlighting one of the many tests that didn’t work and saying “don’t do that” isn’t helpful. Let it happen “automatically” isn’t helpful when I started with the fact that it didn’t “happen automatically” for years prior to me testing and prior to the tests you are saying not to do, I did the thing you are suggesting and it didn’t work, hence the rest of the trials:
"I deleted the collection, validated there was no lock (or entry) on the collection tag. Refreshed the library metadata, no change. Refreshed the individual title, no change. "
Thanks, I’ll give this another go. BTW, what are you using for your screen capture? Would be more helpful for me to post like this instead of using words to aid in clarity of what is being done/not done and the result.
