How to make a Smart MCU Playlist

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Hello all.

I am trying to make a Marvel Cinematic Universe playlist out of the movies and tv shows I have on my server and can not find a way to do all that I want it to.

Here’s what I am trying to accomplish:

A playlist of MCU movies, tv shows, shorts.
Sorted chronologically. See this link for an example: https://trakt.tv/users/donxy/lists/marvel-cinematic-universe?sort=rank,asc
And to remove the media once it has been watched.

I found an incredible tool https://chronolists.com/ made by Paul Jones that makes it easy to create such a playlist but I can not get it to remove the media once watched. I’ve been able to create Smart Playlist that does the filtering I need but it can not span different media libraries.

Any help is appreciated.

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Simple answer: you cannot create a smart playlist (or smart collection) that contains different-media content or content from different libraries. Smart playlists/collections are always created from a (single) filtered library.

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SOLVED

I’ve been looking for a solution to make an auto updating MCU chronological playlist for ages and think I have a working solution thanks to this community and others.

Since Plex couldn’t do what I wanted natively I had to look for external solutions. Members of this community and others suggested I look into Plex Meta Manager. Wow is this such a powerful tool. If you are trying to do something like this, I strongly suggest taking the time to learn how to use PMM to do what you need.

This is a short type up of what I did incase others are trying to find a solution.

A good overview of the possibilities for PMM can be found on youtube by Ibracorp.

That team did a good walk thought on their blog as well. It should be linked in the show notes of the above video.

A summary of what I did to get it working:

Installed PMM as a docker container on my unraid server following the guide in the video.

This is where I deviated a bit. To test this out, I only made 2 .yml files. config.yml and playlists.yml. Since I’m running this on unraid, all I had to do was put these files in /mnt/user/appdata/Plex-Meta-Manager, restart the container, and trigger the script. I think the below also sends this playlist to family I share this server with.

I’m not sure what all of this does, but this is a sample of my config.yml.

## This file is a template remove the .template to use the file

libraries:              # Library mappings must have a colon (:) placed after them
  Movies:
    metadata_path:
      - file: config/Movies.yml
      - pmm: basic
      - pmm: studio
      - pmm: genre
      - pmm: actor
  TV Shows:
    metadata_path:
      - file: config/TV.yml
      - pmm: basic
      - pmm: network
playlist_files:
  - file: config/playlists.yml
  # - pmm: playlist #commented out bc I didn't want all the playlist pmm made by default    
settings:                  # Can be individually specified per library as well
  cache: true
  cache_expiration: 60
  asset_directory: config/assets
  asset_folders: true
  assets_for_all: false
  sync_mode: append
  show_unmanaged: true
  show_filtered: false
  show_missing: true
  save_missing: true
  run_again_delay: 2
  missing_only_released: false
  create_asset_folders: false
  collection_minimum: 1
  delete_below_minimum: false
  tvdb_language: default
  show_missing_assets: true
plex:                       # Can be individually specified per library as well
  url: ############### #enter plex url
  token: ############  #enter plex token. see video how to get it.
  timeout: 60
  clean_bundles: false
  empty_trash: false
  optimize: false
tmdb:
  apikey: #search PMM wiki how to get apikey.
  language: en
trakt:
  client_id: #see PMM wiki how to get this
  client_secret: #see PMM wiki how to get this
# Everything below this line is automatically generated
  authorization:
    access_token: 
    token_type: 
    expires_in: 
    refresh_token: 
    scope: public
    created_at:

This is a sample of my playlists.yml file.

playlists:
  Marvel Cinematic Universe Chronological Order:
    sync_mode: sync
    libraries: Movies, TV Shows
    trakt_list: https://trakt.tv/users/donxy/lists/marvel-cinematic-universe?sort=rank,asc
    filters:
      plays.lt: 1  #this filter is needed to remove watched content. 
    summary: Marvel Cinematic Universe In Chronological Order made with ppm.

The trakt_list: https://trakt.tv/users/donxy/lists/marvel-cinematic-universe?sort=rank,asc section has most of what I’m looking for but I think there are still a few shows mia from the list. If anyone knows how to inject items, or create a different list, please let me know.

I’ve never done anything like this and get lost very easily. After reading through the wiki, I was confused how to apply the filter. I was able to join their discord group and posted my question and was able to get the missing piece I needed. If you’re stuck. That’s the best place to look.

My hat is off to all who had a hand in making this and I strongly encourage you to donate to the project if you find value in it.

I hope this is able to help someone else. In my googling over the years for a solution to make a Marvel playlist of movies and tv shows in timeline order, I came across several discussions on this topic but no solution. Hopefully those who were in the same boat as I was can find this thread and get a solution.

Thanks again for the help!

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