[implemented] Movie Collections

Feature Suggestions
201

@MovieFan.Plex said:
Being a popular request helps but there are other factors that also need to be taken into account.
Aren’t there always “Other Factors” involved?
But the fact that something is a popular request does factor and should weigh more heavily since it does identify what the greatest problems of your current users are.
If this was just an issue that only affected the Android or iOS client it would be one thing. But it is a fundamental flaw that affects every client platform that Plex Supports.
While it is true that a majority of users may not have large libraries and therefore do not speak up about the issue because it’s not a major problem for them, in time it will affect all as their library grows and they come to find that the display being used is the biggest hurdle toward using Plex as the all encompassing all device media streaming option.

There is a separate Transcoding team and I’m sure there is a group dedicated to the Library display as well. Instead of working on things like Premium Music (which most of us do not need since we have our own vast music library already,) they should take these requests to heart to make the experience better for all platforms. This is the number one issue with Plex for me at the moment. I am forced to only use it with my personal mobile devices because I know what movies are in my collection. XBMC is still required however for the rest of my family to find and enjoy that collection.
Plex Devs could end that if they simply took this library issue to heart and put it at the fore of future development. You have already out shined XBMC in the transcode and server department.
Time to surpass it or at least equal it in the library display department.
You are almost there with the ability to create separate libraries aside from just TV Show and Movies. TV shows work perfect, all that needs changing is the Movie section and XBMC will be relegated to the dustbin because Plex will do just about everything XBMC could do and more.
no more need to run two media playback software for one media library.
This is where we want Plex to get to.

@Bop3162 said:
Lots of good discussion on this. I would like to see something similar to the “Seasons” level that’s in TV shows.
I’d also like to see grouping of multiple TV shows WITHOUT having to define a Season.
Guess what I’m really wanting is an OPTIONAL ability to group Movies and TV shows under whatever title you wish.
Example - you could group all James Bond movies, All Die-Hard movies, etc. You could group several TV shows WITHOUT defining them as belonging to a Season.

Discussion can take place all day on this subject because the way it’s implemented is a personal preference… BUT - Fact is, there’s no functionality within Plex to allow for overriding database organization with personally defined Hierarchal content grouping. I’ve got a collection of over 1000 movies and close to 1200 TV shows. This becomes a real issue for large collections.
I think the mistake has been they looked to make more of a Netflix instead of a transcoding replacement for XBMC.
Netflix is also a pain to find movies and you have to use search instead of browse or browse by genre to find what you want.
But most people with a home library don’t want a Netflix experience they want a full fledged playback system that can be easily browsed and categorized ac cording to their own methods of organization.

202

@AsphyxNYC said:
But the fact that something is a popular request does factor and should weigh more heavily since it does identify what the greatest problems of your current users are.
If this was just an issue that only affected the Android or iOS client it would be one thing. But it is a fundamental flaw that affects every client platform that Plex Supports.
I would say not having this feature is more of an inconvenience than a flaw. The fact that it will impact all clients is actually a downside in this case. To implement something like this would require work from all teams.

Instead of working on things like Premium Music (which most of us do not need since we have our own vast music library already,)
I’m not sure I would agree with that statement.

This is the number one issue with Plex for me at the moment. I am forced to only use it with my personal mobile devices because I know what movies are in my collection. XBMC is still required however for the rest of my family to find and enjoy that collection.
I utilize the sort title feature so all my movies in a collection are listed next to each other. That makes it pretty easy to find the movies I’m looking for.

203

I disagree it is a fatal flaw, one that stops me from using Plex as the first place to go to to find and browse for media. It should be the only media location in my house. But the people who live with me refuse to use it because they can’t take browsing through all the collections to find that one movie they haven’t seen yet.

Imagine the Music Section if it did not display via Artist and only displayed by Album name…
This is essentially what Movies does.
Sort by collection is fine to identify movies in a collection.
I have 20-30 Abbot and Costello movies, every movie Kubrick ever made, Every James Bond, and Godzilla.
Browsing is a pig F$#@!
Sorting is not a solution and certainly not an acceptable replacement.

What is the purpose of Premium Music as opposed to our own music collection?
I mean other than to have another tiered feature to spur Plex Pass buy ins?

In September it will be three years since this problem has been identified and mentioned.
It is not like this is something that requires a complete and total scrapping of the code to get.
Like I said half of it already exists and all that is needed is to change some fields and database queries to look for the collection data and create pages accordingly.

And this was very much a part of the display and play source code Plex started with from XBMC.

As far as I’m concerned it is a race between Plex and XBMC between who completes their project first…
Plex by adding proper display to their Movie selection or XBMC finally deciding to dd transcoding so things like Chromecast and mobile can use it as the central media repository.

I won’t hold my breath on either of the projects actually ever doing it.
If in 3 years Plex isn’t doing it then no amount of votes or popularity will ever get someone working on this…

And when a Media Server project does that will be the day I stop posting here and running their product.

204

@AsphyxNYC said:
I disagree it is a fatal flaw, one that stops me from using Plex as the first place to go to to find and browse for media. It should be the only media location in my house. But the people who live with me refuse to use it because they can’t take browsing through all the collections to find that one movie they haven’t seen yet.
I can’t make your users use Plex, but there are many ways to find a movie (browse, search, filter, sort), so I’m not seeing how having movies grouped in a collection would change anything.
Imagine the Music Section if it did not display via Artist and only displayed by Album name…
This is essentially what Movies does.
True but with music (or tv shows) you must have a grand parent (artist / tv show), parent (album / season), then the child (song / episode). For movies, there isn’t 3 levels. Collections would only make 2, so there is a fundamental difference in how this would need to work.
What is the purpose of Premium Music as opposed to our own music collection?
I mean other than to have another tiered feature to spur Plex Pass buy ins?
I’m not sure you understand what a Premium Music library is. This does not provide music. it is still your own music collection, but it allows for better matching and the option to use Plex Mix.
In September it will be three years since this problem has been identified and mentioned.
It is not like this is something that requires a complete and total scrapping of the code to get.
Like I said half of it already exists and all that is needed is to change some fields and database queries to look for the collection data and create pages accordingly.
See my answer above. It’s not quite so simple as you think.

205

Our opinion is that Browse is useless. So it is not being considered a method that is usable in a large collection.
Sure you can sort…You can sort Music too and yet there is still an Artist display to help narrow down the massive amounts of display data to make browsing for a specific song more manageable.

You identify Two tiers for Movies and Three for Music.
Collection is as much an Artist Tier as Artist is to Music. So there are three…We could one day have 50 Star Wars movies if Disney has it’s way and that means they will have more material to categorize and warrant a Tier than David Bowie has for Albums.

The fact that a particular movie may not have any other companions in the library is no different than if an Artist only had one Album. The movie is a member of it’s own collection that at anytime a sequel can be made.

So this could all be done easily if we just made the first tier page always point to a collection page where all collections are displayed that links to another page of all movies in that collection and from there click on any movie that will then display more detailed info plus Multiple cuts and Extras for that particular title.

In cases where there is only one member then only one movie is displayed on that second page. Far less inconvenient to make an extra click to get the details for those one offs than having to browse through a display of 50 Godzilla (I have Japan and US versions) movies just to get past the G section of an entire movie Library.

And we are not saying that users shouldn’t be able to use the display as it is currently…
All we are asking for is the same consideration to display based on Collection in the same way you can choose to sort music by album or artist.

Basically ALL movies are part of their own collection.
If the Movie Collection page handled them in that way then this would be an easy fix.
an extra click (and even that is dubious since you can always put a play button anywhere you want for each movie displayed on the second tier page) is far less intrusive than having to do 100-200 extra scrolls to get through a browse the way it is being done now.

The entire point of the display pages in Plex are to make it easy to find movies. If that was not important than we would all just use DLNA servers since how it is organized wouldn’t matter it just spits out a link to every file it finds and no client app would be needed in most cases. One of the reasons why Plex overtook and killed Twonky was due to the fact that Twonky didn’t have a slick interface to help you pick what you wanted to see.

So as far as I’m concerned this is a key goal of Plex and part of it’s mainline reason for development.
Transcoding being the main priority of course.
But if you can’t find the movie you want to have trans coded then what is the point at all?
Twonky did transcoding, didn’t require a client and paid as much attention to collections as Plex seems to do.

The code changes required are not as daunting as trying to scroll through a 20TB collection.
Simply create a collection page that the Browse page links to and then you are done.
Movies without a defined collection during scrape are given one (perhaps a numeric key that points to a table of collections as the collection id). Then the front page simply displays based on that collection table and when clicked the page would display all rows (movies) that have that collection ID

But this attitude that it isn’t important and doesn’t require attention or worse is too difficult just doesn’t fly for many of us who so desperately want to make Plex the one and total media server in our homes but can’t because it is far too hard to find things you want without having to sort, filter and do all these others things most 5-10 and 60-80 years old folks don’t understand at all.

At this point it almost makes sense for us to create a new library for every collection so that they might show up in recently added on the Home page and get a Collection display that way.

Plex needs that third Tier for movies and we are all very perplexed why they can’t seem to understand this or dismiss it as easily as you are trying to as a mere inconvenience.

As for Plus Music I understand what it is I just don’t understand why I need it.

I don’t but I DO need some way of browsing that doesn’t require me to scroll through 20TBs of movie titles in hopes of finding the one I want.

206

I’ve got a lifetime pass. I’ve totally bought into the whole PLEX ecosystem. I absolutely love it because it’s made accessing all my media so easy, and the best part is that I can share my media with friends. This is one of the huge draws for me; I have a lot of personal favorites and hard-to-find media on my server. I have a reputation among friends for having good taste in shows and movies, so PLEX is a great way for me to share my recommendations.

I think what it really boils down to for me is that while PLEX does a pretty great job of analyzing my media library and prettying it up in different sections (TV, Movies, Music), the analysis and matching isn’t enough. It’s only the first tier of what I’d like to do with my server.

I want CURATOR tools. I want easier ways of creating movie collections based on franchises and themes. I want to be able to create dynamic playlists that I can share with my friends. If I go on Netflix I can browse movies and shows by really interesting categories, like “foreign romantic dramas” or “raunchy stand-up specials;” I would love to be able to create these kinds of collections for my friends. Franchise-based collections are obviously also a great idea (Star Wars, Marvel, etc.).
If a friend of mine wants to dig in and browse my entire Movies library, that’s great. But I would love it if I could set up something like “The Summer Sci-fi Movie Festival” where they could just check out all of my sci-fi picks for the summer.

I feel like Libraries in PLEX are in a really good place now. I mean obviously there’s always room for improvement and new features and stuff like that. But I think that the next step for PLEX is building up the metadata tools for Libraries that will allow us to create and curate really great looking Collections that can be shared with all of our users.

207

I created a new feature request (complete with mock-ups) that shows a proposed approach to quickly get to movie collections from the main menu. With my approach, the user could sort a collection by name, release date etc. using the current interface.

Here is my formal feature request is here:

If you like it, please vote for it by clicking on the ‘Like’ button in that post.

208

Dale I wish you had added your post to this one…
We now have 4 posts (minimum) about collections sitting atop the Forum (and more further down) which is part of the problem here…
We keep making new posts and diluting the power of each thread.
357 Comments (Granted I have quite a few of those) in those 4 posts on a topic asked for and started in 2013.

If we added all the Votes (likes) related to Movie Collections in the top vote getters listing alone we would have 1028 votes that would put this feature into 3rd place on the top requested features.
(Granted some of those are double votes across the many requests being made and that would bring it down in the ranking)

209

@AsphyxNYC

I didn’t add it to the other collection feature requests because, as you can see if you look at it, I am not requesting collection customizations like others. I’m requesting a quick link from the main menu to the collection functionality that already exists. I’m also requesting (as you will see in the link) the same kind of quick links be optionally available across all the various relevant ‘filter’ types - beyond just collections - genres being the most important to me. My request is a complement to other requests - not a duplication. I also didn’t want to hijack another request with something the originating requester may not find important.

Respectfully, I think the Plex developers are sophisticated enough to look beyond simple vote counts. As you have seen in the past they often never implement features widely requested and implement others that get few votes. My request is something that could be implemented pretty quickly within their current framework. I think this sets it apart
from the complex request to totally rewrite how collections are handled as others want - as worthy as those suggestions are.

I took a lot of effort to write the formal feature request and create all the mock-ups. I would ask that you please respond to the merit of my request in the forums. Would you like it or not? If so please vote yes. If not please explain why.

Thanks.

210

I already liked your post Dale…
I do think it would partially solve the problem many have with the current system of doing things,
But the key step to getting what we want is to separate Collection info from the Tags system and put it into it’s own table in the database.
Then during scrape, If collection data is found a lookup is performed to see if that collection exists and what ID it has. If it doesn’t exist in the table or there is no collection info for that title then Plex would add the collection data to that table and give it an ID.

Then you can browse by collection and still see all the media as well. Only it is far easier to build a display page as you are only querying the Collection table.

The reason why people think this is so complicated is because they seem to want to do the flattening in the display code when the obvious place to do this is via the addition of a Collection table during scrape.

211

I’m just amazed this is still not a feature… this seems like pretty low hanging fruit.

212

I voted for this. Most missing feature for me.

213

Here is why the flattening of Collections is desperately needed…Sure you can filter for Collections but what if the movie you want to browse for is NOT part of a collection?
I challenge anyone who thinks the current system works to answer how to solve the following scenario.

I have a Plex Server with 20TBs of content…
Majority of that content is movies that are part of a collection.
About 200 are not…
Tell me the Plex solution to NOT SEE movies that are part of a collection so someone can just browse the one offs without having to page through every movie because all collections are listed as one offs.

Unfortunately Dale’s solution does not solve this fundamental problem.
To find these one offs you have to know it is part of the library.
Which makes the BROWSE function quite useless.

As far as I can see there is really only two ways to solve this fundamental problem…
List every movie (even one offs) as part of a collection (means creating a collection for each title regardless of if other members may exist) so when you filter by collection you get a single listing for each collection that can be browsed…OR
Flatten the Collections to a single Icon on the Browse page to get essentially the same result.

Both will require Plex to create a table of collections that can be queried to make the page needed.

214

@AsphyxNYC said:
Here is why the flattening of Collections is desperately needed…Sure you can filter for Collections but what if the movie you want to browse for is NOT part of a collection?
I challenge anyone who thinks the current system works to answer how to solve the following scenario.

I have a Plex Server with 20TBs of content…
Majority of that content is movies that are part of a collection.
About 200 are not…
Tell me the Plex solution to NOT SEE movies that are part of a collection so someone can just browse the one offs without having to page through every movie because all collections are listed as one offs.

Unfortunately Dale’s solution does not solve this fundamental problem.
To find these one offs you have to know it is part of the library.
Which makes the BROWSE function quite useless.

As far as I can see there is really only two ways to solve this fundamental problem…
List every movie (even one offs) as part of a collection (means creating a collection for each title regardless of if other members may exist) so when you filter by collection you get a single listing for each collection that can be browsed…OR
Flatten the Collections to a single Icon on the Browse page to get essentially the same result.

Both will require Plex to create a table of collections that can be queried to make the page needed.

Can you explain how it is possible to have thousands of movies as part of a collection (as would be the case with 20 TB of movies)?

My suggestion is for people with normal movie libraries - which would be the vast majority of users - with normal collections - typically two to 10 movies in a collection. I can’t comprehend how thousands of movies could be part of a ‘collection’. My suggestion for you is to create one library for your 200 movies that are not part of your multi-thousand movie collection. That way people need only search that library (and, yes, searches should be limited to the library you are currently in). I have a set up like that for kids movies. I put all my kids movies in one library and all my (many more) movies in another. That way my kids can easily find the movies they want in the smaller library. It bugs me now that searches go across libraries. I have some 30,000 home movies (10 seconds to 5 minutes in length) of my kids growing up. I hate, hate, hate, when I search for a hollywood movie in my ‘movies’ collection that plex still mixes in similarly named home movies. That’s a fundamental design defect in my opinion. If I wanted to search across all libraries this should only happen if I search from the Plex home screen. If I’m in a library that is the only thing that should be searched when I’m searching.

215

Yep…Godzilla collection (Japanese AND English Versions). James Bond, ShawBros, Mel Brooks Collection, Stanley Kubrick Collection, Scorsese Collection…Need more examples? Times that by as many collections as you can fit in 20 TB of hard drive space…

I get what you are saying but is this a media server or just a consumer hobby server that shouldn’t be used by SERIOUS Media Enthusiasts?

I have Multiple HTPC that don’t seem to have any problem doing what we ask.
If all I wanted was to group and see collections I would simply Filter them the way plex provides…

Since you could not give me a way to find one of those movies without making a COLLECTION COLLECTION in Plex (which means do the plex dance when I want to move a one off into a Collection) I rest my case here…

Seeing Collections as a flat list is easy!
Just set the filter to COLLECTION.

Find something not in a collection on a browse listing with 20 TBs of Movies being listed.
Thats the challenge here!

216

I use Playlists for all my “Box Sets”. Works really great.

217

@AsphyxNYC said:
Yep…Godzilla collection (Japanese AND English Versions). James Bond, ShawBros, Mel Brooks Collection, Stanley Kubrick Collection, Scorsese Collection…Need more examples? Times that by as many collections as you can fit in 20 TB of hard drive space…

I get what you are saying but is this a media server or just a consumer hobby server that shouldn’t be used by SERIOUS Media Enthusiasts?

I have Multiple HTPC that don’t seem to have any problem doing what we ask.
If all I wanted was to group and see collections I would simply Filter them the way plex provides…

Since you could not give me a way to find one of those movies without making a COLLECTION COLLECTION in Plex (which means do the plex dance when I want to move a one off into a Collection) I rest my case here…

Seeing Collections as a flat list is easy!
Just set the filter to COLLECTION.

Find something not in a collection on a browse listing with 20 TBs of Movies being listed.
Thats the challenge here!

OK, I misread what you wrote above. I thought you had one single collection that had almost 20 TB in it. You have 20 TB full of probably hundreds/thousands of collections. Got it. Still don’t see your problem. If you KNOW the movie you want you don’t have to browse through the list, just type the first few letters. Know the genre, search by genre. Know the year, search the year. Know the actor, search by actor. All these methods will bring you a short list very quickly. All you seem to want is a collection of movies NOT in a collection … is that right? So you can scroll through those 200 movies? Just create a collection called “OTHER” or “MISC” or something like that and browse that collection. It’s pretty darn easy to create your own collection. If you gave me your list of 200 movies I could make a MISC collection in about an hour or two. Then you are done. You are right that my proposed solution would not automate the creation of a ‘no-collection’ collection. Never thought I’d ever want that and really don’t see the need for it given the dozens of ways of searching the library - not to mention creating a separate library just for them as I suggested.

218

My problem with the flat instead of a easy drill down grouped collection method = I sometimes don’t remember the title of a movie or two in a collection, and they don’t always line up alphabetically.
The "Nolan’ Batmans for example.
I can almost always remember “Dark Knight” is in the title of the 2nd and 3rd movies. (The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises)
So I can browse to those using search and or alphabet quick letters.
But for the life of me I can’t ever remember what the first one is named when I want to watch it (Batman Begins).
I’d be happy if my 90s Batman’s (as horrible yet oddly corny fun as they were) and the Nolan Batmans and any other Batman movie were just grouped in a single icon I clicked to drill down named “Batman”. I’d then figure out what’s what from there.

219

The problem is Dale I want to find one of the movies that are NOT in a collection but have to browse through EVERY MOVIE even those in the collections to find that one that isn’t!

By Flattening the Collections on the Browse page to just one I reduce the number of Icons to scroll through from 1000 to about 100!

This is why Collections need to be Flattened not because you can’t tell what is in a Collection but you can’t find something that isn’t in one when you browse every movie on the server unless you know what movie you want to see in the first place…And if you know that then you wouldn’t use the browse page you would use the Search!

Browse is meant to display the titles for people who don’t what is in the library!
Most don’t want to see every James Bond movie displayed just one Icon that says James Bond so you can skip ALL james bond movies during browse in the space of a single Icon slot.

The way Collections are (NOT) Handled affects more than just finding movies in a collection.
It affects those that are not a member of a collection as well because they get lost is the sea of icons created by the browse page.

220

@JamminR said:
My problem with the flat instead of a easy drill down grouped collection method = I sometimes don’t remember the title of a movie or two in a collection, and they don’t always line up alphabetically.
The "Nolan’ Batmans for example.
I can almost always remember “Dark Knight” is in the title of the 2nd and 3rd movies. (The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises)
So I can browse to those using search and or alphabet quick letters.
But for the life of me I can’t ever remember what the first one is named when I want to watch it (Batman Begins).
I’d be happy if my 90s Batman’s (as horrible yet oddly corny fun as they were) and the Nolan Batmans and any other Batman movie were just grouped in a single icon I clicked to drill down named “Batman”. I’d then figure out what’s what from there.

This is the second issue…
It doesn’t even group the movies based on Collection data in the Browse page Unless you manually set the Sort Title for each movie.
At minimum it should set the Sort Title based on if Collection data exists and which order they were released as a member of that collection.

Then all your Nolan Batmans would appear right next to each other because they would have the Sort Title set to Dark Knight 1, Dark Knight 2 Dark Knight 3…

Still wouldn’t solve my issue of being able to find a movie that isn’t in a collection and not knowing what movies are available to search.

When someone wants to find a movie to watch they have to browse on an HTPC to see what is available and then do a search in the Plex app to get to it without scrolling through 1000 pages of Movie Icons.