[implemented] Movie Collections

Feature Suggestions
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@AsphyxNYC said:
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.

AGAIN, I don’t understand your problem. Create a “Miscellaneous” collection. Put all the movies you watch that aren’t in another collection in that collection and then load up that collection whenever you want to browse your miscellaneous movies. Or put the non-collection movies in a separate library and be done with it. What seems to you to be a tremendous problem is solvable in perhaps one hour or less effort to create a Miscellaneous colleciton or a separate library. I agree it would ‘be nice’ to also have the kind of view you want, but I can’t imagine very many people wanting it. I have hundreds of movies (if not over 1000) that are not in collections yet I have no problem identifying the movies I want to watch given the dozens of ways of finding movies already built in to Plex.

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

Yep its enough after waiting for 3 or 4 years to make me cancel my Plex Pass. Especially having discovered how they can (if you so choose) be made automatically in Emby.
Automated collections created for Iron Man films, Captain America, Thor and all the other linked marvel movies with no input whatsoever…
Then create a collection of those collections and you immediately have a Marvel weekend MashUp all put automatically in the correct chronological order. Job done in about 20 seconds .
Or the Plex way… Create playlists, making sure you know what order you add entries for the playlist.
Don’t call it a playlist… call it a collection. You now have a collection. Wow!!
Then just do the several clicks required if you are using a Roku, PMP or similar… or just click the collections page on the front page OR any of your media section pages on Emby.

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Dale what part of SOMEONE wants to find what movies are on the server that are MAYBE are NOT part of a collection and how they can avoid all the collection selections on the browse page?

How does a playlist help them find a movie they may not have seen but I have?
You seem to think I am the only person viewing movies in Plex when the truth is I never use Plex myself as I have HTPCs which do a much better job than plex does in it’s Movie Display.

You got 20 movies your way works great!
When you get to over 300 movies it sucks and doesn’t makes the Browse for movie page USELESS!

You are suggesting either I create a library just for collections which means my guests have to browse TWO libraries to find something they haven’t seen or create a playlist for just movies that have no Collection?

You are being ridiculous in your suggested solutions.

There is only one solution…Have Plex do what most every other media server/player does and flatten collections properly or at least provide the proper filters to exclude collections if so desired.

Please tell me how any of your suggestions will allow me to EXCLUDE or reduce the number of titles that display on the Browse page?
All you are doing is asking me to make 20 Browse pages which is ridiculous.
Plex should be handling this…
And all it takes is creating ONE TABLE with Two Columns (ColID and ColTitle) in the database and using that to build the browse page.
Then each movie scrapped is the collection tag is empty Plex creates a new collection and id in that table named after the Movie.

DONE!

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@AsphyxNYC said:
Dale what part of SOMEONE wants to find what movies are on the server that are MAYBE are NOT part of a collection and how they can avoid all the collection selections on the browse page?

What ‘browser page’. Perhaps we need to step back. What client are you using to view Plex content. I use the 2 Rokus, three iPhones, an Android Tablet and two iPads. I don’t view collections on a ‘browser page’. I view my collections from the collections filter when looking at my movie library on any of these devices. How are you accessing/viewing the default auto/generated Plex collections now. Perhaps if I understood how you use it I could understand better what you are saying.

@AsphyxNYC said:
How does a playlist help them find a movie they may not have seen but I have?

I’m not sure why you are asking about playlists here. We are talking about the Plex Collections - the built-in collection feature which is a distinctly DIFFERENT function from Plex playlists.

[Sept 8 UPDATE: Oops, I did accidently use the term ‘playlist’ in my first Sept 7 post on the prior page. I meant suggesting creating a collection titled “Miscellaneous” not a playlist with that name. I have consistently used the term collection after that errant post. Sorry for the confusion.

If you meant how does a ‘collection’ help someone find a movie they may not have seen, and you are referring to the Miscellaneous collection I suggested, the user would scrolls up and down (or left and right as the case may be) the (in your case) 200 movies in the Miscellaneous collection. Admittedly, the Miscellaneous collection would be listed along with all the other collections. You could call it @Miscellaneous if you want it to appear at the top of the collections list to make it easier to find.

Same situation if they used a separate library. They would click on the library and scroll up and down (or left and right). I am presuming YOU are the user scrolling this list and not some stranger to your house. I don’t really understand why you want to separate out the movies that are not in collections from those that are but I thought that’s what you wanted so I made the two suggestions I made to achieve that goal. Perhaps that’s not what you want and I misunderstood, again.

Though I still don’t know what device you are viewing in, I’m ‘guessing’ what you really want is one view of all your movies where any movie that’s in a collection is in a group on the same page as all the movies not in a collection so as you are scrolling through you would see, for example, an icon for ‘The Apartment’ (a solo movie) next to, for example, an icon for ‘Aliens’ which if clicked on would show you the 5 or 6 movies in the Aliens series. Is that what you have in mind?

If that’s what you are after, I get it, that would be a nice way of viewing things if you have a movie database around 500 movies. Maybe as many as 1000. I personally wouldn’t use it as my library is too huge for that to be an effective movie-picking method. I probably have over a thousand plus movies NOT in a collection and another thousand plus in collections. Doing what I think you want here would still result in an unwieldy menu to scroll around in to view available movies.

@AsphyxNYC said:
You seem to think I am the only person viewing movies in Plex when the truth is I never use Plex myself as I have HTPCs which do a much better job than plex does in it’s Movie Display.

The above REALLY confuses me, if you don’t use Plex, why are you here? Why are we having this discussion? Why do you care? Why don’t you just use the method that works for you?

@AsphyxNYC said:
You got 20 movies your way works great!
When you get to over 300 movies it sucks and doesn’t makes the Browse for movie page USELESS!

I have over 2600 movies at the moment and Plex is AWESOME. You are right that I never view movies alphabetically. That would be crazy. But I DO view by the Plex auto-generated collection list all the time when I want to view movies in a collection. But I also search by genre. If I’m in a mood for film-noir I look at my film-noir genre (again auto-generated by Plex). If I want Hitchcock, I filter my movies by Hitchcock and see all his movies. If I want to view movies I have not yet seen I filter by movies I haven’t seen and then genre/actor/director etc. I also keep a separate Playlist of moives ‘just for me’ that I’m keen to watch in the next few months. I add to it and remove movies from it routinly. I have a separate library for kids movies just for my kids to watch. I have a constantly changing ‘playlist’ for my wife so she can easily find the stuff I know she wants to watch.

All, in all there are dozens of very effective ways of surfacing movies in my growing collection. At no time would I ever scroll through the whole alphabetical list (whether collections were flattened within or not).

@AsphyxNYC said:
You are suggesting either I create a library just for collections which means my guests have to browse TWO libraries to find something they haven’t seen or create a playlist for just movies that have no Collection?

To be clear, my suggestion was for YOU, not for your guests. I thought YOU, personally, wanted an easy way to identify your non-collection movies. As I wrote above, I’m starting to think you just want them mixed in with your collections (ie: the Apartment/Aliens example above). Your way may be useful if you have a small library (under 500), but wouldn’t be useful in my world. And, NO, I wasn’t suggesting a library for collections. I was suggesting an alternative way of getting what I thought you wanted - a list of movies NOT in a collection). A library for them made sense given what I thought you wanted. Since I’m gathering that’s not what you want, I retract that suggestion. Again, just trying to be helpful here. Not trying to anger you as I seem to have done.

I host movie nights at my home when friends come over and we watch movies. They never take control. I do. I’ve never had a scenario where guests tried to use my Plex other than demoing it for them. So, their ease of use is never relevant to me. I can understand if your house guests do use your Plex without your being there to help them that a simple list with flattened collections would be useful for them. But, again, that will only work up to a certain number of movies but after that it would be kind of a huge seemingly never-ending scroll even with your structure.

@AsphyxNYC said:
You are being ridiculous in your suggested solutions.

Not trying to be ridiculous. Trying to help with what I understood you were trying to achieve.

@AsphyxNYC said:
There is only one solution…Have Plex do what most every other media server/player does and flatten collections properly or at least provide the proper filters to exclude collections if so desired.

Again, your idea (as I understand it - see Apartment/Aliens discussion above) would not be helpful beyond 500 or so movies (in my opinion). Your continuing to say you want to ‘filter-out’ collections, was what lead to my suggestion of creating a separate library where movies not in collections existed or a separate manually made collection of movies not in a collection - each achieving what you seem to want when you keep asking to exclude collections. So I guess I’m still confused as to what you are trying to achieve.

@AsphyxNYC said:
Please tell me how any of your suggestions will allow me to EXCLUDE or reduce the number of titles that display on the Browse page?

Again, what browser page? Are you viewing your movies on a laptop and casting them to a TV with Chromecast or something?

I don’t understand how you can’t understand that if you have separate library or a ‘Miscellaneous’ collection, either of which contain only the 200 or so movies that are not otherwise part of another collection, that having filtered out those 200 from your 1000, that would not result in a reduction of ‘titles that display’. You would only be looking at 200 instead of 1000 (or whatever you have in your collection). Last I checked 200 is less than 1000. The 800 NOT in the Miscellaneous collection or library would be EXCLUDED from the greater list of all your movies. What am I missing?

@AsphyxNYC said:
All you are doing is asking me to make 20 Browse pages which is ridiculous.
Plex should be handling this…
And all it takes is creating ONE TABLE with Two Columns (ColID and ColTitle) in the database and using that to build the browse page.
Then each movie scrapped is the collection tag is empty Plex creates a new collection and id in that table named after the Movie.

DONE!

Again, what browser page? I wasn’t suggesting you create any browser pages, 20 or othewise. I was suggesting you create EITHER 1 new Collection OR 1 new Playlist. Plex DOES do all the rest. Plex already automatically creates all my collections. All my Star Wars are already in a collection. I didn’t do that, Plex did.

Are you currently using the built in Collection feature within Plex? Plex already creates about 80 collections for me without my doing a thing? I scroll up and down that list of collections then click on a collection to see the movies within. Is this not happening for you? I do agree that we need an easier way to surface the collections. Hence the mockups I made in my suggestion (link below). Completely agree with that. Here’s my preferred interim collection world:

https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1225838

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You keep thinking I’m looking for something in a collection Dale…
Which is why you keep giving bad solutions to the problem…You obviously are the only one who uses your library! Good for you! I have about 20 people who come over and/or share my library here…
They can’t find new movies I added since the last time they looked unless they remain in the recently added section! This may work for you but not for me!

YOU DON’T BROWSE!!!
You Search!

Great for you not for my guests!
I know full well what movies have been added by me to my Library!
Guests who come over and want to see a Movie do NOT!
They simply want to see a movie from my vast collection they haven’t seen yet.
Sure they search if they were in the mood for one type of Movie and they would never see a Movie they would rather see more because they did a search not a browse of the collection.

Go to your browse page (master Movie Collection) and with no filters being used find a movie that is NOT part of a collection without having to wade through collection icons…
Can you do it? NO!

Why did I mention playlists? Because that was your suggestion…
And you repeated it in your last post!

I don’t want playlists for movies that are NOT part of a collection thats just dumb!
I don’t want to make a separate library just for collections cause again that is just dumb!
They are all movies and should be in the Movie Library ONE Movie Library not 100!

And no I couldn’t even do that if I wanted because My library is well organized and made for far better Media Player systems than Plex…
I’m not going to ruin a properly formatted Library files system because some program can’t deal with it properly!

I challenge you to have someone come over to your house and find a movie browsing through your 3500 movies and time them on how long it takes to get through from A - Z…

If it takes 30 Minutes then that is too long and that browse page is not conducive to proper browsing.

I’ll remind you again the problem isn’t that you can’t find collections it is that you can’t find title NOT IN A COLLECTION that are getting lost in the 1000s of movies that are!

There is no filter to remove collections is there?
If there is tell me and I’ll shut up!

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I have like 3k movies and browse alphabetically all the time, even just being able to manually assign them into a collection so they are not scattered through my alphabetical list would be awesome.

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@quakemarine20 said:
I have like 3k movies and browse alphabetically all the time, even just being able to manually assign them into a collection so they are not scattered through my alphabetical list would be awesome.

You can. Wwhen viewing your library through a web browser, for any movie you want in a paticular collection:

  • Click the pencil icon on the movie icon :
  • Click the “Tags” option
  • Click on the 'Collections" field
  • Type the name of the collection you want to add it to.
  • If the collection doesn’t exist yet, the first time you do this will create it.
  • Thereafter select your existing collection name when adding the 2nd, 3rd etc. movie to that collection.

In case this isn’t clear, If you use the Plex Movie agent, your movies will already automatically be assigned into their respective collections. When wanting to view the new colleciton you created or any collection you add movies into,

  • Click on your movie library
  • Make sure “All” is selected at the top
  • Click on “New Filter”
  • Click “Collections”

Voila, there are all your movie collections including any you create on your own…

Be sure the “Use Collection info from the Movie Database” checkbox is checked in the Plex Movie Agents settings screen in order for Plex to automatically generate your collections. YOu may need to click on the “Update Library” option if this is your first time turning on the collections option in this agent.

…Cheers.

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@AsphyxNYC said:
You keep thinking I’m looking for something in a collection Dale…
Which is why you keep giving bad solutions to the problem…You obviously are the only one who uses your library! Good for you! I have about 20 people who come over and/or share my library here…
They can’t find new movies I added since the last time they looked unless they remain in the recently added section! This may work for you but not for me!

Do you live in a dorm? Or do you run a small hotel? You must understand that your use case is unique. I can’t imagine most Plex users having 20 people showing up to their bedrooms and living rooms to watch movies unattended. But, I get it, you want the ability for 20 people to be able to use your system and easily browse through all the movies in your library that are NOT in a collection. Is that correct?

You still haven’t told me what client these 20 people will/would be using? Roku, iPad, TiVo, what? And I still don’t know the size of your movie database. Until I know that I’m not much help. Also, please tell me how many movies you have and how many of those are in collections.

For reasons discussed below, I can’t imagine your 20 friends being happy with your proposed solution either.

@AsphyxNYC said:

YOU DON’T BROWSE!!!
You Search!

Great for you not for my guests!
I know full well what movies have been added by me to my Library!
Guests who come over and want to see a Movie do NOT!
They simply want to see a movie from my vast collection they haven’t seen yet.
Sure they search if they were in the mood for one type of Movie and they would never see a Movie they would rather see more because they did a search not a browse of the collection.

Go to your browse page (master Movie Collection) and with no filters being used find a movie that is NOT part of a collection without having to wade through collection icons…
Can you do it? NO!

True that. They couldn’t.

@AsphyxNYC said:
Why did I mention playlists? Because that was your suggestion…
And you repeated it in your last post!

OK, I think I found the source of part of our mutual confusion. In my first Sept 6 post I accidentally used the term playlist when I meant ‘collection’. GRRRR. I since updated that post to use the term ‘collection’ where I intended it and I updated the later Sept 6 post to point out that error too. Sorry

Let me be clear. At no time did I intend to suggest the use of playlists for your situation. I did mention that using playlists is one of many many ways that I and others find movies as I was trying to understand your use case. But it wasn’t a suggested solution for you. Frankly, I didn’t understand your 20 friend situation until now. I find it difficult to imagine someone in your situation, but it is what it is. Let’s continue.

I had specifically only intended to recommend (as you see elsewhere above), either:

  1. the creation of a separate library to house your non-collection movies that your 20 guests could scan up and down through; OR
  2. the creation of a “Miscellaneous” collection where you would put all those non-collection movies for your friends to browse through.

Given the Plex interface the 1st suggestion would be best for your friend context as the collections menus are much harder to find than a library. You could have a Library called, for example, “Movies for Friends” containing the movies not in collections. Your own Movie library would include everything, movies in collections and movies not in collections. You wouldn’t need to browse two libraries. You’d see all your stuff in one place.

ALL THE ABOVE SAID, neither solution would work for large libraries like mine (see discussion below). I thought at one point you said your movie collection was around 1,000 movies (though below you use the 3500 number). At another point you mention a 20 TB movie collection which could be 5000 or more movies. I’m not sure what your situation is.

My apologies for the errant use of the term playlist in the first June 6 post when I meant colleciton.

@AsphyxNYC said:
I don’t want playlists for movies that are NOT part of a collection thats just dumb!

Again, sorry, I didn’t intend to recommend a playlist for this. I meant to recommend a separate "Misc’ collection for movies not in a collection. I didn’t think it was dumb (if your library is around the 500 movies level or maybe even up to 1000 if more than half your movies are in collections). At the time I recommended the "misc’ collection suggestion, I thought it was just you using your library - not 20 friends. The library idea would be better for the 20 friends situation. But I agree for 1000 or more movies neither idea wold be a good idea.

AsphyxNYC said:

I don’t want to make a separate library just for collections cause again that is just dumb!

Depends on the size of your library. Care to tell me how big it is and how many of those movies are in collections.

@AsphyxNYC said:
They are all movies and should be in the Movie Library ONE Movie Library not 100!

I never recommended 100 libraries. I recommended 2. One “Movies for Friends” and one “Movies” for you. The first would include the subset of movies not otherwise in collections, the 2nd would include ALL your movies.

I have two movie libraries in my Plex set up. One called “Kids Movies” and one called Movies. In the Kids movies library I have about 80 movies appropriate for my kids. My “Movies” library includes ALL my movies including the kid movies. I was suggesting a similar set up.

@AsphyxNYC said:
And no I couldn’t even do that if I wanted because My library is well organized and made for far better Media Player systems than Plex…

Which brings me to the question I asked above … so why are you here? If you are so adamant that you have a better solution, why are you here complaining about something you don’t use and have no intention of using? Why don’t you use the better solution for you and be done with it?

@AsphyxNYC said:
I’m not going to ruin a properly formatted Library files system because some program can’t deal with it properly!

OK. You had a specific use case that, in my estimation, 99.99% of Plex users would never need. I was trying to suggest how you could achieve your goal using Plex, when I thought the solution was for you alone - not a group of friends - and when I thought your library was 1000 or less movies. Admittedly it would require you separating your movies in to two different folders in order to create the two libraries.

Again, if Plex is so bad, and can’t do what you want, and you have another solution that does, why are you here?

@AsphyxNYC said:
I challenge you to have someone come over to your house and find a movie browsing through your 3500 movies and time them on how long it takes to get through from A - Z…

Here’s where I’m confused. Do you have 3500 movies or 1,000? or what? Until I know this I can’t really help you. The solution you propose would probably work for up to 500 movies. Beyond that your solution becomes less and less useful to the point of being not useful at all - as I discuss in the next two paragraphs.

I am a movie collection nut. When I buy a movie in any series/collection I usually try to acquire the entire series/collection if available. All that to say I think I have a pretty normal ratio of movies in collections to movies not in collections. If anything I probably have a higher than average percentage of movies in collections than not.

As of this second I have exactly 2633 movies. I used the Plex collection filter to count exactly how many movies I have in collections. As of this minute I have exactly 671 movies in collections. That means I have 1962 movies that are NOT in collections. If Plex could achieve your holy-grail and easily and quickly show a list of just those 1962 movies (not in collections) to your friends, an A-Z scroll would probably take an hour or more. Just guessing at that. How does showing 1962 ONLY non-collection movies help your friends quickly find movies if the only method they use to find movies is to scroll through an A-Z list. Seriously? How does your solution work beyond maybe 500 movies? That is unless you have some seriously skewed collection to non-collection ratio where only a tiny fraction of all your movies are not in collections? Or you have a smallish (sub 1000) set of movies.

@AsphyxNYC said:
If it takes 30 Minutes then that is too long and that browse page is not conducive to proper browsing.

Couldn’t agree more. With your proposed solution it would take your friends MUCH longer than 30 minutes to scroll through a list of my non-collection movies.

@AsphyxNYC said:
I’ll remind you again the problem isn’t that you can’t find collections it is that you can’t find title NOT IN A COLLECTION that are getting lost in the 1000s of movies that are!

There is no filter to remove collections is there?
If there is tell me and I’ll shut up!

Nope, there isn’t. And, as I point out above, even if there was your friends would still be scrolling forever if there was. Or maybe you have a much different ratio of movies in collections to movies not in collections. Even still, why wouldn’t your friends also want to see the movies in your collections?

Please try to stay civil. I’ve spent over 3 yours of my life so far trying to help you. I don’t know why your responses are being so hostile.

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@DaleDietrich said:

Do you live in a dorm? Or do you run a small hotel? You must understand that your use case is unique. I can’t imagine most Plex users having 20 people showing up to their bedrooms and living rooms to watch movies unattended. But, I get it, you want the ability for 20 people to be able to use your system and easily browse through all the movies in your library that are NOT in a collection. Is that correct?

No Dale I have 20 Friends that come over to watch movies at my house and at various times stay for a weekend and overnight. None of which know what movies I may have added and in most cases already know and have scrolled through the 1000s of movies that are part of collections yet have to wallow through them to find a one off they would like to see.

You still haven’t told me what client these 20 people will/would be using? Roku, iPad, TiVo, what? And I still don’t know the size of your movie database. Until I know that I’m not much help. Also, please tell me how many movies you have and how many of those are in collections.

For reasons discussed below, I can’t imagine your 20 friends being happy with your proposed solution either.

They would be much happier scrolling through 3000 Icons then they are trying to scroll through 6000!

@AsphyxNYC said:
Go to your browse page (master Movie Collection) and with no filters being used find a movie that is NOT part of a collection without having to wade through collection icons…
Can you do it? NO!

True that. They couldn’t.

AND THIS IS A PROBLEM!

OK, I think I found the source of part of our mutual confusion. In my first Sept 6 post I accidentally used the term playlist when I meant ‘collection’. GRRRR. I since updated that post to use the term ‘collection’ where I intended it and I updated the later Sept 6 post to point out that error too. Sorry

So I need to make a Collection of Collections? Or A Collection for every Collections? WHich means your suggestion is to have 500 Movie Collections one for each collection? Or one Collection just for collection which is currently impossible due to the fact that he way Plex sets up Folder Assignment it can not EXCLUDE the Collection folders from the rest of the One offs!
SO that solution fails miserably as well Plex won’t even let me do that!

  1. the creation of a separate library to house your non-collection movies that your 20 guests could scan up and down through; OR
  2. the creation of a “Miscellaneous” collection where you would put all those non-collection movies for your friends to browse through.

Again Plex won’t allow this they are all in the same master folder as they should be!
Movies
…Movie Title (for One off)
…Movie Collection
…Movie Title

This works in XBMC and for every other Media Server that exists! Not what you suggest!

ALL THE ABOVE SAID, neither solution would work for large libraries like mine (see discussion below). I thought at one point you said your movie collection was around 1,000 movies (though below you use the 3500 number). At another point you mention a 20 TB movie collection which could be 5000 or more movies. I’m not sure what your situation is.

I never said I only had 1000 movies…I probably am more in the range of 6000 with half to 3/4s of them part of a collection.

I never recommended 100 libraries. I recommended 2. One “Movies for Friends” and one “Movies” for you. The first would include the subset of movies not otherwise in collections, the 2nd would include ALL your movies.

My library is movies for MY HOUSE! I am not going to break it up I would rather stop using Plex entirely before I ruin my Library and Filesystem to get around missing or badly implemented code!

I have two movie libraries in my Plex set up. One called “Kids Movies” and one called Movies. In the Kids movies library I have about 80 movies appropriate for my kids. My “Movies” library includes ALL my movies including the kid movies. I was suggesting a similar set up.

So I guess you are used to spreading your library out all over the place and creating a mess due to the fact that the media server you use doesn’t support what it should like Parental Controls.

@AsphyxNYC said:
And no I couldn’t even do that if I wanted because My library is well organized and made for far better Media Player systems than Plex…

Which brings me to the question I asked above … so why are you here? If you are so adamant that you have a better solution, why are you here complaining about something you don’t use and have no intention of using? Why don’t you use the better solution for you and be done with it?
I only run Plex for Mobile Devices and TVs that have no HTPC connected such as in my Guest Bedrooms!
Guess you missed that part when I mentioned it earlier.
If not for those Guests I wouldn’t run Plex at all! I don’t need it I have HTPCs in my Office, Theater and Master Bedroom…And that won’t be changing anytime soon because they do what Plex can’t seem to figure out 3 years after it was requested!

@AsphyxNYC said:
I’m not going to ruin a properly formatted Library files system because some program can’t deal with it properly!

OK. You had a specific use case that, in my estimation, 99.99% of Plex users would never need. I was trying to suggest how you could achieve your goal using Plex, when I thought the solution was for you alone - not a group of friends - and when I thought your library was 1000 or less movies. Admittedly it would require you separating your movies in to two different folders in order to create the two libraries.

Oh please stop with the ridiculous Most users would never need this…YOU NEED IT you just don’t know it yet because your library hasn’t grown enough yet.
You already are doing what you propose because Plex doesn’t have parental Controls.

As of this second I have exactly 2633 movies. I used the Plex collection filter to count exactly how many movies I have in collections. As of this minute I have exactly 671 movies in collections. That means I have 1962 movies that are NOT in collections. If Plex could achieve your holy-grail and easily and quickly show a list of just those 1962 movies (not in collections) to your friends, an A-Z scroll would probably take an hour or more. Just guessing at that. How does showing 1962 ONLY non-collection movies help your friends quickly find movies if the only method they use to find movies is to scroll through an A-Z list. Seriously? How does your solution work beyond maybe 500 movies? That is unless you have some seriously skewed collection to non-collection ratio where only a tiny fraction of all your movies are not in collections? Or you have a smallish (sub 1000) set of movies.

So I have roughly 3 times as many movies as you do…

@AsphyxNYC said:
If it takes 30 Minutes then that is too long and that browse page is not conducive to proper browsing.

Couldn’t agree more. With your proposed solution it would take your friends MUCH longer than 30 minutes to scroll through a list of my non-collection movies.

How long would it take them if your Collection movies were included in the same “MOVIE” Library like they should be since they are all movies?

There is no filter to remove collections is there?
If there is tell me and I’ll shut up!

** Nope, there isn’t**. And, as I point out above, even if there was your friends would still be scrolling forever if there was. Or maybe you have a much different ratio of movies in collections to movies not in collections. Even still, why wouldn’t your friends also want to see the movies in your collections?

Because they saw all those movies the last time they came over and there is no way to filter them out to find all the other movies they may have missed during the last browse because after 30 minutes they only got to M in the Listing!

Browsing for Movies in XBMC take all of 10 Minutes at most and that’s A - Z…Why?
Because XBMC Flattens collections PROPERLY without having to create 20 different sections of movies just to make navigation easy!

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Not sure why I am continuing given your continued hostile posts but …

@AsphyxNYC said:

…I probably am more in the range of 6000 with half to 3/4s of them part of a collection.

So, let’s round that out and say you have about 4000ish movies in collections and 2000ish movies not in collections. As I NOW understand it your guests, for some reason, have no desire to see any of the movies in your collections of 4000ish movies. OK? They ONLY want to access the 2000ish non-collection movies. And you believe, that if they could EASILY access ONLY those 2000ish movies alphabetically, they could scan through them in 10 min.

Fine. Again, as much as you don’t like to hear it - I believe this to be AN EXTREMELY RARE USE CASE. If it wasn’t such a rare case don’t you think other Plex users would be rallying around your suggestions here? I’m not seeing that.

@AsphyxNYC said:

Because they saw all those movies the last time they came over and there is no way to filter them out to find all the other movies they may have missed during the last browse because after 30 minutes they only got to M in the Listing!

You understand that if they stopped at M the last time, they could jump directly to M in a second or two and keep scrolling on the next visit right?

But, moving along … if they only got through half your 6000 movies (M being the 13th letter) in 30 minutes, doing the math that’s 3000 movies scrolled in 30 minutes or or 1000 every 10 minutes. Under your proposed ‘flattening’
solution, having Plex automatically present them only a subset of the 2000 non-collection movies, it would take them 20 minutes to scroll through those.

@AsphyxNYC said:
Browsing for Movies in XBMC take all of 10 Minutes at most and that’s A - Z…Why?

So, based on your math, even if you could flatten Plex movies as you wish, it would still take them twice as long on Plex as on your magical XBMC machine to scroll through the same number of movies. I’m guessing that still would be unacceptable to you and your guests no?

@AsphyxNYC said:
Because XBMC Flattens collections PROPERLY without having to create 20 different sections of movies just to make navigation easy!

Again, I didn’t suggest 20 different sections. Not sure why you keep asserting that.

If they want to see just what was added to your Plex server since your last update, Plex happily presents an endless list of movies sorted reverse chronologically by date added. That’s what my wife does. When she wants to see what’s new, she looks at that list. She’s not at all a techy like me yet she figured that out on her own. I suspect your guests could too.

I still don’t understand why your guests would not want to view the 4000’ish movies in your collections. How could your guests have seen all of the one’s they would ever want to see in those 4000 yet have a deep seated need to see only the other 2000. Just can’t imagine that ever occurring. Nor could I imagine them wanting to scroll through 2000 movies under any circumstance.

Your only real solution is to buy a bunch more XBMC machines and live happily ever after with your preferred solution.

DONE HERE - SPENT ENOUGH TIME ON THIS THANKLESS ATTEMPT TO HELP. It’s clear you won’t be happy with Plex. Can’t imagine the Plex team spending engineering resources to implement a feature that exceedingly few would ever want or find useful. Good luck with that! :wink:

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@DaleDietrich said:

Can’t imagine the Plex team spending engineering resources to implement a feature that exceedingly few would ever want or find useful.

Very true that…(or is it?)
Bandwidth limiting at well over a thousand likes (pending for about 3 years)

Real collections!! (as in if the word playlist is mentioned in creating it then it isn’t a collection, it’s a playlist) well over 3000 likes on the various threads (pending for about 3 years)

Anything that hardly anyone has ever asked for… Already added.
:slight_smile:

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@davehobson said:

@DaleDietrich said:

Can’t imagine the Plex team spending engineering resources to implement a feature that exceedingly few would ever want or find useful.

Very true that…(or is it?)
Bandwidth limiting at well over a thousand likes (pending for about 3 years)

Real collections!! (as in if the word playlist is mentioned in creating it then it isn’t a collection, it’s a playlist) well over 3000 likes on the various threads (pending for about 3 years)

Anything that hardly anyone has ever asked for… Already added.
:slight_smile:

I think you misunderstood Dave. I have no doubt Plex will update the Collection functionality in Plex in a way that most users would love. It’s AsphyxNYC’s specific request to create fast access to an A-Z list of ONLY those movies not already in a collection that I think is extremely unlikely to see the light of day any time soon - or ever.

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I have to agree with some here…
A particular individual who seems to hate Plex and prefer a competing product keeps coming here to complain. They should move on.
Though I’m not ecstatic about some of the things Plex is still missing, it’s come a LONG way since I started using it.
I don’t see a need to include a ‘non-collections’ only option.
I simply wish, as this whole post was originally started for, I didn’t have to select collections in a side menu one by one to only see all the movies if I selected all of them as a flat list a-z.

I want a “Batman” or “Bourne” or “Oceans” single icon/poster to drill down into a selection of movies related to that, rather than have the individual movies. If I have movies not part of a collection, they can appear separate.
An option to enable perhaps to see that, or, an option to disable to see them totally flat as they are now.

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@DaleDietrich said:

@davehobson said:

@DaleDietrich said:

Can’t imagine the Plex team spending engineering resources to implement a feature that exceedingly few would ever want or find useful.

Very true that…(or is it?)
Bandwidth limiting at well over a thousand likes (pending for about 3 years)

Real collections!! (as in if the word playlist is mentioned in creating it then it isn’t a collection, it’s a playlist) well over 3000 likes on the various threads (pending for about 3 years)

Anything that hardly anyone has ever asked for… Already added.
:slight_smile:

I think you misunderstood Dave. I have no doubt Plex will update the Collection functionality in Plex in a way that most users would love. It’s AsphyxNYC’s specific request to create fast access to an A-Z list of ONLY those movies not already in a collection that I think is extremely unlikely to see the light of day any time soon - or ever.

This is proof you are not reading anything I have said and merely making up your own theory that you feel you can dismiss as NOT STANDARD when it is standard for EVERYONE regardless of how many movies they have!

I don’t want a separate listing of movies NOT in a Collection. I want Collections flattened so that If I want to find the Dark Knight series I can click one icon and see them all without having to go to B to see Movie 1 of the Collection and D to find the other two!
And in REVERSE cases where I do NOT want to see any Dark Knight Movies I only have to skip past ONE ICON as opposed to three.

Now amplify that to other Collections I have like Godzilla which has about 20-40 Movies in it…
All SPLAYED across the browse page so you have to hunt for them if your looking for one, or being forced to skip 40 movies if I don’t want to see Godzilla!

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@JamminR said:
I have to agree with some here…
A particular individual who seems to hate Plex and prefer a competing product keeps coming here to complain. They should move on.
Though I’m not ecstatic about some of the things Plex is still missing, it’s come a LONG way since I started using it.
I don’t see a need to include a ‘non-collections’ only option.
I simply wish, as this whole post was originally started for, I didn’t have to select collections in a side menu one by one to only see all the movies if I selected all of them as a flat list a-z.

I want a “Batman” or “Bourne” or “Oceans” single icon/poster to drill down into a selection of movies related to that, rather than have the individual movies. If I have movies not part of a collection, they can appear separate.
An option to enable perhaps to see that, or, an option to disable to see them totally flat as they are now.

I don’t hate Plex in fact you will see I spend a lot of time supporting Plex users around here!
What I hate is a fundamental Feature that should have been there from the get go since this was a Fork of a program that already did what we are asking has ignored it for 3 years!

I’m fighting for the same thing you want!
Dale is fighting for nothing but a Button that takes you to the Collection Filter that already exists.

Tell me whose method would YOU prefer?

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@davehobson said:

@DaleDietrich said:

Can’t imagine the Plex team spending engineering resources to implement a feature that exceedingly few would ever want or find useful.

Very true that…(or is it?)
Bandwidth limiting at well over a thousand likes (pending for about 3 years)

Real collections!! (as in if the word playlist is mentioned in creating it then it isn’t a collection, it’s a playlist) well over 3000 likes on the various threads (pending for about 3 years)

Anything that hardly anyone has ever asked for… Already added.
:slight_smile:

Hmmm more than 1200 People want this feature so I doubt Highly no one would use it…
Perhaps reading would be a good suggestion here…And stop thinking What Dale is saying has anything to do with my Request!

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@AsphyxNYC said:

@davehobson said:

@DaleDietrich said:

Can’t imagine the Plex team spending engineering resources to implement a feature that exceedingly few would ever want or find useful.

Very true that…(or is it?)
Bandwidth limiting at well over a thousand likes (pending for about 3 years)

Real collections!! (as in if the word playlist is mentioned in creating it then it isn’t a collection, it’s a playlist) well over 3000 likes on the various threads (pending for about 3 years)

Anything that hardly anyone has ever asked for… Already added.
:slight_smile:

Hmmm more than 1200 People want this feature so I doubt Highly no one would use it…
Perhaps reading would be a good suggestion here…And stop thinking What Dale is saying has anything to do with my Request!

Cant say I have analysed what you are asking for that much… If there is really that many requests specifically for what you are asking for then as in the examples I have given earlier its unlikely to happen.
@DaleDietrich . I cant imagine why you say you think Plex will update the collections feature updating implies it already exists. It doesn’t, despite the three or so years of requests. I say again… any mention of collections that involves using playlists or filters is nothing to do with a collection.
@JamminR explains exactly what a collection is at the end of his post. But to add that those collections should be available in maximum of two clicks. So a collections tile on the home page, taking you directly to the tiles of each collection. Anyone who doesn’t use collections simply ignores the tile on the home page.

From here

To here

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@AsphyxNYC said:
Dale is fighting for nothing but a Button that takes you to the Collection Filter that already exists.
Fighting is a bit extreme. I’m not fighting for or against anything. I simply made a suggestion for something that would be extremely fast and simple to implement as an interim step. I too have always supported a full-fledged update to how the collection system works. Just thought my idea would be a nice easy interim step that could help a lot of people until the broader collection features were added.

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@AsphyxNYC said:
And stop thinking What Dale is saying has anything to do with my Request!
Dale has simply been trying to filter through your bombast and bluster to understand what you are after and help if possible. I’m gathering what you want more is argument with fellow Plex forum members. Each time I read your posts you say something different. Near impossible to figure out what you want. If all you want are collection icons that appear within A-Z listings of ALL movies, that, if clicked on, open up the full list of movies in the collection, and those movies in collections are not otherwise exposed as individual movies in the A-Z listing beyond the collection icon, I’m certainly not against that. At least that’s what I’m NOW hearing you say you want, I think there are better ways of exposing collections, but I’m not against your idea. Still can’t fathom what the heck you are trying to achieve with your 20 house guests who will be scrolling almost endlessly through your movie collection, but I"m beyond caring at this point!

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@davehobson said:
@DaleDietrich . I cant imagine why you say you think Plex will update the collections feature updating implies it already exists. It doesn’t, despite the three or so years of requests. I say again… any mention of collections that involves using playlists or filters is nothing to do with a collection.
Plex has some limited degree of support for collections now. I use it. Several times a week. Anything beyond their simple implementation to a more feature rich collection system, to me, would be considered an update or upgrade. If that terminology doesn’t work for you. fine. My point is/was that I believe the Plex team will, at some point add/update/upgrade (whatever term you want to use) the Plex system to satisfy most people’s collection needs. I doubt they’ll do it precisely how @AsphyxNYC wants it (its pretty hard to discern what he wants - though I think I’m getting clearer on it each time he blows a gasket and tries to explain it again), but I have faith something will happen. Would love them to implement my suggested INTERIM step so we have something more useful until the collection holy-grail is reached, but I won’t lose any sleep over it if they don’t.

FYI, LOVE the pictures you attached. I would be delighted to see Plex to that. In fact, its very similar to my suggestion (without the collection icon though - see markups in link):
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/225961/quick-acces-to-collections-genres-etc-suggestion/p1. A ‘collection’ link of the main page, taking you directly to a list of collections you can drill down on. Whoot! From your images to Plex Developers’ coding fingers! :slight_smile: Would also love a similar direct link off the first page to Genres, Actors and Directors! That’s how I look for my movies (by collections, geners, actors and directors). No scanning through thousands of movies A-Z the @AsphyxNYC way! :wink: And, yes, now I’m deliberately poking @AsphyxNYC!