@Pil71 said:
Using the existing Collections features only allows a filter to be applied to view selected Collections (assuming you have updated all movies metadata with the collection they belong too). We all appear to want the same thing - to be able to view all movies in the library, collections or not, in a single view, and see a single poster for a collection, click it and it opens up the individual movie posters within that collection. Can this functionality be provided Plex Team ? Please
We don’t all want this. I want a link off the first page to all my collections. I don’t want to have to scroll through thousands of movies to find collection icons and drill down from there.
And it’s not practical. Yes, the Star Wars’ franchise would be be found under S as you would expect.
But, what would you do with the “Dollars Trilogy”. Would you place it with the “D” movies? Yet, the first movie in that trilogy is “A Fist Full of Dollars”. Do you head off to the 'F’s to find the trilogy. If you did it wouldn’t be there. The movie “Clerks” was the first of the (currently 6) ‘View Askewniverse’ series. Are you looking under “C” or “V” to find this series. Or “M” for Mallrats or “C” for Chasing Amy etc. There are a great many movie collections/series like this making it impractical to place a single collection icon within an A-Z listing of all your movies to find them.
@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! 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! And, yes, now I’m deliberately poking @AsphyxNYC!
Yeah those collections are all created automatically. Anything beyond this can be made manually.
For Example all the Marvel films, Iron Man, Thor, Avengers etc… will be created automatically…
Then add those to a Marvel collection and they automatically list in the correct running order which those movies really need.
Just FYI I also tend to have the odd day where I just wanna watch by actor. On any movie preplay screen you should be able to access all available films with that actor.
Also did you notice the favourites button next to collections… Any movie, full show, single episode all reachable with one click…another great navigation aid.
@davehobson said:
Also did you notice the favourites button next to collections… Any movie, full show, single episode all reachable with one click…another great navigation aid.
I did, but not sure it would be something I’d use. I have favorite movies of course but its usually years between viewings. One of my other long-standing requests/suggestions here has also been a request to be able to indicate which actors are your favorites and then have plex filter/toggle the actor list to show just those actors. I have about 200 favorite actors I’d like to scan through - NOT THE 10’s of thousands that currently show up when I sort by actor. A wholly useless feature in Plex the way it is implemented now!
@JamminR said:
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.
This idea works only up to a certain library size - I’d say 500 movies or less. When you start getting above 1000 and into the many thousands, having to scan through, in my case, some 2000 movies to find the 130ish collection icons containing about 670 movies, becomes a bit sillly and unlikely.
And, as you can read in my post directly above, It’s easy to know where to place your ‘Bourne’, "Oceans’ and "Batman’ icons but where to you place your “Dollars” or “View Askewniverse” icons. And do you put “Batman vs. Superman” in the Batman collection under “B” or the Superman collection under “S” or both?
@DaleDietrich - Though I can’t speak as to the Dollars question, I’d dare imagine that multiple collections could contain same movies. Superman Vs Batman could appear in 1) DC 2) Batman and 3) Superman
But off topic, I tried sitting through BvS. IMO, it was rubbish. I left the theater (and I’ve only done that one other time in life)
After Nolan’s vision of the Dark Knight, even the final one that went a bit far on imagination, attempting to watch BvS just didn’t do well for me.
Back on topic more - I’d never have to worry about that movie as I don’t plan on adding it to my, uh, collection (pun intended).
@JamminR said:
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.
This idea works only up to a certain library size - I’d say 500 movies or less. When you start getting above 1000 and into the many thousands, having to scan through, in my case, some 2000 movies to find the 130ish collection icons containing about 670 movies, becomes a bit sillly and unlikely.
And, as you can read in my post directly above, It’s easy to know where to place your ‘Bourne’, "Oceans’ and "Batman’ icons but where to you place your “Dollars” or “View Askewniverse” icons. And do you put “Batman vs. Superman” in the Batman collection under “B” or the Superman collection under “S” or both?
In the screenshots I showed I scanned through nothing. The server did it. (if I’m understanding you correctly and you think this is a manual process.)
1650 movies in my library. and its created 109 collections that’s all. As for Batman Vs Superman it has attached it to both the batman collection and superman collection. Aliens Vs Predator has done the same.
@davehobson - he’s referring to ‘scan through’ visually. As if what I want were to be implemented.
Basically, if you took the totally flat A-Z scroll now with no other filters, enabled a ‘Collections’ feature or switch, it would take only those as part of a collection and place them in the A-Z, reducing by that many movies.
So, if Batman were the only collection in, say, 300 movies, the A-Z list would become reduced by 6 (I own 7 movies, classic and dark knight), and one “Batman” icon would appear that if clicked, would drill down into the 7 movies I own much like a TV season does now.
Even if it wouldn’t work for 1000+, according to Dale’s opinion, I’d sure like it much more than having to go into current collection methodology of clicking multiple collections and appearing flat, and not in order of release without yet another filter.
The screenshot you linked was nice. Is it Kodi or Emby?
I’ve looked at Emby, but really didn’t like it’s interface on my Roku, and it didn’t seem to have as many clients for the family and friend userbase I have so far.
My understanding of Kodi is that it’s not a server/client setup. It’s install all or none. But, I admit I could be wrong.
(I also understand it’s a bit more complicated to setup/maintain - though I’m quite technically geek enough to do it all, that’s one big thing about Plex, it takes little time)
@JamminR said: @davehobson - he’s referring to ‘scan through’ visually. As if what I want were to be implemented.
Basically, if you took the totally flat A-Z scroll now with no other filters, enabled a ‘Collections’ feature or switch, it would take only those as part of a collection and place them in the A-Z, reducing by that many movies.
So, if Batman were the only collection in, say, 300 movies, the A-Z list would become reduced by 6 (I own 7 movies, classic and dark knight), and one “Batman” icon would appear that if clicked, would drill down into the 7 movies I own much like a TV season does now.
Even if it wouldn’t work for 1000+, according to Dale’s opinion, I’d sure like it much more than having to go into current collection methodology of clicking multiple collections and appearing flat, and not in order of release without yet another filter.
The screenshot you linked was nice. Is it Kodi or Emby?
I’ve looked at Emby, but really didn’t like it’s interface on my Roku, and it didn’t seem to have as many clients for the family and friend userbase I have so far.
My understanding of Kodi is that it’s not a server/client setup. It’s install all or none. But, I admit I could be wrong.
(I also understand it’s a bit more complicated to setup/maintain - though I’m quite technically geek enough to do it all, that’s one big thing about Plex, it takes little time)
Yeah fair enough about the collections.
The screenshots are Emby… I’m guessing the interface has been updated on the Roku since you tried it. It’s pretty much identical on the Roku to those screenshots my girlfriend uses two at her place and fell in love with the UI .
She dislikes the Roku PMP styling.
They do seem to achieved what if I recall was a goal for Plex in creating apps that look identical. The X-Box 360 and Samsung TV pre 2016 also have the same interface.
Yeah certainly there are less clients but most of the major players are there…
Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Android TV, Xbox (one & 360) WP, IOS and Android & for me at least Samsung on 2016 TV’s coming soon.
Sadly as yet no embedded. No huge deal for me as the NUC I use, never gets switched off but if the Samsung 2016 app works as well as Orca’s app does on Plex then the NUC will be put in a drawer.
@davehobson said:
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.
Dave all I’m asking for is for Collections to be Flattened to a single icon in the main Movie browse section to reduce the number of Icons being displayed which will make it far easier to find those few movies that are NOT part of a collection while making it far easier to play an entire collection without the need to create a playlist because the movies in that collection are spread out alphabetically and splayed out all over the 6000 icons being displayed.
By Flattening Collections to a single Icon you solve TWO issues.
1 the need to filter just to find collection members in their proper release order and
2 Reduce the Icon clutter of the browse page so finding a movie that is not a member of a collection so it is easier to find without having to swipe up 400 times to get through the library.
If a typical collection contains 4 movies and you have 4000 movies that are part of a collection you have reduced the number of Icons you need to browse through from 4000 to 1000…
Still a lot but takes 25% less time to browse through Collections.
As it stands if I have 4000 Movies in Collections and 2000 Movies not related to another I am scrolling through 6000 Icons but if the Collections were flattened it would be just 3000.
Tell me this is not what everyone is requesting in this thread?
All Dale wants is a link to the Collection Filter…
Fine I have no problem with that but it doesn’t solve the issues I have discussed regarding ALL MOVIES and the Icon Clutter that results once you have a large Library.
@JamminR said: @davehobson - he’s referring to ‘scan through’ visually. As if what I want were to be implemented.
Basically, if you took the totally flat A-Z scroll now with no other filters, enabled a ‘Collections’ feature or switch, it would take only those as part of a collection and place them in the A-Z, reducing by that many movies.
So, if Batman were the only collection in, say, 300 movies, the A-Z list would become reduced by 6 (I own 7 movies, classic and dark knight), and one “Batman” icon would appear that if clicked, would drill down into the 7 movies I own much like a TV season does now.
Even if it wouldn’t work for 1000+, according to Dale’s opinion, I’d sure like it much more than having to go into current collection methodology of clicking multiple collections and appearing flat, and not in order of release without yet another filter.
The screenshot you linked was nice. Is it Kodi or Emby?
I’ve looked at Emby, but really didn’t like it’s interface on my Roku, and it didn’t seem to have as many clients for the family and friend userbase I have so far.
My understanding of Kodi is that it’s not a server/client setup. It’s install all or none. But, I admit I could be wrong.
(I also understand it’s a bit more complicated to setup/maintain - though I’m quite technically geek enough to do it all, that’s one big thing about Plex, it takes little time)
JamminR you seem to understand what I’m asking for…
Dale doesn’t seem to get it…
The issue is the number of Icons being displayed and how they are displayed only by title with no further grouping possible without filtering being used. Filtering doesn’t work here because it excludes movies.
If the Icons for Collection Movies were reduced to a single Icon for that collection, the Icon Clutter of the main Browse page would be very much reduced, If you were not in the mood for BATMAN you could skip them all by skipping ONE Icon not seven and if you wanted to find some movie that is not part of a collection it will be far easier to find without all the clutter of the collection members filling up the screen as one offs.
Also it would make playing an entire collection far easier since they would all be found in a single Icon as opposed to having to know what the title of each movie and hunting or running to filter B collection just to exclude everything but what you want to see.
@davehobson said:
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.
Dave all I’m asking for is for Collections to be Flattened to a single icon in the main Movie browse section to reduce the number of Icons being displayed which will make it far easier to find those few movies that are NOT part of a collection while making it far easier to play an entire collection without the need to create a playlist because the movies in that collection are spread out alphabetically and splayed out all over the 6000 icons being displayed.
By Flattening Collections to a single Icon you solve TWO issues.
1 the need to filter just to find collection members in their proper release order and
2 Reduce the Icon clutter of the browse page so finding a movie that is not a member of a collection so it is easier to find without having to swipe up 400 times to get through the library.
If a typical collection contains 4 movies and you have 4000 movies that are part of a collection you have reduced the number of Icons you need to browse through from 4000 to 1000…
Still a lot but takes 25% less time to browse through Collections.
As it stands if I have 4000 Movies in Collections and 2000 Movies not related to another I am scrolling through 6000 Icons but if the Collections were flattened it would be just 3000.
Tell me this is not what everyone is requesting in this thread?
All Dale wants is a link to the Collection Filter…
Fine I have no problem with that but it doesn’t solve the issues I have discussed regarding ALL MOVIES and the Icon Clutter that results once you have a large Library.
Gotcha…
I’m pretty sure that’s what @JamminR and myself are looking for, so we are all on the same page.
As far as I’m concerned that is the only definition of collections. Anything else is either a filter or a playlist.
I guess our only difference is I also want to see
From here
To here
EDIT. I think what caused the confusion for me is the terminology of “flattened” which to my mind was seeing every item individually (as it is now) . I learned something new today
Like I said…I have no problem adding a one click option to get to Collections without having to go through the damn filters! LOL
But in my case the issue is I want to be able to see the entire library Collections and Not in a cleaner way without excluding content.
I am not even Opposed to keeping the current view as an option that would allow us to toggle off flattening for those who like the mess.
The fact that this can be achieved by the addition of a two column Collections Table and a checkbox in settings that determine how the DB is queried to create the browse page makes me wonder why it seems to be so difficult to implement.
@AsphyxNYC said:
Like I said…I have no problem adding a one click option to get to Collections without having to go through the damn filters! LOL
But in my case the issue is I want to be able to see the entire library Collections and Not in a cleaner way without excluding content.
I am not even Opposed to keeping the current view as an option that would allow us to toggle off flattening for those who like the mess.
The fact that this can be achieved by the addition of a two column Collections Table and a checkbox in settings that determine how the DB is queried to create the browse page makes me wonder why it seems to be so difficult to implement.
Yeah I absolutely agree. Just checked and Emby doesn’t seem to flatten them in the main library. Purely for my needs it does suit unless a solution is thought out for seeing the watched status for a for a flattened collection. But yeah for those who don’t see that as important then yeah a toggle option should be good.
@AsphyxNYC said:
Like I said…I have no problem adding a one click option to get to Collections without having to go through the damn filters! LOL
But in my case the issue is I want to be able to see the entire library Collections and Not in a cleaner way without excluding content.
I am not even Opposed to keeping the current view as an option that would allow us to toggle off flattening for those who like the mess.
The fact that this can be achieved by the addition of a two column Collections Table and a checkbox in settings that determine how the DB is queried to create the browse page makes me wonder why it seems to be so difficult to implement.
Yeah I absolutely agree. Just checked and Emby doesn’t seem to flatten them in the main library. Purely for my needs it does suit unless a solution is thought out for seeing the watched status for a for a flattened collection. But yeah for those who don’t see that as important then yeah a toggle option should be good.
Well the way XBMC handles watched status is that when you click down to the Collection you see what movies have been watched and which ones have not and once the entire collection has been watched the Collection Icon displays the Watched checkbox as well.
If you then add another movie to that collection the Watch check mark also goes away on that collection Icon.
It does the same thing for TV Shows.
No Filters are needed and you don’t even have to click into the collection to play all the movies you can simply play them all by playing the Icon for that collection.
In my case this would actually reduce the number of Icons to around just 500 for all collections (which consist of about 4000 movies) making my scroll through XBMC just 2500 Icons while in Plex it is close to 6000.
As others have stated I would very much like to see auto-created collections similiar to how Kodi makes the collections without reducing clutter and providing one place to look for series
It could be easy to automate this process in the same manner that we have to follow filename schematics for Plex to scrape our movies right now. You can help Plex identify collections by using the following directory schematic:
/Media /Movies movie content /Name of Collection movie content
The issue isn’t how the database works is it? Or maybe it’s been a while and I don’t remember anymore that I set these up but it seems to pick up whatever I’ve tagged as a collection in Metabrowser. Or maybe it’s just a new movie I’m adding to a collection
The only problem I have is that I have to go through filters for this like others have mentioned. I can’t imagine anyone in my household using a filter to narrow down to a collection. It should be handled as it in Kodi. Is it really something so difficult to implement that a request for proper collections support gets ignored for such a long time?
And, yes, now I’m deliberately poking 
