Good things take time.
ducks
Its actually even worse :-/ Check this out
If you combine most of the posts that are related to Collections, you’ll see this is one of the most requested features period.
@aeonx said:
Good things take time.ducks
Thanks!! I just spat coffee all over my laptop. 
Seriously though… It’s worrying, as I’m far enough into my 50’s to not actually remember my exact age. 
I’m seeing 7 different feature request threads about movie collections in Plex on the first page of that forum section. I think there’s a good chance it’ll be implemented very soon, or at least there is a lot of visible demand for it that the developers can’t ignore.
@aeonx - Please. Stop.
At first I laughed out loud.
Now I’m just crying.
In depression.
Over how true the cynicism in your jokes are.
o:)
@JamminR I didn’t want to be cynical. It really was an attempt at a lighthearted joke. It’s just a feature request to an already great product, personally I can wait for them to get it right.
Sorry mate. It just seems many of us have been waiting many years for a feature that other things keep getting added that make us wonder “Who’s asked for this?” everytime the release blog says “by popular demand”.
Yeah I get it! Plex should nail a collections view, being a software to present media in the first place anyway, and it should be here yesterday rather than tomorrow. I guess priorities don’t always align between people. In the meantime, why not try filters as a temporary, make-do collection view? 
No sarcasm or cynicism intended!
Honestly?
Current filter implementation of collections are extremely cumbersome, especially on a Roku/other devices that don’t use touch screens, of which there are many.
Even on a touch screen, or a web click view, you have to know exactly what you may be looking for from a huge text list.
Whereas, imo of course, if I want to scroll through a list of posters representing collections, having them appear as their own poster “library section” view/filter (as some would like), or intermixed with singles within a library (as I would like, but the option to have either both would be best), that removes the difficulty of scrolling through a text list of filters.
I believe I read in another thread that Elan/Plex believes that no one uses the ‘collection’ feature now, and therefore, no additional time has been put towards it. I’m of the strong belief that usage is so low because the current feature is so cumbersome and not easily used/browsed, or even noticed.
I understand. I just mean using filters as a temporary fix, not as a replacement. I am convinced collections is coming soon.
This very request in this thread here is on place 10 on the feature requests that Plex developers are tracking: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1349579/#Comment_1349579
So don’t give up your hope yet. They are aware of the requests, and I think they are prioritizing development and implementing requests based on the likes they get.
Even Things 3 is going to get released after 4 years and several announcements.
@aeonx - I appreciate your enthusiasm and positive energy, but it won’t change my mind.
I won’t believe it until I see it, and I feel that won’t be soon. I know many others agree, as I watch another thread that laments the development teams apparent priorities.
There are two main reasons imo for this necessary implementation.
- To clean up the mess. All those 5-30*40 movie collections scattered around the library with different names. How convinient it would be to just have one folder for each One with correct order embedded.
- Remote control convinience. You would not need to search or sort order use av keyboard. Just browse down to the collection, two clicks and be off.
And of course, it must be global (for all users)
@aaronharstine said:
It would be awesome if there was a way to group movies for instance all bond movies or all harry potter movies under one icon that breaks out with all the movies… also there should be a way to manually sort these “folders” by movie order rather than name
Xbmc now Kodi has been doing this for years. It was simple easy and intuitive which is what plex is supposed to be compared to Kodi. It did it automatically no manually going to each movie and adding it to a collection that still doesn’t show up properly. On Kodi in the movies he would see Harry Potter and you would click on it and it would show all the harry potter movies and then you could just select the movie very well done.
Xbmc now Kodi has been doing this for years. It was simple easy and intuitive which is what plex is supposed to be compared to Kodi. It did it automatically no manually going to each movie and adding it to a collection that still doesn’t show up properly. On Kodi in the movies he would see Harry Potter and you would click on it and it would show all the harry potter movies and then you could just select the movie very well done.
I installed Kodi just to compare it to Plex, it only took me about an hour to conclude that Plex for me is the superior platform. Except the collections as implemented in kodi, it has to come to Plex. For me it is quite simply the way it should be done on any platform.
@DaleDietrich said:
@MattWeiler said:
Pretty much everything you are suggesting has been suggested many times before if you read through the many many posts on Collections. It doesn’t have to be ‘either/or’. Some what collections inline. Others (me) want a separate top level collections tab similar to a library where we can see all our collections in one place because I’m NEVER going to scroll through thousands of individual movies to find my collections.Your approach would work well on smallisn sub 500 movie libraries. I think Plex would be well-advised to do both. See my mock-up here:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/225961/quick-acces-to-collections-genres-etc-suggestion
Unlike your icon below idea I think it more likely that Plex would place an orange circle with a white number in it on top of the collection icon - just like they do for TV shows (ie: how many are in a season) with the number indicating how many movies are in the identified collection.
A fundamental problem with your inline idea (that I have pointed out a half dozen times in the various threads) is what happens for movie collections like the ‘Dollars’ trilogy. None of the movies are titled ‘Dollars’? Do you put the collection icon in the ‘D’ movies, or do you put the collection in “F” where the 'Fist Full of Dollars" stand alone movie would be and another in ‘G’ for 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" etc. There are tons of collections with official names that aren’t the same as the movie title. Hell, there is no “James Bond” movie with the name James Bond int it. Where do you put that icon it the collections are inline with movie titles? That’s another reason why I want a separate/optional top-level Collections tab.
I also want a separate/optional 'genre’s top level tab and one for directors and favorite actors too … but for now I’d be happy just to have Collections solved.
And, ya, pretty much everyone agrees that if you only have one movie from a collection that movie should not be identified as a collection of one movie - the way Plex does it now. Just fills up the collections list with a bunch of non-collections.
…Dale
My only issue with the orange circle showing the number is that it would not be consistent with how it’s used in the TV Shows section.
In the TV Shows section, that number denotes how many un-watched episodes you have in that series/season.
I’m no artist, so my icon is just a very rough idea… I’m sure that the Plex guys could come up with something far better.
I agree that it could be somewhat confusing to find say The Lost World: Jurassic Park if it were grouped with Jurassic Park, but I would argue that one could search for the movie name at the top or disable the inline-Collection logic via a button in the filtering-panel at the top-right of the page (along with the Play All, Shuffle, Add to Playlist, Sync, etc… options).
This inline-Collections logic wouldn’t have to be limited to the main Movies, TV Shows and Music pages; Collections could be shown inline within the smart categories (discovery sections).
I don’t think that putting Collections in the left menu along with Movies, TV Shows, Music and Playlists would work very well since TV Shows and Music can have collections too.
This feels like it would be too cluttered there since you’d have to have a Movie Collections, TV Show Collections and Music Collections.
They do have a mechanism to search by collection when you’re already in the Movies, TV Shows and Music sections… if you click the All button at the top-left of the screen you can select Collection (I’m sure you already know this, but others might not 
)
@nibble4bits said:
@DaleDietrich said:
Pretty much everything you are suggesting has been suggested many times before if you read through the many many posts on Collections. It doesn’t have to be ‘either/or’. Some what collections inline. Others (me) want a separate top level collections tab similar to a library where we can see all our collections in one place because I’m NEVER going to scroll through thousands of individual movies to find my collections. Your approach works well on smallisn sub 500 movie libraries. I think Plex would be well-advised to do both.Dale, this probably could go under the “View” options as well. “Nested, Flattened, Collections only”
I like that idea… that way if you don’t want your collections shown inline, you wouldn’t have to.
This has become a monster thread, so for the sake of not losing any votes:
don’t forget to “like” the first post, otherwise your +1 will not count!
Emby handles collections SO much nicer than Plex does. Painfully neglected feature that hasn’t changed at all in years has it?
@hstamas - Actually, it has improved within the past few months. Not yet finished imo though.
Plex Web now has the ability to go to a collection from a movie’s info screen. If you have a collection of movies, click on one of the movies, there’s a >x< collection category below cast and extras. Click that collection category and it loads a filter of just those movies.
Roku client has the same ability from the ‘extras’ 3 dots menu within a movie info screen.
I’d still like the ability to view collections as a flat view though. Say I have 250 movies, 200 of those are parts of a 40 collections. I’d love to have a one or two click view where I only see 90 posters (40 collection posters and 50 singles)
The client and web filters still bite though. If I click collections from the top right menus, I still have to select individual collections from a long list. Repeatedly if I want to show more.
