You’re describing a Collection with a slightly different UI!
If this was a Collection-level setting, it could leverage everything that Collections already leverage. It doesn’t even need a new tag type, just a per-collection setting. The visible-but-not-working-yet “Custom” ordering option would even suit it.
It could also gracefully “fall back” to acting like a standard collection, for any clients that weren’t aware of these Cut Collection enhancements.
—-
I think a lack of metadata sources is the other significant problem. Apart from file naming issues, I don’t think there’s any place to get data on alternative cuts. The cuts would need to get unique guids, at least. That almost seems like a harder problem.
This is where the earlier (more simplistic) ideas were coming from. Being able to define the name of the cut from the filename or a subfolder name (i.e. “Directors Cut -cut”) would provide the minimum details to distinguish between the cuts and then video length could be pulled from the file itself.
Beyond that you are going to need to modify the big database systems to track multiple cuts or else everyone will be doing a lot of individual editing for most of the cuts.
It’s not just a different UI, but yep; collections were the inspiration :
As noted above, it’s not just the UI though: there are important semantic/functional differences with collections.
Additionally, as noted long ago, a significant downside to collections is:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this problem exists with all potential solutions? The minimum people would need to do though would be to change the Title of the cut. i.e. you would only need to update other details (year, director, etc.) if it really bothered you. Importantly though, one of the most important attributes would be able to be automatically determined by Plex: runtime!
Here’s a list of spitballed ideas, in no particular order: (note, these are just from the perspective of the UI/UX, I have very little experience with coding so I don’t know how much of a headache implementing them would be)
Each cut would need its own unique GUID for keeping its own unique watch status and metadata.
Nested Movie Cuts. The idea of being able to go to one entry for, say, Justice League and switch between the original and the Snyder Cut on that page is interesting. The design philosophy behind it would be something like this: “One Story, One Entry.” Often, when you’re dealing with Director’s Cuts and such, it’s fundamentally the same story, just presented in a new/better/different way. Therefore, most of the metadata - plot summary, genres, directors, producers, even collections - would be the same as the original cut.
Inherited Metadata. Derivative cuts could inherit metadata from their parent by default. Two ideas on how this could work:
Cuts have their own metadata fields that are able to be locked. This would be very similar to how customizing metadata and “locking” the field works now, except with a cut, when you click Refresh Metadata, it pulls the fresh stuff from the cut’s parent instead of the web.
Cuts don’t have any unique metadata at all, except for a new Cut Description field that summarizes what makes the cut different from the original. When the user switches to the cut from - idk, maybe a dropdown menu - this Cut Description would display above the plot summary.
If the UI for this feature ends up being as versatile as Plex typically is, people could also use such a feature for fan edits, such as Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and the Phantom Edit. Anticipating this, the Fanedit Database over at ifdb.fanedit.org would be an excellent source to add to the agent if/when this feature rolls out.
Kudos to the people putting together UI suggestions.
That said, it’s embarrassing that a supposed ultimate media player can’t handle a director’s cut of a movie and that your customers have to spend 9 years coming up with ideas the company completely ignores.
Could not agree with you more! 9 years of users trying to come up with solutions/ways to help to address this issue and get this implemented, has been 9 years of wasted time by everyone that has chimed in on this thread.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind if we had to MANUALLY add the info, so long as the field to do so is there. I looks weird having 3 versions of Deadpool 2 (standard, super duper cut, once upon a Deadpool) when it’d be SO much easier to have one entry and choose. The SIMPLEST way would be in the existing version drop down if we could simply add the text we need to describe it. That alone would help me.
ANNNNND this is a prime example of why I think limiting your votes to 5 is incredibly short sided on Plex’s part. 1439 votes have been potentially locked into this one idea for about 9 years. It’s starting to feel like a repeat of Atlassian (Jira) where the people have spoken but no one at the company listens/cares? There’s 613 responses in this tread, this is obviously something people want … How many votes will it take? No idea. Are we close? No idea.
Plex frequently makes the argument that when prioritizing new features they must consider the needs of the full audience, of which these forums only makes up a small percentage.
I would be really interested in knowing the analysis that concluded the full customer base wouldn’t find this feature useful if implemented. Is the predicted usage somehow less than the usage of Plex VR?
: