Movie Collection Folder

General Discussions
1

How do I stop the Movie collection folders showing up in the Movie Library? I’d rather use the collection tab to reduce clutter

2
  1. Edit your library (... > Manage Library > Edit...)
  2. Open the Advanced tab
  3. Set Collections to Hide Collections But Show Their Items

Though… personally I consider that’ll increase your clutter.
You could also set it to Hide Items Which Are In Collections – which will show just the collections but requires you to open the collection to see its items.

3

Much better. thanks

4

The above only hides the collections from direct view.
Maybe think about preventing them from getting created in the first place?
On the same library properties tab as above, there is “Minimum automatic collection size”.
Set that to an appropriate value (or disable it altogether).

5

Thanks, yes, I have 1 selected which is good for me and it tells me that there are more in the movie collection

6

Selecting 1 is directly responsible for creating countless useless collections.
Often enough, someone at TheMovieDB has created a collection with only one item in it, in the hope that there will be sequels and prequels in the future.

7

Yeh true that, if I disable it altogether will I need to add any new sequels manually in future to my collections?

8

I would rather recommend to set it to 3. That way you still get collections which deserve the name but are avoiding all those 1 or 2-member ones.

But yes, if you disable automatiuc collections completely, you will have to create wanted collections manually.

Careful if your files are in mp4 format: if there is an Album metatag in them, the video will be added automatically to a collection with the name of the Album.

1 Like
9

Thanks, what I have done is change the threshold to 2 and all the 1 item in collections that have a sequel with TBA etc, I have deleted, now I can add sequels to 2 items and above if any are available.

The reason for 2 items is there are many movies with only 2 movie releases

10

Be careful deleting a movie collection that Plex automatically created (or that a movie is in). Plex will LOCK the Collections field of the movies so they will not get automatically added to a collection in the future. So if you manage to add a sequel in the future, this second movie will be in the 1-movie collection, but the first one will not.

You can edit the movie, find the collections field, and unlock it by pressing the orange lock icon so it turns grey.

11

Great, yeh, I noticed that in the tag/collection area, the lock icon was orange but empty, so that is where I unlock it and do a manual override?

12

If it is orange, then the field is locked, and will NEVER automatically be added to a collection in the future, no matter how many other movies in the collection you get. This happened to me when I stupidly turned on “1 or more” in my automatic collections field. So, since I had the one movie, it created a collection for it even if I don’t have the others in my library. What is worse, is when a future movie has been announced - but not released - my movie will suddenly disappear from my library and is replaced by a single-movie entry for the series itself.

Once I modified my library to only allow automatic collections for 2 or more, I noticed that all 1-movie collections I deleted locked the collection field, so if I were to add a sequel, it would never get added to it. I still have a few movies with a locked collection field that I do not intend to happen. The best way to find out which ones seems to be to browse my collections by “count”, and look for 1-movie collections.

This indicates that a movie I own SHOULD be in this collection, but isn’t due to a locked field. It isn’t too hard to find out which movie belongs to this collection.

TLDR: So yeah, an orange lock icon, but empty field. Click the lock so it is grey, then save and close the box. Refresh metadata. If you have the right number of movies in a TMDB collection, then it will be added, and the field will be unlocked. If not, the field will stay blank and unlocked.

13

Yes, I have removed all the 1 item movies from collections and went back to each one and unlocked them, so in theory when a sequel is added it should add both to the collections?

There were only 20 of them so no drama.

14

Yeah, they will be auto-added when you add a sequel.

If you wish to experiment, find a small video file. Name it the same as a sequel to one of these movies, and place it in your library. When Plex scans the new addition, you should see a new collection appear, this movie AND the old movie should both me in it. When done, delete the new movie file, rescan.

I suspect the movie collection will not vanish, so you will need to delete it, then re-unlock the collection tag of the movie that you own again.

15

Thanks to you all for your guidance, much appreciated.