Spent some time today creating a playlist since it was the only way I could filter out movies for my children. Then I realized what a playlist really is… a playlist. Do people really sit down and watch one movie after the next for 42 days straight? Or do people really just need the smart filtering features to group together movies but wish they were presented as a library.
If it’s the later, why not re-envision playlists. Call them “groups” and allow users to keep multiple smart groups for the main library. If you want to pull up a group of movies just click on the saved filter group. They would be presented the same way movies are presented in the main library - sort of a subset of the entire library.
I just can’t imagine there are people who have a need for a movie playlist. Good for music… but movies?
Would be curious to hear how others feel about this or how they use Movie Playlists.
I handle most of my movie grouping using collections – if I need to do some “smart filtering”, I usually do that “on the fly”.
My actual use case for video playlists are:
smart playlist with unrated movies (more for administrative purposes)
seasonal themed tv-show episodes (e.g. for x-mas or halloween)… well… for that time of the year
a bunch of playlists with award winning movies (e.g. Academy Awards/Oscars) – in case I want to see movies by a criteria that’s not reflected / available with smart playlists
Except for #2 this is rarely to watch movies in a row… more about better/alternative filtering
I tried collections but it’s time consuming… can’t use filters for collections. Unless there is some script that people use to modify the XML to add tags?
The only option once you have selected a bunch of movies is “Add to Playlist”. If there was an “Add to Collection” button that would work.
As for your use cases, it sounds like you use them the same way I do - for grouping movies together, not necessarily for watching them one after the next.
Thanks. I didn’t mean to present this as a restriction issue. It was really meant as a grouping issue. I like the idea of smart playlists as a method to group movies but would like them to be presented as they are in the main library. I would like a way to recall that subset of movies without having to recreate the filter every time (In a web browser I can save a link I suppose but it’s not very portable for devices).
And I wonder how many users really watch their Smart Movie Playlists vs users who really just want to have a smart grouping of movies. Possibly with an option to turn that into a playlist.
Thanks. Not ideal because they aren’t “Smart”. I wish there was a way to create Collections from Smart Playlists by using the Edit button to add a Tag.
I think what you are after are a kind of “stored filters”, which you could e.g. pin to the side bar and access just like libraries.
This is currently not possible in Plex.
There is only a feature request [Feature Request] - Pin/Save Filters
That is exactly what I want. It seems logical to me - smart grouping of movies by a set of filters and being able to recall or share those groups at a touch.
Playlists for movies seems illogical to me since they are usually 2 hours each.
