New Library Category: Shorts

[heathen3017]

With the use of animated shorts, they really aren’t TV material, and they can severely clog up one’s MOVIE catalog. I have a few select shorts in my MOVIES section, but most shorts can be categorized into groups very easily, especially the large repositories of animated features from the likes of WB, Disney, MGM, etc…

With that being said, I propose a new library category called SHORTS. However, this library should be treated differently than MOVIES or TV libraries. Since there really is no true way to put most of these in proper “Seasons”, the Categories (“Show Names”) and Sub-Categories (“Seasons”) should be read directly from the file structure of where you are reading the SHORTS library from.

For instance, let’s presume you have a folder labeled SHORTS that you are pointing to for the location of shorts. You have the following directory structure:

Looney Tunes
|---- Bugs Bunny
|---- Daffy Duck
|---- Porky Pig

Disney
|---- Mickey Mouse
|---- Donald Duck
|---- Goofy

Pixar
|---- BluRay Volume 1
|---- BluRay Volume 2
|---- Extraneous BluRays

Academy Awards
|---- 2016
|---- 2017
|---- 2018

etc….

In the player, when you select SHORTS, you are then presented with the Categories of the top level directory names (Warner Brothers, Disney, Academy Awards, Pixar, etc…) in the same fashion as TV Shows are presented. Opening a Category presents the sub-categories in the same fashion as Seasons of TV SHOWS, but obviously with the names of the directories.

Naming of the files would be the same as those of MOVIES, with the short name and the year to mimic MOVIE NAME and YEAR so that the server can pull information from it from sources.

This gives the user the presentation of large amounts of shorts in the fashion that is easiest to navigate and most desirable while allowing the user to define what is presented for their own unique tastes. It also prevents the numerous shorts that users don’t want clogging up their MOVIES library.

[tom80H]

You can already create a movie-type library and name it e.g. „Shorts“ for that purpose. As for the extra layer of categories… isn’t that what collections are for?

[heathen3017]

As I mentioned, your way pollutes the MOVIES library with tons of shorts to put in the collections. Also, isn’t collections just one category deep? With its own direct media type, setting up collections is as easy as creating a directory and putting in content.

[tom80H]

@heathen3017

your way pollutes the MOVIES library

You can have multiple movie libraries.
I currently have 3:

• one for actual movies
• one for shorts
• one for „extras“ of collections (e.g. shorts or featurettes that relate to more than one item of a collection)

[heathen3017]

But what is a more simpler and elegant solution? Creating individual libraries within the setup, only to have to create additional collections and maintain them manually, or creating categories and subcategories by creating a directory structure one probably would be creating anyway to organize content and then dropping content into the directory structure?

[tom80H]

If you ask for my personal/honest opinion… my money will be on multiple libraries and the flexibility of collections.

That being said… my opinion shouldn’t diminish your perspective/use case. There’s however already an existing suggestion discussing an option to derive collections based on a folder structure (incl. an option to allow multiple levels of nested collections). If that’s the primary purpose of your suggestion, I’ll encourage you to consider commenting/voting in those threads in order to help us avoid distracting or cannibalizing votes.

Movie Collection Subfolder Support // mod: create collections based on folder structure

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Collection naming (for use especially with collection nesting)

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Note to self… those two might actually be considered overlapping / redundant as well.

Nested Collections

Adding my vote to this. For me the ability to make a collection part of a collection would be great, basically hierarchical collections just like folders on a PC.

[heathen3017]

Are there any updates?

[tom80H]

Given you haven’t voted for your own suggestion (and neither did anybody else): no updates — except the same old: „have you checked out those existing suggestions asking for similar organizational options?