When writing on a different thread about sharing kids movies with my kids I thought that tagging could be a good way to use as parent control for example, or as a new way of sharing certain film you want with other users without having to create a library,
A) I tag the movies I want with "kids"
B) I share with other users, my tagged movies "kids"
or same:
A) the movies I want with "Eric"
B) I share with other users, my tagged movies "Eric"
What do you think of this idea ?, was it already thought of maybe in another thread ?
Well the existing system doesn't allow that kind of things, ie serious rewriting would be required.
Shares are made based on a library so it would be easier to just make a kid library in this instance. Plus who would want to go edit manually all the files he wants to share to add a tag (or even a collection it seems).
who would want to go edit manually all the files he wants to share to add a tag (or even a collection it seems).
I would :)
I mean I have some movies, cartoon etc... I would like to share that are in different folders...
Let's say I want to share 4 films with a friend of mine for instance, how can I recreate a library without moving physically the files and share these 4 movies ?
If I want to let my daughter see some animation movies but not all of them, and also a few films how do I do without puting these movies in a seperate folder ?
Z.
PS Edit: another way around I am thinking could be to create virtual librarys and add films into some sort of collection that we could share... would that be possible ??
or just make a new library with just the kids movies. Solves the problem too because you sharing only that library with your kids or friends.
Or am I wrong?
Well I thought so too and I will likely do that but I have also films I would like to show to my kids example wizard of oz, and I would have to individually move all those films in a new directory... that's why virtual library could be interesting... see what I mean ?
You don’t have to copy or move the file around tho accomplish this. 2 methods. 1 - If your movies are in individual folders, i.e. movie 1 is on its own movie 1 folder, movie 2 in a movie 2 folder, you can create your new library and just point to each individual folder you want tho include. 2 - create a folder on your computer that you want to share. Make the library in plex and point to this folder. Add the movies you want by using hard links instead of copying the file. The hard link acts like the original file but doesn’t actually exist so it doesn’t take up extra space and requires no time to create.
You don't have to copy or move the file around tho accomplish this. 2 methods. 1 - If your movies are in individual folders, i.e. movie 1 is on its own movie 1 folder, movie 2 in a movie 2 folder, you can create your new library and just point to each individual folder you want tho include. 2 - create a folder on your computer that you want to share. Make the library in plex and point to this folder. Add the movies you want by using hard links instead of copying the file. The hard link acts like the original file but doesn't actually exist so it doesn't take up extra space and requires no time to create.
Nice trick I didn't know about that I will try it soon to give you an update ...
My movies are in individual folder by genre -> name of movie
some are in director -> name of movie for famous directors
but I still would have to go inside these folders to create the shortcuts....
In Picasa there is a feature "locate this file on disk" which takes you directly to the file... it woul be very handy to have such a feature to create the shortcuts...
I also use genre folders. This is how I set up my system for Windows.
I have folders corresponding to each library. I then have an extra folder I made with a bunch of batch files, each named the same as my libraries. Each batch file has the following 1 line:
mklink /h "C:\PathToMyLibraryFolder\%~nx1" %1
When I want to add the link for a movie to a particular folder, I just drag the movie file using windows explorer onto this batch file. It creates the link automatically. Just copy the batch file for each library you want and edit the path.
You don't have to copy or move the file around tho accomplish this. 2 methods. 1 - If your movies are in individual folders, i.e. movie 1 is on its own movie 1 folder, movie 2 in a movie 2 folder, you can create your new library and just point to each individual folder you want tho include. 2 - create a folder on your computer that you want to share. Make the library in plex and point to this folder. Add the movies you want by using hard links instead of copying the file. The hard link acts like the original file but doesn't actually exist so it doesn't take up extra space and requires no time to create.
I also do this, as well as I have all my movies in Genre folders, that are inside of a general all Movies folder. It gives a lot more flexibility for Shares than the single folder method prevalent here.
The other method you could use, if you're using the single folder for Movies method that most seem to use, is to create a Sub-Folder under Movie, and call it Kids, and only share that Kid Folder/Library with the Kids account. But because it's inside your single Movie folder Plex will still find all of your movies, including the Kids movies, in your solitary Movie library.
Either method will work, just a matter of which you want to use. I actually use all of those methods for various libraries on my system. Plex makes it easy to create my libraries and give access to them as I see fit, with just a little extra work in the file system setup. ;)
I also use genre folders. This is how I set up my system for Windows.
I have folders corresponding to each library. I then have an extra folder I made with a bunch of batch files, each named the same as my libraries. Each batch file has the following 1 line:
mklink /h "C:\PathToMyLibraryFolder\%~nx1" %1
When I want to add the link for a movie to a particular folder, I just drag the movie file using windows explorer onto this batch file. It creates the link automatically. Just copy the batch file for each library you want and edit the path.
This seems like a nice idea... my concern is how to drag the movie... if I am browsing with Plex to decide which movie I want to share... it means I have to find the path to explorer, correct it (the antislash), the copy paste it into explorer to go to the approproate folder and then do the drag & drop...
If i decide to do it directly from explorer could be good, but can take a while too as it is more easy to browse poster images than nested folders...
Maybe a "move all these movies into one folder" feature or again a virtual library would be great in Plex... don't you think ?
Z.
EDIT: I just tried the bat file with my path but it did nothing, maybe I missed something :/
There are a lot of things I wish I could do within Plex itself, but since the manager is WebBased, I think there would be a lot of limitations to what it can do or at least a lot of work to get it implemented. I would actually like to see a stand alone Plex manager that can do a lot of these management tasks.
The batch file doesn't do anything on it's own. You need to drop a file on it from the windows explorer. Then check the folder you specified and you should see what looks like a copy of the file you dragged.
A recommendation - multiple source folders in a single library. Sperate out your movies as described but for your main movies library add multiple source folders. That way you don’t have to fiddle with using symlinks.
