Yesterday, I re-scanned my movie library because some actors were missing - I figured out why and corrected that problem by addressing my agent settings…
However on the re-scan, the collection feature took over a really jacked up my movie library. Randomly, about every 4th or 5th movie ended up in a collection all by itself, which is stupidly inserting a second menu layer for no benefit. Also, on occasion, it created some ridiculous groupings, like “London Has Fallen” grouped in a collection with “Olympus Has Fallen” and called the collection “…Has Fallen”. Really? Both if these behaviors make no sense to me at all.
So, loving the collection feature in general, can I keep it on but not allow it to automatically make collections? If if have to re-scan again in the future I don’t want to spend the hour+ to go though and movie movies out of “collections” of one all over again. I looked for a setting that controls the automatic behavior, but I can’t find it.
For immediate relief, disable the inline display of collections in your library.
For an explanation where those collections come from and what you can do about it, see here:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201273953-collections/
To make it worse, it missed a couple obvious matches - Karate Kid II went into a collection all by itself, but Karate Kid was not included in it.
Clearly, the logic of the auto-collection feature needs to be addressed.
I know if I disable the collections feature it wont happen. I like the collections, a lot. It’s the most useful feature that’s be added for quite a while. I just think the automatic behavior is broken.
I use collections BUT the auto-collections that Plex or the agent (TMDB) produce are worse than garbage so I disable that on my server and create the collections I want manually. Plex has made it pretty easy.
Thank you, that is what I was looking for. I didn’t see that option before.
I unchecked “Use collection info from The Movie Database” in my Plex Agent. Hopefully, that will prevent this from happening next time.
UNFORTUNATELY THIS DOES NOT WORK EITHER. SEEMS WE HAVE ANOTHER BUGGY FEATURE.
It’s still does it even with the above change. This is a bug.
Are you using mp4 / m4v files?
If so, verify that they don’t have an ‘Album’ meta tag.
Turning off that setting does not remove the collection data already added to your library. It only affects mere things you add. You can recreate your library or delete all the current collection data.
@OttoKerner said:
Are you using mp4 / m4v files?
If so, verify that they don’t have an ‘Album’ meta tag.
None of the Movies - all .mp4 - have an “Album” tag. They all have a Title and Year tag and most have a Genre tag. No Artist, Album Artist, or Album on any of them.
@“MovieFan.Plex” said:
Turning off that setting does not remove the collection data already added to your library. It only affects mere things you add. You can recreate your library or delete all the current collection data.
I did not suggest that turning of the setting would remove anything. I simply stated that turning of the setting did not stop the undesirable behavior. I fail to see how going through all the effort to recreate my entire library would somehow magically stop this behavior, nor would deleting all the current collection data. Your suggestions make no sense and do not address the problem.
The problem is, some movies are being put into collections by Plex that are nonsensical, like creating collections of one movie, or re-directing a movie into a collection that doesn’t match the movie.
This morning, I went though and changed some posters and backgrounds (the change in Agents led to some unwanted image changes). A handful of these edits resulted in the movie being moved by Plex into a collection of one. I had to go back to each of those and move the movie back out of the collection and delete the collection. This time with each of these, I also locked the collection field while blank hoping at least these specific ones won’t again be targeted.
I really love the idea of collections and I hope the Roku client will honor them soon, but the auto-collection building needs to be turned off or run only once when activated and not continually running - apparently even when turned off.
I went back just now to make sure I had turned it off in the Plex Agent as
@Elijah_Baley said:
I use collections BUT the auto-collections that Plex or the agent (TMDB) produce are worse than garbage so I disable that on my server and create the collections I want manually. Plex has made it pretty easy.
suggested and I had. Then I dug deeper and found the SAME option in the Movie Database agent as well. I now have turned it off there also. Hopefully, this will kill this behavior for good. I’ll do some testing…
Finally it seems to have stopped. These two movies that had been affected several times;
“Interview with a Vampire” - moved into a newly created collection “The Vampire Chronicles”
“Insurgent” - moved into a newly created collection “Divergent”
Both are solo (no other related movies in my collection at this point) and both moved more than once by the auto-collection feature, now seem to be left alone. I removed the lock on the “Collections” field and refreshed their metadata several times with no ill effects.
So the resolution is to go through ALL your active agents and make sure the “Use collection info from The Movie Database” boxes are ALL unchecked.
Thanks for your input.
@oshunluvr said:
I did not suggest that turning of the setting would remove anything. I simply stated that turning of the setting did not stop the undesirable behavior. I fail to see how going through all the effort to recreate my entire library would somehow magically stop this behavior, nor would deleting all the current collection data. Your suggestions make no sense and do not address the problem.
Ah, sorry. I thought you were trying to clean up the collections info that was already created.
@“MovieFan.Plex” said:
Ah, sorry. I thought you were trying to clean up the collections info that was already created.
Must have been some confusion there. I did need to clean up the mess the auto-collection thing caused, but I was just looking to stop it from happening again. I assumed I would have to manual fix everything, I just didn’t want to have to keep doing it. Thanks for responding tho…
