Server Version#: 1.18.5.2260
Player Version#: 4.12.3
Problem 1: respect ‘Disable collections’ in library settings
In addition to a main ‘Movies’ library, I also have other sub-libraries that sometimes feature the same movies e.g. ‘The Empire Strike Back’ is also in my ‘Movies-Kids’ and ‘Movies-Recommended’, ‘IMDB250’ etc libraries. Even though for these secondary libraries I have set Collections to ‘disabled’ they are still being shown on all the other libraries, when they shouldn’t be. I can understand the rationale to show collections from other libraries, but not if the collections are disabled.
Here’s the mess it makes of my Empire listing page in the main libraries page - look at the incomplete collection listings (because not all the Star Wars movies are in the sub-libraries. It also affects the search, as unnecessary multiple listings appear.
Problem 2: Incomplete collections being shown when restrictions set
I have set restrictions by content rating and tags for my kids e.g. only show U, PG etc and a few higher certs like 12A for films I tag. When logged into their account on the Collections tab they don’t see all their available collections. e.g. here’s the Empire view for one of my kids showing all the movies, whereas Star Wars like hundreds (literally) of other collections aren’t being shown on the library tab
kids view of empire (picking up extra collections again):
first, the visibility of collections applies ONLY to the library view and whether or not there is a collections entry/poster within the movie posters list.
second, I dunno about the age restrictions, sorry don’t use them.
That’s not a sensible solution - I know I can select all movies in a library and remove the collections, but I’d have to keep doing that everytime I add a new movie and I’m guessing potentially having to remove collectins if metadata gets updated. That’s a lot of effort for a big library, when I barely touch my metadata as it just works!
I don’t want cross pollination of collections across libraries and an option to turn it off please. You’re just explaining how it works currently, which is what I’m asking to be changed in a future version.
The 2nd thing I’ve pointed out is a clear bug as that can’t be the intended behaviour.
‘cross pollination’ of collections of the same name is the intended purpose and unlikely to change, but who am I but just another user.
if you change the NAME the collection, perhaps star wars-kids, then you will avoid duplicates across libraries.
or as above, disable collection information from even being applied.
if you want to request a feature/change, then post in the feature request forum where everyone can vote and plex can take it into consideration based upon demand.
Not if you turn off the idiotic gathering of ‘Collection’ info from TMDB/Plex Movie (Plex Movie even gathers ‘Collection Info’ from TMDB - then dutifully and stupidly adds single movies to a Collection - for a reason Users are unable to comprehend:
Edit: disabling collections didn’t work as it’s a global setting rather than a per library setting, which I want for my main library. I’ve resorted to deleting the collection info from each movie in those libraries. The Collection info didn’t seem to get re-added when I did a refresh metadata, so hopefully the tags won’t come back.
Thanks - that’s part helped solve the problem as I forgotten about that setting. I guess I thought previously disabling collections would do the trick. I’ve done this for a few of my smaller libraries that I don’t need the collections showing and I definitely don’t want the duplicates/half-empty collections appearing in other libraries. I guess that’s all I’ll get until collection support is fixed - it’s the only major area where I think Kodi wins hands down with addons like Artwork Beef.
To my original list of Collections issues I’d like to add 3) Disabling collections doesn’t disable the ‘Collections’ like at the top of libraries (Recommended Library Collections Playlists)
I mean no offense but it sounds like you didn’t read the posts from TeknoJunky above (or maybe you missed those parts).
The Collections option in the advanced library settings is configuring how collections are being displayed within the regular library view (when sorted by title). The options are:
Disabled => collections are not displayed in line with the other library items
Hide items which are in collections => displays the collection poster instead of each individual movie
Show collections and their items => displays the collection poster and the posters of all movies in that collection
Setting how collections are displayed (see above) is not a global setting but can be configured individually for each library!
There’s 2 scenarios how collection tags can be added to your movies:
If you have enabled Use collection info from The Movie Database in the advanced library settings (again… individually for each library)
When you have local media assets enabled and an mp4/m4v file contains an embedded Album tag, Plex will interpret that as Collection
If you don’t want collections to show at all, you indeed need to remove all of them
There’s certainly topics that could be improved when it comes to collections. There’s actually a number of open feature suggestions, e.g. on downloading posters/descriptions from The Movie Database (instead of just creating/defining a collection) or changing how collections behave if you have movies in multiple collections.
The behavior of those collections is quite nicely explained in this support article:
@tom80H I read the posts and I already understood how collections works, apart from forgetting that options in the library settings are global (another annoying problem) rather than local to that library.
What I am asking for is for Collections to not to be duplicated between libraries of the same content type, that contain the same movies:
The way that the service is built above is perfectly fine if you only have one movies library, but if you have more than one and it contains the same movie e.g. as in my scenario where in addition to my movies library I have kids_library which has (using my star wars example) the star wars movies in, and other libraries ‘Movies_Recommend’, ‘IMDB Top 250’ and more created using the python plex library script it all falls down and gets really messy. Hence my post!
The 2nd problem I posted is a less annoying bug. This is where I’ve given my kids access to some of the more mature movies in the main Movies library now that they are getting older, based on sharing tags and content_rating restrictions. I’m having to do this as the older one in particular is ready to watch more 12/12A movies.
As shown in the screenshot only 23 collections are showing from 2909 movies available to them, whereas there should be roughly 200.
I am not sure how the restrictions and collections interact (it all comes down to sql queries to the database), however it could very well be that if there is any content within a collection that does not meet your restriction, then the whole collection is hidden.
meaning, if collection xyz, has movies ABC and DEF, but DEF is rated R, then collection xyz is hidden.
I would suggest you make a TEST collection.
Add a couple TEST movies/shows, then experiment with the ratings/restrictions and see what happens.
you might also try testing different LABEL combinations along with the restrictions to see how they interact with the ratings.
I’ve already tried that. e.g. for the star wars collection all movies are in my son’s library based on content_rating, with no manual sharing tags applied and the collection doesn’t appear in his library.
I’ve tested this to death and there’s no workaround to fix the problems caused by the way collections are handled, hence my first post.
What I’ve had to resort to in order to fix 1) is to delete collection labels from the other libraries, delete the collections and then remember to keep doing this every now and then as new movies are added to those libraries/hope the tags don’t reappear on a metadata update.
For 2, this is a genuine bug and if there was a bug reporting tool I would submit it along with logs.
you can attach logs here (or a new post if you prefer)
Plex Web > settings > troubleshooting > download logs
drag/drop the zip into a reply
you might want to make sure DEBUG is ON and VERBOSE is OFF in the server settings.
then navigate to the profile/sections that you are having problems with, or otherwise some how recreate the issue so the logs can capture what is happening, then download/attach to post.
then Tom or any other plex team can have more info to investigate.
Changed 8 movies in Halloween to ‘12’ so would show up in kids library
Movies visible in kids library view when they are logged in - collection showing on movie detail page, but not added to Collection view Plex Media Server Logs_2020-01-21_23-03-45.zip (3.2 MB)
