Problem after create smart collection

[hfoi589]

1. There are two ways to generate the collections in Plex’s library tab, which is ‘add to collection’ and ‘create smart collection’.
2. Now I have more than 10000 movies in my library, and I choose ‘created smart collection’ by actor and choose ‘Hide items which are in collections’ in my library advanced setting.
3. But seems it doesn’t worked? Seems the ‘smart collection’ which doesn’t be regarded as ‘collection’ . So that the movies I have already added in smart collection are still shown when I sort by title.
   4.And I tried to change to ‘add to collection’ and then the feature ‘Hide items which are in collections’ worked…

In a word, the collection you create by ‘create smart collection’ feature doesn’t be regarded as ‘collection’, so that the feature ‘Hide items which are in collections’ doesn’t worked.

Did anyone have met the same problem? And can any guys find the better way to auto maintain the 10000 movies by actor automaticlly?

[tom80H]

Collection display options like hiding their items from the library view don’t apply for smart collections. I believe it’s a known issue that the smart collection options still offer that option despite it having no effect.

What exactly are you trying to achieve?
There’s no automated way of organizing a library by actors/cast. You can however filter by actors (or directors, writers…). Alternatively you can also use the person page from the global search or by clicking an actor’s image.

[hfoi589]

The num of movies I have is huge. I want to create collections by actor to make it order.
The smart collection can automatically update and include this actor’s movie I download in the furture.Saving my time to sort them…
And as it’s the known issue, is it possible to ask PLEX to fix it?..

[hfoi589]

Smart collection can automatically add new movies into collection.
Then I won’t waste time to sort them time by time.

[tom80H]

@hfoi589

And as it’s the known issue, is it possible to ask PLEX to fix it?

If I understood it correctly, Plex considers the different behavior to be “by design” – so the issue is only that smart collections have the full set of visibility options even they’re not supposed to be available.

You can still have smart collections – but maybe it’ll be easier to access the library via the Collections tab for your use case.
As a side note… organizing the library by actors via a smart collection has its caveats. A smart collection will e.g. not distinguish different actors by the same name. IMDb is e.g. listing 13 persons named “Jack Black” – your smart collection will pick up every single one of them, not necessarily the same person.

IIRC there’s been a feature suggestion to get another tab like Categories. The Categories tab will group your library by genres. I’ll need to see if I can find the other suggestion I have in mind… that one was basically asking for a similar grouping based on actors (or directors).

Edit:
link to the referred feature suggestion (that suggestion didn’t get all that much attention/support from the community)

Add Additional Tabs

Plex has added a “Categories” tab which sorts media by its “Genres” tags. It would be useful to have similar tabs for “Directors”, “Countries” or “Studio”. Ideally, users would also have the option to hide some or all of these to prevent crowding the UI. From my perspective, this would more fully implement the green/bud card shown by Amanda Sobrinski during her Plex Pro Week video. I currently use collections for specific directors, countries, and studios; requiring custom sort names to keep t…

[hfoi589]

@tom80H

You can still have smart collections – but maybe it’ll be easier to access the library via the Collections tab for your use case.
As a side note… organizing the library by actors via a smart collection has its caveats. A smart collection will e.g. not distinguish different actors by the same name. IMDb is e.g. listing 13 persons named “Jack Black” – your smart collection will pick up every single one of them, not necessarily the same person.

The actor in my library is Asain guys, most of thier names are unique. so maybe I won’t have the problem you mentioned like “Jack Black”…
The true problem is , the 10000 movies still be 10000 after I create the smart collection one by one if movies already in smart collections don’t hide.
And I will have trouble in create new collection since I can’t remember which movies I haven’t add…