I know everyone probably has different ways of organizing and using this app, but I also think I’m probably not alone in how I organized my Plex. For me Plex primarily is a way of navigating my personal movie library with a slick user interface. The way my plex is set up is via a series of libraries, one that has everything in it, one that’s just live action films, one thats just CGI films, ones thats just Anime, or Comedy etc. So that way I can browse through just the 80s films I like or just the classic films etc, and for me its faster than going through my entire library and changing the genre tags or some other method because plex just scans the folder I already organized things in and auto does everything for me and I like having the links on the left hand menu of plex for my filtered libraries so theres easy access and its all streamlined as soon as you log into plex. But because I set it up this way, Plex finds tons of duplicates across each of these libraries whenever I do a search because some libraries have overlapping content and there doesn’t seem to be a way to customize what I search for and it always says “search all sources” with no way to change it.
This isn’t a deal breaker for me since technically all of my libraries are linking to the same source file so no matter which duplicate I choose in the search it’ll take me to the same place that I intended but lets just say I’m a little OCD about my library and would like my searches to not have duplicates in them, so to me this is currently “ugly” and “non intuitive” because most people with movie collections I’d assume have some sort of organizing structure and I’d imagine they are probably based on standard computer operating system filepaths that we’re all used to.
Maybe theres a way that it can cross reference my libraries and see that multiple of the “hits” in a search are linking to the same file location (because they are) like have it say “found in multiple libraries from this source” but without it being multiple posters in the search navigation menu, this would eliminate the clutter. This proposed system already kind of exists with the “duplicate files” little banner on the movie poster but it only does this if two separate files for a movie were found in a single library but doesn’t do it if its in another library too, why not overlap duplicate search results this way so that way they are stacked neatly and there isn’t several of the same search results across all libraries?
I also understand because I organized this way, that this means I’m duplicating all of the metadata and poster art locally for each library that has cross over/duplicated content, which isn’t ideal but I don’t really care too much. But again this is all food for thought, maybe there should be a way to get the end result I’m looking for but somehow have plex streamline the process so as to not duplicate this poster art and meta data info and remove the redundant data or somehow have a way to figure out that there are redundancies and store them all in a single location.
I know there are also playlists etc, for organizing but I don’t like the playlist system for movies currently… but if I have to… I guess I’ll have to manually change everything and waste all my previous efforts or figure out a new system of tags or genres or playlists which also isn’t ideal and involves more grinding/work to tweak it to cater to my specific needs (because no auto filter is ever perfect either it seems but some are good like when I used the Western Genre search it was great, but say the “animation” genre is a vague concept that always clumps hand drawn and CGI films together and theres never a way to search for just CGI films it seems without making a custom tag and doing a lot of work/sifting).
The easiest fix for me to eliminate the duplicate search results, is to be able to differentiate searching for pinned or unpinned content, or even just have “search” only search within the pinned libraries/content. That way I can just hide and unpin these other libraries which are just subfolders in the file path of the main library (so its like “Movies/movie categories/CGI Films”).
Doing it this way would allow me to still easily search my entire film library (which would always be pinned at all times), while keeping the grid poster navigation style for my other filtered sub-libraries but instead they would be relegated to the “more” section on the left hand menu, which is where unpinned libraries go and would be fine for me and thus I could bypass having to use playlists all together and still use the grid view I’ve become accustomed to and enjoy. This would eliminate the duplicate searches problem with this style of organizing and I wouldn’t have to keep unpinning and repinning libraries to do specific searches because I’d probably just be lazy and keep all my custom filter sub-libraries unpinned in the more section, that way the “search” in this scenario would be designated as a master search for the whole film library without filters or overlaps/duplicates (best of both worlds really) because to be honest I don’t really need to search just one library anyways (though it would be nice), I just want to only search my main library because the realistic use for search is for searching for a specific movie title if that makes sense.
or another idea would be if I was able to specify which library I am searching in, like for example whichever library is currently highlighted and selected on the left hand side menu of plex is what is currently being “searched within”, this would make it muuuuch easier and streamlined so that each library can just be searched within exclusively while they are selected and being navigated through via normal use, this would also make it very intuitive because when I first used plex I figured this was how it was going to work but discovered that sadly it didn’t. Doing it this way would also allow a lot of functionality without needing to redesign any of the user interface and keep most of the fixing under the hood. I’m actually surprised theres no search filter parameters or customizable options at all besides getting rid of the Movies & Tv/new/podcasts which I already did.
Otherwise another fix would be some way of being able to organize or search things by folder and then pinning that to the left hand menu because my folders are already organized by hand but plex doesn’t seem to notice or have a way to integrate my previous folder organization on my hard drive and has its own system which I have to manually edit.
Another way around this perhaps, is to “pin” a genre to plex’s left hand side menu (while hopefully still keeping the grid view poster navigation). Because many of my sub libraries are just genres anyways (except for the CGI/Live Action ones). So this method of fix would create a philosophical equal to my current system in many respects. Like if I can directly pin a genre filter (like how one does while navigating within a library) but be able to activate that same action from the left hand menu instead of going through a series of drop down menus to find that genre within a specific library (which is more steps and annoying and I probably have a few favorite go to’s like “Comedy” for instance), this method/fix would also be a nice work around and a be more efficient use of plex in general.
I understand I can mimic what I proposed and put a genre filter into a playlist and make it auto update while manually inputting a playlist creates a static one, but this still isn’t as streamlined as I would like it to be or as customizable as it should be.
I guess the only other way to create my filtered content the way I’m imagining is by making play lists, or collections, but this also changes the navigation style and removes grid view which is what I like for scrolling through my library, and I don’t like list view because everything is too small and the posters are tiny. Collections are intended for a movie collection like a trilogy, not for filtering content like by genre or type. Actually come to think of it, why can’t we select grid, list, or summary view while in playlists? Thats another easy fix to much of this.
By fixing this issue I think it would really make Plex a lot stronger with its ability to navigate and search for content. Plex’s strength is its auto scanning and meta data features, bypassing the need for tedious library upkeep, why not utilize this with a users custom folder organizing and not force them into tons of manual edits to get it the way they want? I feel like the basic steps are there in the overall design philosophy of Plex but all the steps haven’t been made to connect the dots and falls short in each area that could have fixed this issue. So why not utilize my current file structure organizing, and plexs ability to auto fill in metadata, this would make Plex insanely easy to use for someone whos library is already organized by folders. I just feel because of how plex is currently designed, its missing something key and creating extra work for people, so fixing this issue or incorporating this style of organizing into the plex’s features or design philosophy would be a nice adaptation because I doubt I’m the only one using plex this way either and I’ve seen quite a few users post about these same issues with folder organizing.
Sorry for the long post but if you need any clarifications just let me know, I wouldn’t mind taking photos and pointing with arrows or photoshopping what possible hypothetical alternative solutions would look like.
