Collections and Playlists

[hsbrown2]

Is there a way that I can create a playlist whereby all singleton movies are displayed as just the movie, but all collections are displayed the collection?

For example, if I have 1 Star Trek movie, but all Star Wars movies, the playlist will show Star Trek, then Star Wars, and if I click on Star Trek it drills down to the movie level (or plays it), but if I click Star Wars, it drills into a "sub-playlist" that shows all the Star Wars movies?

I hope this makes sense...

Thanks!
hsbrown

[jbinkley60]

Is there a way that I can create a playlist whereby all singleton movies are displayed as just the movie, but all collections are displayed the collection?

For example, if I have 1 Star Trek movie, but all Star Wars movies, the playlist will show Star Trek, then Star Wars, and if I click on Star Trek it drills down to the movie level (or plays it), but if I click Star Wars, it drills into a "sub-playlist" that shows all the Star Wars movies?

I hope this makes sense...

Thanks!
hsbrown

I do this by creating a main folder on my hard drive called Science Fiction which is where I put the the Star Trek movie and similar single Sci Fi movies. Then I create a subfolder called Star Wars and put the Star Wars movies there. That's the easiest way I know but if you have a reason to organize how you store your media on your hard drive a different way, this might not work for you.

[hsbrown2]

I don’t ever use the folders playlist. I’ve created several custom playlists.

What would be a great feature is if, during the creation of a custom playlist, one could just tick a checkbox “show series/collection as series/collection” rather than not, or a “group by series” or something of that sort.

[Peter]

You can create an active playlist with the keyword Album/Series and the smart rule Category is Movie then all the movies in a collection will appear in this playlist.

[hsbrown2]

Well, then perhaps a feature request is in order?

I’d like to create a playlist of all movies that groups collection together. That is, if Series is blank or null, just show the movie title, if not group them by series.

Hope that makes sense.

I haven’t tried it yet but I have to assume that in doing this all that are blank or null are going to land in one giant series.

[Peter]

If Series is blank or null then these movies will be excluded from the playlist so you will just get the movies that are part of a collection and no movies that are just a one off. You could create another playlist for movies that are not part of a collection and set a rule that the Series is empty then you can choose to browse movie collections or one off movies.

[hsbrown2]

If Series is blank or null then these movies will be excluded from the playlist so you will just get the movies that are part of a collection and no movies that are just a one off. You could create another playlist for movies that are not part of a collection and set a rule that the Series is empty then you can choose to browse movie collections or one off movies.

Ideally, if I could create a basic list of all movies, and had a checkbox that would allow me to "Show collections as folders" that would be ideal.


Rather than have 2 separate playlists, one with collections, and one with all movies (including those in collections) it would be a better experience.


Part of the problem is when movies have titles that are not in alphabetical order, they do not appear in chronological order without some manipulation of the alphabet. Additionally, as a user, if I'm surfing my collection looking for something to watch, as opposed to having a specific title in mind, if I could reduce the number of items in the list by skimming over, or optionally opening, collections by collection, and also look at all the singletons, it would be what I would consider a better experience.


I hope that makes sense.

[hsbrown2]

Also, just to add a quick addition, when I create a playlist organized by collection, it seems like the query takes a very long time to run (several minutes - 189 collections, and ~1500 movies). Once it is all loaded, it seems to work, but it can take a while to load. The server is overkill, so I don't think that's the issue. It may just be the way the query is built, or perhaps indexes.

[Peter]

Is this the time to create the active playlist or the time to load the playlist on a device?

[Peter]

Ideally, if I could create a basic list of all movies, and had a checkbox that would allow me to "Show collections as folders" that would be ideal.


Rather than have 2 separate playlists, one with collections, and one with all movies (including those in collections) it would be a better experience.


Part of the problem is when movies have titles that are not in alphabetical order, they do not appear in chronological order without some manipulation of the alphabet. Additionally, as a user, if I'm surfing my collection looking for something to watch, as opposed to having a specific title in mind, if I could reduce the number of items in the list by skimming over, or optionally opening, collections by collection, and also look at all the singletons, it would be what I would consider a better experience.


I hope that makes sense.

Currently active playlists require that the files contain all the fields used in the keywords, so if collection is empty then the files are not displayed. There is a checkbox in options to show files only at the lowest level of active playlists, with this turned off then you get the full list of files at each level of the playlist but this might not achieve what you are looking for as it would include all files and not just those without a collection. We can look at implementing some method of grouping files by a keyword.