Opinions on movies sorting

[Ronstang 294]

I have a lot of "franchise" collections on Blu-Ray or DVD like "Halloween", "Dirty Harry" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" to name just a few.  I am finally getting around to putting my personal discs on emby after 4 years and I would appreciate opinions on title sort order that everyone uses or thinks may be best.

I never messed with sort order before but this has me thinking.  For instance with Halloween the movie names end up with random sort order but if I change the sort order in metadata to Halloween 1, Halloween 2, Halloween 3 etc. all the way through Halloween 13 then the movies all show up together under "H" when sorting by alphabet in chronological order regardless of the actual movie title.  The benefit of this is in my opinion is the casual watcher the may not know the whole franchise will immediately see all the titles together rather than having to research....and of those that are aware at least all the movies are together.

The downside of this method is that some of the movies will not show up in a true alphabetical search.  For instance, all the Dirty Harry movies have unique titles so if someone goes to "S" to see if "Sudden Impact" is available they will not find it under "S" but rather "D".  Now if they do an actual search this does not matter.

This does not mean I won't actually have a collection that has all the movies.  It is just a way to see all available titles from a franchise if they happen upon them in a "scrolling" search.

I value the opinions of this community as I have learned a lot here so I was wondering what people think, how they handle these types of collections or any other input on this issue.

 

Thanks

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

When files are directly related, like the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings movies I change the sort title so they show up in the order I want. And in the case of the Hobbit movies I use "Hobbit xx.yy" as the sort title even for the ones titled as "Lord of the Rings." Normally I use the form "Title Date released" like "Amityville 1979" but I make exceptions for movie series that were not released in the order for best viewing like "Star Wars" I use sort titles like "StarWars xx.yy" where xx=the major viewing order and yy is used to insert newer movies between existing ones like "StarWars 01.00" for the first movie in viewing order and "StarWars 04.00" for "A new Hope."
Later on I needed to insert  "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" in between "Revenge of the Syth" and "A New Hope" so I used StarWars 03.50 and that inserted it between the movies I wanted it to be between. By naming the movies that way in the sort title I still see the original title displayed but the order is what I want. I also am covered unless some studio decides to release 100 or more movies between two earlier ones.

I do use collections but I NEVER allow Emby's automatic collection feature to do it as that feature is majorly flawed and cannot even group the Frankenstein movies together correctly.

I do not usually browse by collections but, when I do I do not want to have to go into three or four different collections just to see all the movies related by title.

Emby offers so many naming/sorting options that it was hard for me to decide exactly how I wanted it done. I came up with my methods several years ago and I have not had to change it, at least yet.

[Ronstang 294]

@Gilgamesh_48So you are validating what I am experimenting with so that when "scroll searching" of finding the first movie in a series that all the others show up next, next, next...etc. in the order you suggest viewing?  Because that is what I started doing today with certain collections.

Oh I couldn't agree more on automatic collections...it is abysmal.  Not only does it make a collection out of EVERYTHING it also makes terrible errors based on title alone it puts two or more movies together that do not belong and like you said leaves out others where they belong.   I lost count of my Frankenstein movies....from Universal to Hammer they are all separate collections in my opinion.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

13 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

 I lost count of my Frankenstein movies....from Universal to Hammer they are all separate collections in my opinion.

And I want all Frankenstein movies in the same collection. Emby's automatic collection "feature" is worse than flawed but it can be turned off so it is OK. I don't much like others trying to decide what I want so I turn off much of the automatic crap. But Emby allows a LOT of customization so I end up with mostly what I want.

One of the major reasons I like and use Emby is because of its customization ability.

I do not know anyone that wants their movies/TV shows arranged and presented the way I do but I do not share with anybody so the only person I have to please is me. (and my dog of course but he never argues with me about presentation.)

My only real suggestion is to think through any customizations before you make them as undoing things in Emby can be a LOT more tedious than doing them in the first place. I kind of wish there was a button in Emby's settings that would basically reset everything customizable back to its defaults. I do not like the idea of having to do everything again but, before I decided on my current usage format, I had to redo some things and it took MUCH longer than I really wanted to spend on it but my current setup seems to feed all my needs/wants so I am unlikely to need to reset things anytime soon.

I also wish Emby's collection feature allowed collections inside collections. That way I could have all my Frankenstein movies in one collection and you could have them separated into collections by studio but we both have the same collections at the top level.

[Ronstang 294]

1 hour ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

My only real suggestion is to think through any customizations before you make them as undoing things in Emby can be a LOT more tedious than doing them in the first place.

I agree and understand, that is why I am asking for opinions now, when I am just starting this venture to rip all my personal stuff.  I only have a few collections at the moment and I am going to see how I like it this way.  I do have a number of users and I will ask their opinion also and see where the consensus falls.  For me myself it is not that big of a deal as I know all of my content so finding it isn't that hard but something tells me for the person who might like the movies but is more casual in how they use emby it might be nice to have all the films right there grouped together.

 

2 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

I also wish Emby's collection feature allowed collections inside collections. That way I could have all my Frankenstein movies in one collection and you could have them separated into collections by studio but we both have the same collections at the top level.

I couldn't agree more.  I would love to have all my Frankenstein movies together with sub collections but mixing the Universal ones from the Hammer ones of 25+ years later is just not how I want them grouped.  I love both, but they are totally different viewing experiences.  For me it would be like grouping different genres of music together.  The moods for watching are too different for me at least...but PLEASE....let us have collections within collections!!

[rbjtech 5284]

For movies with a common alternate name - then just create an STRM pointing to the original movie - and give it the alternate name and sort name.

A  good example is the 'Indiana Jones' collection - 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' is of course not listed with the other Films - but if you create a STRM (and change the Sortname to 'Indiana Jones (1) - Raiders blah blah' then it will appear in two places - under R and also under I

Shame the metadata can't have an alternate name that does this for us ..

Edited October 24, 2023 by rbjtech

[blgentry 51]

I understand the desire to have the movie name available while browsing, but also wanting to see the movies together as a collection.

I decided that collections (both auto and manual) were the best solution for me.  If I don't see Sudden Impact while scrolling, no big deal.  I can always search for it.  Alternately I might not know that movie title and instead will recognize Dirty Harry as a collection while scrolling through.

 

People here are giving Collections a really hard time.  I'm surprised as I find the Collections feature in Emby to be the best one I have seen in any system.  Perhaps it could have more features.  But it is quite good as is.

 

"STRM" files seem way too hacky to me.  Hard coded paths are a no go for me.  But if it works for you, that's cool too.

 

Brian.

[Ronstang 294]

7 hours ago, blgentry said:

"STRM" files seem way too hacky to me.  Hard coded paths are a no go for me.  But if it works for you, that's cool too.

Yeah, that is my problem too.  I have a huge collection and I keep adding to it almost every day and I end up needing more and bigger drives which means at some point I end up reorganizing my files and  all of a sudden local STRM files are likely dead.   I spend too much time organizing, I really don't want to reorganize all the time.  

[rbjtech 5284]

@Ronstang

Maybe invest in some drive pooling software and/or use UNC paths - that way you don't need to change anything.   I've had the same emby share names for many many years through multiple hardware upgrades and disk storage backend upgrades and changes.