Nested Collections

[user24 412]

33 minutes ago, ginjaninja said:

I have different types of collections which users would appreciating consuming separately when browsing if possible. and i as curator would appreciate showing separately. Perhaps a more simple use case for something akin to 'nested collections'.

Hey there, I've been experimenting with the new home screen sections in the latest beta version (4.10.0.2) and it is now somewhat possible to get a group of collections into their own subsection, via Tags. This is what I set up as an experiment:

The individual countries are Collections of Artists. All Collections have an "Artist Country" Tag and the section is a Tag Section Type.

The only downside I have found (so far) is that while the individual country collections are "clickable" the whole Section of Collections (all the country collections as a group - "clicking" the heading) does not show up under the Tag on the individual Tag page. I reported on this in more detail here:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/145871-41001-revamped-home-screen-section-editor/page/7/#comment-1505864

Maybe this is useful and perhaps you can use this and/or think of a better way to make it more easily workable?  I think it's very close to being usable, but Emby could make it better. Perhaps something to see what you could do with this? Cheers!

Edited February 12 by user24

[ginjaninja 660]

3 hours ago, user24 said:

Hey there, I've been experimenting with the new home screen sections in the latest beta version (4.10.0.2) and it is now somewhat possible to get a group of collections into their own subsection, via Tags. This is what I set up as an experiment:

The individual countries are Collections of Artists. All Collections have an "Artist Country" Tag and the section is a Tag Section Type.

The only downside I have found (so far) is that while the individual country collections are "clickable" the whole Section of Collections (all the country collections as a group - "clicking" the heading) does not show up under the Tag on the individual Tag page. I reported on this in more detail here:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/145871-41001-revamped-home-screen-section-editor/page/7/#comment-1505864

Maybe this is useful and perhaps you can use this and/or think of a better way to make it more easily workable?  I think it's very close to being usable, but Emby could make it better. Perhaps something to see what you could do with this? Cheers!

Thanks it gets some of the way there. I dont think the 'copy data to users' function copies home screen config? so rolling out to users might be a bit of a ball ache, will try it out.. Tagging mediaitems with parent mediaitem 'alone' doesnt feel like a long term way to build a collection architecture in my mind. In an ideal world collections would have option of being ordered with a degree of rights management.

[rbjtech 5389]

2 hours ago, ginjaninja said:

Thanks it gets some of the way there. I dont think the 'copy data to users' function copies home screen config? so rolling out to users might be a bit of a ball ache, will try it out.. Tagging mediaitems with parent mediaitem 'alone' doesnt feel like a long term way to build a collection architecture in my mind. In an ideal world collections would have option of being ordered with a degree of rights management.

It was done for Playlists - so agree, users being able to create their own Collections, tied in with all the new Homescreen changes would be fantastic.   The idea of 'Lists vs Collections' is probably adding complexity imo - I full understand why they are different, but from a standard user perspective, a collection 'is' a list of titles.

[ebr 16830]

15 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

I full understand why they are different, but from a standard user perspective, a collection 'is' a list of titles.

They are subsets of the same superset.

A Playlist is an ordered list of playable items whereas a collection is a collection of pretty much any items.

[rbjtech 5389]

9 minutes ago, ebr said:

They are subsets of the same superset.

A Playlist is an ordered list of playable items whereas a collection is a collection of pretty much any items.

You can call them what you like  but Playlists have only ever been suitable for Audio and possibly Movies, but people just don't watch movies back to back - so not very useful imo.    if Users had the ability to create their own collections (aka 'Lists' of Movies and TV Shows (as opposed to episodes)) - ie a Watchlist - then I think there would be a lot of happy people on this forum..

[visproduction 374]

rbj,

You probably already know this.  If you put the 1st episode of a TV series in a playlist, I believe the series will continue to play to episode 2.  Now that I say this, I don't currently have access to an active server to see if that's true.  I think it is.  It would of course make a very long duration for such a playlist.

Edited February 12 by visproduction

[user84 51]

20 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

You can call them what you like  but Playlists have only ever been suitable for Audio and possibly Movies, but people just don't watch movies back to back - so not very useful imo.    if Users had the ability to create their own collections (aka 'Lists' of Movies and TV Shows (as opposed to episodes)) - ie a Watchlist - then I think there would be a lot of happy people on this forum..

I use playlists for all kinds of stuff....

-I have a TV show playlist that only includes unplayed episodes of my favorite TV shows that I watched nearly every night.

-I have a playlist of kids movies that have not been watched in the last 6 months that my kids can put on shuffle 

-I have a playlist of comedies that are family friendly that we can watch anytime, again on shuffle. 

I have others. I think playlists are super versatile and can be used for whatever you decide.

[user24 412]

@ginjaninja Sorry, I spoke too soon - what seemed to be possible with Tags and Collections in 4.10.0.2 no longer seems to be possible in 4.10.0.3. 

Quote

The genre, tag and studio section types have been removed in favor of a more generalized dyanmic media section.

Will be interesting to see how it evolves...

[rbjtech 5389]

11 hours ago, user84 said:

I use playlists for all kinds of stuff....

-I have a TV show playlist that only includes unplayed episodes of my favorite TV shows that I watched nearly every night.

-I have a playlist of kids movies that have not been watched in the last 6 months that my kids can put on shuffle 

-I have a playlist of comedies that are family friendly that we can watch anytime, again on shuffle. 

I have others. I think playlists are super versatile and can be used for whatever you decide.

And I think you have confirmed what I said above - the definition of a group of media means different things to different people.

To me - all of the above are equally termed a collection or a list.   

But anyway - I think all these changes incoming in Beta are a very good thing, Emby is now starting to dynamically create 'collections/lists/playlists/watchlists/spotlights/favorites' (call them what you like).. and show them as homescreen rows.  

[Landoman 31]

It has been 9 years, 2 levels folders at least. 
Collection and Sub collection. 

Edited yesterday at 06:33 PM by Landoman

[Landoman 31]

"Nested groups using SQL dbase is a complex issue. Easy to describe, but difficult to code.  It's the "Easier said than done" type.  Most online sites do not offer this type of nested selection.  Even the search engines avoid it.  I can't think of an online example.  If you know of a site that does it, perhaps list it in this post.  It could be helpful."

Emby is not an online site. It is a media server/organiser. It is a standard client server set of applications. 
It has a server
it has a client.

"Nested SQL quieries"

Show me the performance impact or issue of having collections within collections. Show me the issue as to why you can have a series, then episodes within that series

but you cannot have a collection and then a collection within that collection.

it is a virtual file system. The metadata associated with each object does not change. You would have one extra field called sub-collection. 

"I can't think of an online example."

Office 365, Libre office,
Any Mail system, Gmail, Outlook, thunderbird, Macmail, Mail, mail (*nix)
Any file system, *nix, Ubuntu, Debian, Rapberry Pi, Windows, OSX,.....
Any browser, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera
Any android phone, any Iphone. Windows phone. 

Pretty much every single application which organises anything allows you to create virtual folders.
 

Edited 11 hours ago by Landoman

[Landoman 31]

On 12/02/2026 at 19:43, rbjtech said:

You can call them what you like  but Playlists have only ever been suitable for Audio and possibly Movies, but people just don't watch movies back to back - so not very useful imo.    if Users had the ability to create their own collections (aka 'Lists' of Movies and TV Shows (as opposed to episodes)) - ie a Watchlist - then I think there would be a lot of happy people on this forum..

Exactly this. playlists cannot be used for TV Episodes.

Here is what I want to use it for.. I have multiple collections of TV shows in different priorities. Shows I am watching now, shows in queue 2, then queue 3,  all based on my preferences. The problem is I have a flat single level folder for all of this. I would like to do this:

TV 
- Watch now
- Second
- Third

Movies
- Watch now
- Second
- Third

Another thing I would like to be able to do is this, find a movie, oh i should watch that. Add it to a collection to watch. Why do I not add it to a playlist? My music folder has about 500 playlists so I cannot navigate it. Hence playlists are out. If there is an easy solution to this please let me know.

Even 2 levels of collections would make organising a lot easier. 

The other issue is once I have watched a tv series I have to remove if from the collection watch now.  This could be because the series has ended but the show has not. However I still watch this show in my High priority watch list as it is a good show. Often I forget about a show and its had a new series and I don't realise. Also there is the problem of series that have ended. So I have to create a collection for ended series as I might go searching for a tv series that has no next series.

[ebr 16830]

5 hours ago, Landoman said:

how me the issue as to why you can have a series, then episodes within that series

but you cannot have a collection and then a collection within that collection.

The difference is an episode is not ALSO a container.  If it were, it could fall prey to the same complications which are the potential circular references.

It isn't that it is unsolvable.  Just a lot more complicated than it may seem.

[Landoman 31]

 The episode is a single item. 
The container for it is the series.
The container above that is the collection. You already have this.

Why can you not simply create a symbolic link to the tv series? And then containers within container? 

If you are worried about a circular reference just check the container cannot contain itself. 

 

Somebody could create an external plugin that references the movie, tv show and then create a virtual file structure for it.  So collections can be made and then collections within collections. 

Edited just now by Landoman