Media collections
A media collection groups catalogue items by a chosen relationship without requiring their files to share a directory.
A collection gives a selection of library items a name and a shared place to browse. It can represent a film series, a director retrospective or a personally curated theme. The important resource is the membership relationship: each listed member still refers to its own catalogue item.
For example, Night Ferry can belong to a River stories collection and a Director retrospective. Its film description need not be copied into two independent movie records.
| Collection | Members in this fictional example | Reason for grouping |
|---|---|---|
| River stories | Night Ferry, The Lockkeeper | Subject chosen by the curator |
| Director retrospective | Night Ferry, Platform Nine | A credited director |
| Harbour Trilogy | Harbour I, Harbour II, Harbour III | A series of related films |
The first two are interpretations of a catalogue; the third could correspond to a provider's recognized movie collection. The file paths do not determine any of these memberships.
The group can have its own description
A collection's title, overview and artwork describe the group. A movie's title, synopsis and poster describe the member. That distinction lets a collection introduce a retrospective without rewriting every film's synopsis.
The group can also be incomplete. Owning two films from a three-film collection does not imply the third resource exists. A provider's collection membership describes a catalogue relationship; the library's available members describe what this server can present.
Emby supports both manual collections and automatic movie collection creation from imported information. The Collections support page describes those controls. A meaningful automatic group relies on the imported relationship, rather than inferring a franchise from every shared word in a title.
Automatic and curated membership answer different questions
| Membership basis | What it is trying to express | Why it may change |
|---|---|---|
| Imported provider relationship | A collection recognized by that catalogue | Provider corrections, matching changes or refresh behavior |
| Manual selection | The curator's intended set | Someone edits the membership |
| Search/filter result | Items satisfying current field conditions | Fields or filtering conditions change |
A collection named Films set by the sea may intentionally include a documentary and a drama. It need not coincide with any provider's franchise model. Imported franchise information is equally unlikely to know that this viewer has chosen a special weekend programme.
A playlist is useful when that programme needs a playback sequence. A collection primarily says “these belong together”; a playlist makes ordering and individual entries part of the selection. The distinction remains useful even if an app can play all members of a collection.
Removing a membership and deleting a media item are different concepts. The former changes the group's contents; the latter affects the resource or its catalogue entry.