Issue with Collections

[mc1984]

Computer info:
Mac mini (late 2012)
2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
OSX 10.13.2

Server: Jellyfin-Server
Version: 10.8.10
Operating System: Darwin
Architecture: X64


First time posting in forum so bear with me.  I am trying to organize my video files in a particular way.  I want all the MCU films in a single collection folder which I can see I needed to do manually. As far as I can see I have removed all options including plug-in's that automate collection recognition and organization but somehow all the individual series (i.e. Iron-Man, Black Panther, Ant-Man, etc) keep re-colleting in their own individual collections even after I delete them. Is there a way to keep Jellyfin from doing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

List of current active plug in's:
AudioDB 10.8.10.0
Bookshelf 9.0.0.0
Cover Art Archive 7.0.0.0
MusicBrainz 10.8.10.0
OMDb 10.8.10.0
Studio Images 10.8.10.0
TMDb 10.8.10.0

As I'm typing this I see that the TMDb plug-in has a scheduled task of updating box-set information. I'm guessing this is whats causing this. I'm not seeing the option to uninstall the plug-in. I'm going to remove the scheduled task and see if that resolves the issue. If it does not I will update here. Any other thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated!

[TheDreadPirate]

In the library settings, did you enable "Automatically add to collection"?

   

The scheduled job you talked about is only present if you have the TMDB Boxset plugin installed, which you did not list.  It is not part of the base TMDB plugin, which comes with Jellyfin and can't be easily removed, nor should it be removed.

On my test Jellyfin I do have that plugin installed and the schedule job is present.

   
   

On my main Jellyfin I do not have the TMDB Boxset plugin installed and the job is NOT present.

   

[mc1984]

TheDreadPirate

Thanks for the reply!

"Automatically add to collection" is disabled in the Libraries setting.

I'm thinking is was because of the Scheduled Task to check for new Box-Set info by the TMDb plug in. I removed the scheduled task so I'm hoping that prevents it. I'll report back if the issue persists.

[KodiUser1138]

I manually curate my collections as Jellyfin doesn't seem to be able to handle such tasks with any decent automation outside of maybe the boxsets plugin which I don't bother with. This worked well enough prior to JF 10.9.4 when something in Collection handling changed and now the auto generated XML files in the Collections folder from Program Data is just ignored so making manual changes there or importing Collections just fails.

For my collections I've added a lot more than just grouping certain movies together. I've included relevant TV Shows, music soundtracks and for some even the posters from an image library. It does make it nice to put everything together into one place but it does take work to maintain since JF saves each entry by it's direct path location and if anything changes to that then a "new" entry needs to be added.

I'm also not overly fond of Collections grouping everything together without the option to have items in the collection grouped by the same library types as the main library. When I add a concert performance from my Concerts library to a collection it just shows up alongside all the movies for the collection, as well as Movie Trailers which I don't spend much time on metadata so they can just end up anywhere.

Over in Kodi I have a collections section that is easily built by using smart playlists which can pull media from title/sort title, director, actor and most effectively tags. That began my journey to using specific tags for my library and now I have Kodi sections built around award winners which I find very useful. I'm not going to spend another hundred hours re-adding all those films to so many categories within JF to have my Oscars collection though, not when such a simple solution exists on my main client.

[mc1984]

KodiUser1138

Yeah, it seems some of the "features" would be better if they were optional. Super nice program other wise! I enjoy having my own streaming library.

[KodiUser1138]

KodiUser1138

Yeah, it seems some of the "features" would be better if they were optional. Super nice program other wise! I enjoy having my own streaming library.

JF is awesome and has made my media library management much, much easier. I have 1 large hurdle I'd like to knock down to further simplify adding new media in general but other than that and a few hiccups I can't believe how much time it used to take me to do what is seemingly simple to me now.

My issues with JF collections are more annoyances that take more time rather than big ticket complaints. Frustrations with changes or seeming lack of execution. I like using collections for browsing my library on JF while my general playback client is Kodi with JF managing the database. If I could make smart playlist type XMLs for my collections and not have to spend time making fixes when something small changes then I'd save myself a lot of self inflicted time wasted.

A simple example is a movie soundtrack having an extended version released and so I curated all the songs into just 1 album. Than then required a refresh of my movie soundtrack library, no big deal. But that soundtrack is in 3 different collections and for each of those collections I had to re-add that soundtrack. OK that's 1 annoyance but if I change the drive location where I store my movie soundtracks now I have to refresh and then re add EVERY soundtrack to a collection. And that scenario is coming down the pipeline as I build my massive media server unit.

If JF handled collections by say using the JF Library name (Movie Soundtracks) and then the Album title + Artist (Deadpool & Wolverine - Various Artists) then after refreshing the library everything else is taken care of for me. This 1 soundtrack appears in the Shawn Levy, Deadpool and MCU collections.