BETA: tvOS/ iOS - Stack Movies into their Franchises

Agreed - can we get them to sort based on the Franchise name at least?

Good catch. Resolved in the latest TestFlight beta:

Awesome! Thanks so much. Works perfect.

2 Likes

Everyone using this helpful feature should also be aware that TMDB's opinion about what constitutes a "franchise" in this context may not line up with their own. For example, according to TMDB, Ocean's 8 is not included along with Ocean's 11, Ocean's 12 and Ocean's 13 in the Ocean's 11 franchise. I do wonder if that's just an oversight on their part, or if they're intentionally considering the 2018 film to be a distinct "spin-off?"

Ocean's - Wikipedia.

I'm browsing through 117 franchises and that's the first example that stood out to me. The rest have looked fine, so far.

Regardless, I created a Collection for these particular films, to cover the bases instead.

This is exactly why we never used these collections for our Library Collections.

We don't particularly think tons of collections with 2-3 movies in them like "Finding Nemo" and "Finding Nemo 2" are all that compelling. Especially for a top tier data point in your library.

This is why we left Library Collections to 100% curation.

"The Pixar Collection" or "Marvel Cinematic Universe" are much more useful as browsable collections, but TMDB does not group them this way.

Library Collections have also become a core mechanism in getting the most out of Channels in that they are very useful to drive other features. Along with Labels, they're great.

  1. Label your movies
  2. Create a smart collection based on Label rules
  3. Use Collections to drive a Virtual Channel.

We think we landed exactly where we should have with the TMDB provided collections, as they are literally just Franchise groupings. So we're glad we waited and it all kind of fell into place.

The way EMBY handles this situation it gives you the Option to add any movie to a collection simply right click on it... along with having automatic collections.

Example I have a movie that is missing from a collection ....

Maybe one day the Smart Rule Editor that is adding content to a Movie Collection could include "Franchise" in the pulldown menu options?

3 Likes

Kodi does the same thing. Has their been any chatter about adding different versions to one movie tile? I can't be the only one with different qualities of the same film, due to the fact multiple devices handle various formats differently.

Is there any way to see these stacks in the web interface? I use it a lot for curating my library but haven't found where to see them?

Franchises and stacking are a feature of the client only at the moment.

We'll look at exposing, them, but as mentioned before, they will be read only.

1 Like

On that note. I discovered that the 7th installment, "Saw: The Final Chapter (2010)" wasn't being included in the "Saw" franchise. I first checked TMDB and confirmed it wasn't lncluded in their official list. There's no reasonable explanation for that, aside from it being an oversight on their part, right?

Personally speaking I'm not a fan of these movies, but I figured this would be a good experiment. So I created an account on TVDB, and I opened a ticket, and reported this issue. I included a link to their list and a link to the series "finale" that should be included in it.

https://thetvdb.com/movies/saw-the-final-chapter#lists

Within a few minutes I got a one-word reply back from help@thetvdb.com:

Done!

And sure enough, now I see that movie is included in their list.

https://thetvdb.com/lists/saw

So, that felt good. But how do I reflect this update in Channels? I'm still not seeing the 7th film show up in the franchise. I refreshed metadata for that title, I also tried to fix it as an "incorrect match" (just changed it to something else and then back again,) and for good measure I "Scanned Personal Media" again too. I force quit the client app and re-launched it to hopefully get it to reflect this new change, but the title's still not being included in the franchise.

Is there a manual CDVR command to "backfill movie franchises" again?

1 Like

Just use refresh metadata as usual. Though it might be hitting our online caches.

TVDB vs. TMDB

Doesn't Channels use TMDB?

Oh. lol. Figures. Thanks!

1 Like

So it appears that TMDB is referring to "Saw: The Final Chapter (2010)" as "Saw 3D (2010)."

Once I fixed the "incorrect match" in Channels DVR, changing from Gracenote to TheMovieDB, the new "franchise" poster included this title.

One possible glitch I noticed on the iPhone beta version is that there are times where the franchise is stacked, and when I go close the app and then open it again, the franchise poster is now a poster and link for just one of the movies. For example, the Avengers poster will be gone, with just the first Avengers movie showing, and no sign of the other movies in the franchise. It's almost like the movie replaced the franchise in the app.

Can you provide a step by step way to reproduce this?

1 Like

I have had this happen. I reproduced it by doing this…

  1. Open Channels on iPadOS and go to all Movies.
  2. Close Channels
  3. Bring up Multitasking in iPadOS and select Channels.



Great thanks, we'll check it out.

A post was split to a new topic: Bug in tvOS latest - 1.8.1706