How to manage collection / dynamic collection

[shadow notch]

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[shadow notch]

Hi,
i am using PMM and now Kometa for over a year and I manage my collections manually directly in Plex. I also do store all the posters and background locally (for both movies & collections but also TV Shows, anime, ...)
I just use Kometa to add some overlays on the posters & title cards.

I would like to manage my collections with kometa and especially do 2 different things :

1. create a config file for all the manual collections I have and use the links to TMDB collection, define the link to the local assets (poster & background of the collection), and identify the movies I have on my server to put in the collection
2. I also would like to manage dynamic collections. For the moment I only would like to create "actor" collections. I have gathered some posters for each actor I want a collection. So I would like to create a config file to list the actors, provide the tmdb id of the actor to make sure there is no mistake and also provide the link for the local poster to use for the collections.

I have tried many things, read the wiki and so on and honestly this is chinese to me. I definitely don't understand how to do.

Can anyone :

1. give me a template for the config file to use for the list of actors
2. give me a template for the config file for the manual and dynamic collections
3. tell me how to modify my current config file to "call" these 2 additional config file. Maybe i need 4 or 5 different files I don't know but I think 3 is the way to go. Please confirm.

If I have the structure and one concrete example I will be able to duplicate it for all my movies and TV Shows.

Attached is my current config file (I only use 1 file as you can see).

THX A LOT

[plush ermine]

If you want to manually create actor collections, one way to do it would be to create shoobx-actors.yml in your config dir, and put this in it:

templates:
  Actor:
    plex_search:
      all:
        actor: tmdb
    tmdb_person: <<person>>
    sort_title: "!_<<collection_name>>"
    sync_mode: sync
    collection_order: release

collections:
  Bruce Lee:
    template: {name: Actor, person: 19429}
  Chris Pratt:
    template: {name: Actor, person: 73457}

Then add it to your config as:

libraries:
  Movies:
    collection_files:
      - file: config/shoobx-actors.yml

Change that template to suit your requirements, like using local art or whatever.

I can't parse what #1 means.

create a config file for all the manual collections I have

Step one would be to define some way of getting the lists of things. If you have a bunch of random collections of random movies, you'll probably have to creeate collections that just list the movies by TMDB ID or something, or you could create MDBlists or the like of those random lists and point Kometa at those lists.

and use the links to TMDB collection

Use the links for what?

define the link to the local assets (poster & background of the collection)

Simplest here would be the asset directory, but you could use file paths as well.

and identify the movies I have on my server to put in the collection

Don't know what this means. You already have the collections, so you already know which movies are on the server, right?

[minor cipher]

Maybe I was not clear.

By manual collection i mean all the movie collections that I have like Star Wars, Monsterverse, Die Hard, ...
I would like to define in a config file all the collections and the movies in it and the posters and background to use for the collections and the movies inside them.

Here is a picture of what i have done manually and that i would like to do in a config file. I will maintain this manually.

Another thing i would like to do that is completely different from the first one is create dynamic collections for some actors

[minor cipher]

for the links to the collection, i imagine that it will fill Plex with the description of the collection like it is done for the movies... i dont know

for the local assets, yes I would like to pu t my posters and background there but i dont know how to declare how to match each poster file and background file to each collection and movie.

[plush ermine]

i dont know

Then no one here can tell you how to do it. 😉

Example:
You have decided in some way which movies go in that "Alien" collection.

You can build a collection like that in a number of ways.

1. Point Kometa at a Trakt or IMDB or whatever list that contains the "Alien" movies and perhaps filter out the ones you don't want
2. Create your own custom Trakt or IMDB or whatever list that contains the ones you want and point Kometa at that list.
3. Create a collection that contains these specific 6 movies and if you want to add a seventh you will add it manually
4. Use the built-in defaults to create these franchise collections and apply custom art.
5. some other thing

Probably most of what you want to do could be done automatically without requiring manual maintenance; if you want to maintain them manually it will be more fuss.

The naming requirements for assets are laid out in detail in the wiki.
https://metamanager.wiki/en/latest/kometa/guides/assets/

If you have a collection named "Shoobx Favorites" then you would store the assets as:

config/assets/Shoobx Favorites/poster.png
config/assets/Shoobx Favorites/background.png

And Kometa will pick them up by name

[minor cipher]

i will have a look at this thanks.
i am trying to do the actor collection as you told me. just one question here. How do I tell the config file how to find the asset (poster) ?
i have created a folder in "asset" with all file posters like on the screenshot
Thx

[plush ermine]

Please refer to that link above; all the details are spelled out.

config/assets/NAME OF COLLECTION HERE/poster.png

I assume the name of the collection here is "Aaron Eckhart (Acting)", so:

config/assets/Aaron Eckhart (Acting)/poster.png

I don't know why you have "Actors" in there.

That is also assuming you have:

settings:
  asset_folders: true

If you don't:

config/assets/Aaron Eckhart (Acting).png

[minor cipher]

I thought it was a good place to store the posters. Is it a problem ?

[plush ermine]

If you want Kometa's asset pipeline to pick up the posters automatically without you specifically telling it to use this poster with the "Aaron Eckhart" collection, they need to be stored in a very specific folder hierarchy under specific names.

If you want to specify them manually for every collection, store them wherever you want.

It's not a question of "good" or "bad". If you want the feature to work you have to name the files so that they match the feature's expectations.

[minor cipher]

Where can I find the description of the « very specific hierarchy » please

[plush ermine]

I linked to it above.

[minor cipher]

Ok

[plush ermine]

The naming requirements for assets are laid out in detail in the wiki.
https://metamanager.wiki/en/latest/kometa/guides/assets/

[minor cipher]

Sorry I am on my phone I will look later on.

Thanks a lot for your help and patience

[minor cipher]

i am trying to make it work and thanks to your help i can now do a few things.
I can't find the page in the wiki with the attributes for the collections.
Example : in my library I would like to hide the movies that are in a collection. but i want the collection to be visible in the "library" of plex.
how can i do that ?

[plush ermine]

https://metamanager.wiki/en/latest/files/updates/

If you want this to apply to every collection, it's simplest to set it in the library's own advanced settings [in Plex itself].

[minor cipher]

ok thanks for the tip

last thing please

the TMDB collection names are not the one i have. example : "Transformers - Saga" in TMDB and "Transformers - Collection" on my disc. Is there a way to tell kometa to ignore " - Saga" and replace it by " - Collection" ?

[plush ermine]

If you are manually maintaining the collections you can set the titles to whatever you want.

[minor cipher]

i am trying to do as you told !! i am trying the dynamics collection

like this :

dynamic_collections:
TMDb Collections: # This name is the mapping name
type: tmdb_collection
remove_suffix: Collection
remove_prefix: The
collection_mode: hide_items

would this work :

dynamic_collections:
TMDb Collections: # This name is the mapping name
type: tmdb_collection
remove_suffix: Saga
add_suffix: Collection
remove_prefix:
collection_mode: hide_items

no it doesn't work 😦

[plush ermine]

Perhaps:

dynamic_collections:
  TMDb Collections:
    type: tmdb_collection
    collection_mode: hide_items
    title_override:
      8650: Transformers - Collection

Where 8650 is the TMDB collection ID

[minor cipher]

THX

[minor cipher]

i will be back with other questions but you helped me A LOT

very clear thx

and can i force a movie to be in a collection created automatically ?

for example https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/667538-transformers-rise-of-the-beasts is not in the transformers collection. Can i force it to be included ?

[ripe bolt]

it's technically a different collection, but yes you could add it to the collection.

if using the ```yaml

• default: franchise
  template_variables:
  movie_8650: 667538

[minor cipher]

Ok thx I will try

[minor cipher]

i continue to work on the dynamic collections and i have an issue. I use the "exclude" attribute with the default actors collection and it does not exclude anything. Here is the beginning of the config file. Is there something wrong with the syntax ?
libraries: Test: collection_files: - default: actor exclude: - Amber Heard - Gretchen Mol - Peter Cullen - Richard Armitage - Peter Fonda - Paula Patton - Tyrese Gibson - Tómas Lemarquis - Josh Duhamel - file: config/movies-collection.yml operations: mass_audience_rating_update: tmdb delete_unmanaged_collections: false

[plush ermine]

You are missing "template_variables"

[minor cipher]

like this :

`libraries:
Test:
collection_files:
- default: actor
template_variables:
- exclude:
- Amber Heard
- Gretchen Mol
- Peter Cullen
- Richard Armitage
- Peter Fonda
- Paula Patton
- Tyrese Gibson
- Tómas Lemarquis
- Josh Duhamel

- file: config/shoobx-actors.yml

  - file: config/movies-collection.yml
operations:
  mass_audience_rating_update: tmdb
  delete_unmanaged_collections: false`

[plush ermine]

No dash before exclude

See the example on the wiki page:
https://kometa.wiki/en/latest/defaults/both/actor/#template-variables

[minor cipher]

Thx

[ripe bolt]

!afnh

[wintry cipher]

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