[Partially in v3.0] Sticky Categories & Filters and visual indicator that Titles are being Filtered

[Manni]

Quick feature request (Paul please let me know if you prefer if I post feature requests in the relevant section).

Please could we have an option to save any selected category or filter between sessions?

I find the selection of a category less easy than with MyMovies, where I just select categories in the menu bar, then the category I want to apply.

Saving a selected category between session would address this. You could have a similar switch for filters.

Maybe having a visual indicator that a category/filter is applied would be useful. Even better if clicking on it would clear the selection, or if there was a "show all titles" button quickly available on the main browser page.

[Pauven]

Let me think about optionally making the Category or Genre sticky between sessions.

Right now, I like that it defaults to an unfiltered view upon startup. If I make it sticky, that will at a minimum have to be a user enabled option. There's also the risk that if a selected/sticky Category or Genre disappears, it could cause an access violation upon the next start-up, so I'll have to be careful if I add this option.

I do have it on my own internal to-do list to make the filter related icons indicate when filtering is active.

The new feature/change window for v2.2 is closed, so I will evaluate this for future versions.

[Manni]

Thanks for considering it.

I understand there might be situations where it could cause issues, and I would definitely make it an option, as I agree not every user would want this behaviour.

By the way, I suggested categories or filters (two separate options), not genre.

I think genre and search are not really useful as sticky.

But at the moment, to give you an example, I almost exclusively play UHD Blurays, so I have to select my UHD Bluray category every single time I launch CMC... It takes a couple of keys in MyMovies, it's more involved in CMC, mostly because I have quite a few categories, so I have to go all the way up to select 4K UHD Bluray, then all the way down to apply the filter.

[Pauven]

By the way, I suggested categories or filters (two separate options), not genre.

What are calling "filters"? I assumed you were referring to Genres.

But at the moment, to give you an example, I almost exclusively play UHD Blurays, so I have to select my UHD Bluray category every single time I launch CMC... It takes a couple of keys in MyMovies, it's more involved in CMC, mostly because I have quite a few categories, so I have to go all the way up to select 4K UHD Bluray, then all the way down to apply the filter.

That's a good example, and helps me understand what you are trying to accomplish.

On a related note, the funnel shaped Filter Icon currently does nothing, but I will be adding functionality to it in the future. One of the things I will be adding (and it has been requested multiple times) is a disc type filter. So you would be able to filter on 4K discs right there, and not even have to maintain a custom category for them at all.

I already have the Media Type filters (i.e. Movies, TV Series) configurable as a startup default option, and I had planned to make the Filters options configurable as startup defaults too.

Things I know for sure will be going in the Filters section will be Disc Type, Parental Rating, and Stars.

Would that accomplish your goal, or would you still foresee a need to have a startup default Category filter applied?

[Manni]

In MyMovies, you have both categories and filters. They achieve different things.

Categories are custom categories that you create. For example, I have 4K UHD Bluray to be able to select these easily (given that there is no 4K UHD title type the way there is for 3D BLurays in MyMovies). I also have a category for each family member, so whenever I add a title to the collection, I also add it to the category of whoever might want to watch it. That way, when I sit with my 6 year old, I have selection that appears, and it's quite different from the one that appears when I sit with my 13 year old. etc... I also have categories that show all my titles in Atmos, or DTS:X, when I want to test/demo a specific sound format. This is because there is no specific field in the database for the sound format.

Filters are ways to make a selection based on one or more existing fields in the database. For example, I have some filters based on genre, other on media type (such as 3D bluray, which used to be a category before it got supported as a specific media type). I could use a filter to show all the HDR10 or all the Dolby Vision titles, without having to "mark" them manually, because the info is already available in the database as a specific field. And of course, you can combine criterias, for example create a filter that will only show the title for my 13 year old that are unwatched and in 3D.

The advantage of filters over categories is that they can combine various criterias from existing fields in the database (including categories), and are saved as a unique filter.

I assumed that this is what the (non working yet) filter icon was destined too. I thought it was a work in progress, but if you can access the filters from MyMovies, it would be great to have them the same way we have access to categories. This tight integration of CMC with MyMovies is a huge plus, and now that you support jRiver as an external player, CMC can really offer the best of both worlds, given that jRiver doesn't support that kind of integration, and doesn't support either the two MyMovies features that mean I haven't switched yet:

- MiCasaVerde Lights support (lights off on playback, dim on pause, on on stop)
- WOL on playback when a specific title is located on a powered off server.

As soon as this is implemented, I can leave MCE/MyMovies plugin behind (and purchase at least another CMC license).

To answer your question, for flexibility it would be great if we could have an option for a "sticky" category as well as for filters as I described above. That way we can create our own combinations in CM (take a look, the criterias are very sophisticated) and are not limited to whichever filter you would offer.

[Pauven]

Ok, gotcha, by filters you meant the configurable My Movies Filters. I've used these in the past. I don't think the API exports these filters, only the results of the filter being applied. For example, the API could tell me that these 7 titles show up in filter ABC, but now how filter ABC is defined.

So chances are, My Movies configurable filters will not be coming to CMC. Though I will be taking another look at this.

[Manni]

Ok, gotcha, by filters you meant the configurable My Movies Filters. I've used these in the past. I don't think the API exports these filters, only the results of the filter being applied. For example, the API could tell me that these 7 titles show up in filter ABC, but now how filter ABC is defined.

So chances are, My Movies configurable filters will not be coming to CMC. Though I will be taking another look at this.

That would be good enough. If the API tells you which titles to display when applying a filter, and if you only display those when the filter is applied, that’s all we need. There is no need to know how the filter is defined, that’s done in MMCM, like categories.

[Pauven]

I have implemented a Disc Type filter in CMC v3.0, plus made it sticky as you requested. Now you will be able to start CMC defaulted to showing 4K movies. And changing the Disc Type filter will be much easier than what you were doing with your numerous custom Categories.

I have not yet updated the icons to show which are actively filtering. That's still on my to-do list.

At this point, I have not done anything with the My Movies custom Filters. As I wrote before, these filters are not exported from the My Movies API, and alternative methods of trying to bring those filters into CMC may be very difficult. I'm also having a hard time thinking of a good reason to bring these in - though I am listening if you can think of some good reasons. For now, these are a very low priority.

[Manni]

Hi Paul, that's great, thanks for implementing the disc type filter, much appreciated.

One thing that could really help would be a hotkey calling a list of categories, so that we could select which one to apply with up/down or left/right and enter, or if it's easier a few quick access ones. At the moment the menu is very slow and impractical when you have a lot of them. It takes about 15 keystrokes to select a single category (all the way up, select, all the way down, select)!

Re custom filters, the use is simply to be able to show any sub-section of your collection that isn't covered by categories.

For example, 4K bluray with Atmos, or unwatched 3D blurays.

If they are not exported though, I understand it would be difficult. It's not really a priority, just a non-implemented feature of MyMovies with MCE.

A lot more important are the following missing features (in order of importance, for me of course but also re how many users could benefit from them):

1) More than one letter (at least two) to select a title in the wall. With 3500 titles, one letter means more than 100 titles per letter... really unpractical. It takes me ages to select a title, so the implementation of the above will make a HUGE difference with 4K titles, but it's still a challenge for anything else (except TV Series as we can go to that section easily).
2) Support for titles on shares that are offline. Currently, I have to wake up all my NAS boxes and do a full scan every time I add a title. Otherwise all the titles in the NAX boxes that are not online are deleted from the collection. That's a real bummer given that 99% of the time I'm adding a 4K UHD Bluray that goes on my always-on share.
3) WOL support so that an offline NAS Box is switched on when an attempt is made to play an offline title. At the moment, I use MyMovies to switch all my NAS boxes on on Windows start so that I can do a full scan if needed or play any title without having to find out on which NAS box it's located and switching the NAS on manually before playing the title. The workaround is easy but bad for the environment, as 99% of my playback are titles located on my main NAS hosting 4K UHD Bluray, the others are "cold storage" for bluray, DVD, 3D Bluray etc.
4) Support for lights using the MiCasa Verde controller (which I think you have), especially lights off when starting a movie, that's what I miss most. Second is dim on pause. Third is lights on on stop.

Any chance of these making 3.0?

I'm sure you have quite a few things on your to do list, but it would be great to have these in at some point because I'd really like to leave MCE behind. Until the first two items above are supported, CMC remains a lot less user friendly for my use (very large collection on different NAS boxes).

Happy to discuss in another thread, I might have created one at some point, I can't remember.

Sorry for the off topic, and keep up the good work!

PS another brief off-topic: I had an exchange with Brian recently regarding the disappearing MPLS info for TV series episode info, we have identified the reason, Brian was able to reproduce and has all the info, so hopefully a fix will come as soon as he can get to it.

[Pauven]

Re custom filters, the use is simply to be able to show any sub-section of your collection that isn't covered by categories.

For example, 4K bluray with Atmos, or unwatched 3D blurays.

Those are great examples, though I think that is functionality I need to implement in core CMC filtering, and not require external filters to be configured in My Movies Collection Management. Got any more great examples?

1) More than one letter (at least two) to select a title in the wall. With 3500 titles, one letter means more than 100 titles per letter...

That's a really great point. My collection is only half of that, and so is my pain. This is still on my todo-list. By the way, do you know about fast-scrolling using the Channel Up/Down, Next/Prev Chapter, and Rew/FF buttons? If not, you should play around with them. One does a full-screen jump, another jumps 3 screens, and the other goes to the beginning/end of the list.

2, 3 and 4 are still on my to-do list. My deadline for getting v3.0 out the door is Halloween, in 3 days, so it's doubtful I can squeeze any of those in by then. But v3.0 has finally taken a lot of high-priority features off my plate, so there's a much better chance I can get to these enhancements in v3.1.

PS another brief off-topic: I had an exchange with Brian recently regarding the disappearing MPLS info for TV series episode info, we have identified the reason, Brian was able to reproduce and has all the info, so hopefully a fix will come as soon as he can get to it.

That's awesome, for so many reasons! Thanks for sharing! Perhaps while he is in there he can take care of that feature request to do Title/Chapter filtering by runtime, making it easier to map episodes.

Also, here's a tip in return: LOCK your TV Series (actually, feel free to lock everything if you want, but definitely lock those TV Series). I've had random updates (contributed by other users) overwrite my CORRECT episode mappings, which is more problematic now with CME automatically exporting the TV Series metadata and blowing away my episode playback in CMC. As a bonus, I have tested and verified that you can still update the Watched status of episodes via the API with CME even when the Title is locked, so I really don't see any downside to locking TV Series.