I have a library of 100’s of movies, with individual movies in the top level folder and series in child folders. I want the movies to be sorted as follows:
All movies and folders sorted in alphabetical order - not folders first then files.
I want to sort to ignore “The” and “A”, etc. “The Avengers” should sort to A, not T. I still want the correct title (with “The”, “A”, etc. to show up as the real title in the metadata.
Movies in a series need to be sorted by the series order, regardless of the title. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone needs to be #1 in the Harry Potter folder regardless of the titles.
Is there any way to do ANY of this today???
WDTV - PLEASE add these capabilities to your firmware!!!
Should be an option to turn on or off
Movies should sort by something OTHER than the .xml file “Title” field. Use the filename, or another XML field such as “SortTitle”
Fixed by fixing #2. I can rename the files with 1- , 2-, etc. Or I can apply a correct value to SortTitle field.
People speak of this as if it were simple. It’s not, and it’s hardly “Universally” recognized.
When you consider how many “rules” there are when coupled with regional “internationalization”, it’s easy to understand why they don’t do it: The firmware to enable so many rules would be impractically large.
But to do what you want, you can always edit the XML tag in the metadata to change it however you wish.
Sorting for music works the same way. in a folder as well; and like the movies do in the WD like the OP stated.
I edit my music, videos, metadata as Tony suggests if I don’t like how they automatically sort. “It’s just the way things are”, (to quote a line from the movie “Babe”.)
Depending on how you are setup, you can always change the filenames as well which works well for my needs.
I have some of my moves that are a series with the year first in the filename which keeps them chronically correct, regardless of what system I am using to watch them on. If I modified an XML file that is specific to one device (let’s say my HUB), it would not help me when viewing from my Nexus 7 Pad, laptop, phone etc.
For example in my “Thin Man” directory.
(1934) The Thin Man.DVD.ISO
(1936) After the Thin Man.DVD.ISO
(1939) Another Thin Man.DVD.ISO
(1941) Shadow of the Thin Man.DVD.ISO
(1944) The Thin Man Goes Home.DVD.ISO
(1947) Song of the Thin Man.DVD.ISO
Since I wouldn’t remember what the correct order is off the top of my head, this helps a bunch when traveling etc. Plus I am sure the William Powell and Myrna Loy would want me to watch them in order and I wouldn’t want to disappoint them.
If you like those great old movies from the 30s and 40s, here is a little gem that no one’s heard of, but it is an entertaining movie from 1932 called Trouble In Paradise. We watched it for a second time recently.
Thanks for the reco mike27oct. Haven’t seen it but looks like winner. Ernst Lubitsch is a pretty decent directory and it’s always worth catching any movie with Edward Everett Horton in it. Yeah, movies from that era make up a large percentage of my collection. After cutting the cabel cord, the only thing I miss is Turner Classic Movies.
Luckily you can buy a lot of movies from the 30s-50s on DVD for a few bucks sitting in bargain bins, and a good amount of them are streamed for free on the net.
But changing the title in XML changes what is displayed.
You could accomdate everyone by adding a “SortTitle” field in the XML. One that is not displayed, but is used to determine the sort order. I could edit this to remove leading “The” and “A” words, or add “1-” “2-” etc to get series sorted correctly.
And how about an option to sort folders in with the videos, instead of all of the folders first and then the single files? This way the “Austin Powers” folder would be right next to the “The Avengers” video, instead of being separated by all the “B thru Z” folders.
