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Selection for "Not in a Collection"

ht guy

Well-known member
⭐️ Premium ⭐️
Is there a way to get a listing of titles that have not been assigned to a collection?

If not, can one be added? Possibly another default sort called "Movies not in a collection"?
 
Interesting request. Could you say a little more about your use case for this?
 
Sure. Let's say I have 3 collections - Movies, Movies for Kids and Concerts.

I have guests over, so I want to show the Movies Collection.

Problem is, what if there are a half dozen titles that I got recently, and forgot to assign to a Collection?

Such a sort would help to ensure all movies have been categorized.

It would also be a lot easier than looking through the "All Movies" list when looking for movies that haven't been assigned to a Collection.
 
Recommendation #1: When I purchased my K system a few months ago, I (apparently incorrectly) assumed that from the Covers Page (or List Page) I would be able to see EVERY movie I owned: those on my local Terra, those that I owned but were not on my local Terra and any I had cataloged. This ability would have provided me a single location to identify every movie I had, and if it were not on the Terra (but I owned it), I could download and watch, or it I had only cataloged it, I could find it on my existing NAS and watch it or play it on my BR player. That I can not do that UNLESS I purchase a no longer in production and no longer supported Alto (good luck trying to even find one), is not only silly, but I find unacceptable. Since you have the data (can be seen at http://my-kaleidescape.local/movies browser) I would find it hard to understand why this might be such a difficult task. In case not everyone wants all of this data, then provide options. For Example: (a) ALL movies; (b)Only those on my Terra; (c) Those on my Terra and those I own but have not downloaded.

Recommendation #2: I moved to the K System from ripping my movies with MakeMKV and playing them back via Plex. Plex offers a lot of flexibility and one thing I find very important is the ease to either search for a movie or at least get to it quickly if you know the name of it. As you can see in the attached, down the right side of the screen is the alphabet to get you close to the movie you are interrested in; and on the left, show the catagories that I have my movie placed into. And at the top of the screen, you can see the search option. Something along these lines would greatly improve your product.

Quite frankly, many of the various DIY options (e.g. Plex and Zappit) have far better interfaces for this part of the product than does K and K is supposed to be the "Premier Solution". And sort of amazingly, this interface is virtually identical to what it was when I was a K user 5 years ago. Not a single serious enhancement that I am able to identify. I sort of find that hard to understand - and would really like to see the K product be at least as flexible as any other option.
Screen Shot 2021-12-27 at 2.51.58 PM.png
 
Thanks for the suggestions. Regarding your second one, the list and collections places support both textual filtering and jump-to-letter. You can use our mobile app's remote control features, or a suitable control system. In the mobile app, just tap the ABC button in the top right corner of the touch pad area to enable jumping to a letter. If you want to filter, enter text into the field below the touch pad. These features are not supported in the covers view.

Regarding the first suggestion, the philosophy behind the onscreen display is that it is intended to show you the movies that you can play right now, with at most the need to place a disc into a tray. We felt that it would be frustrating to fill the display with a bunch of movies that were unavailable to play. This is something that we're re-examining, now that broadband speeds (and Terra's download capabilities) make it possible to download a movie within a few minutes.

The onscreen display was never intended as a way to show movies that your system can't play at all (i.e., movies that you would be putting into an external player). Not saying it's a bad idea -- it was just never something that was even considered. But this is why movies that are cataloged, but for which the system contains no compatible players, are not shown.
 
Hey, Mike. One thing that I think would be helpful would be a new "collection" of movies that is movies IN your collection but NOT on your server. With my 6TB Strato, I frequently need to out-with-the old/in-with-the-new and then when people come over, it would be nice to be able to let them browse a FULL list of movies I have available in my library, even with the understanding that this NOT on server list would need to be downloaded. As it is, I often forget exactly what I own! :)
 
Thanks, John! I think that suggestion has come up internally as well. It has the advantage of being relatively easy to add without adding new behaviors (like filtering) or new settings to the other views.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. Regarding your second one, the list and collections places support both textual filtering and jump-to-letter. You can use our mobile app's remote control features, or a suitable control system. In the mobile app, just tap the ABC button in the top right corner of the touch pad area to enable jumping to a letter. If you want to filter, enter text into the field below the touch pad. These features are not supported in the covers view.
I don't have any interest in using anything but my C4 system. I was not aware (nor did I see) any "jump to letter" opportunity on my projector screen when viewing the List Page, but I will look again and see if I can find it. Is it not possible to do something like I showed on the Plex movies covers page where the letters are located on the side of the data. That way we can much more quickly access specific movies from the covers page view ( which I much prefer over the List View)?

Regarding the first suggestion, the philosophy behind the onscreen display is that it is intended to show you the movies that you can play right now, with at most the need to place a disc into a tray. We felt that it would be frustrating to fill the display with a bunch of movies that were unavailable to play. This is something that we're re-examining, now that broadband speeds (and Terra's download capabilities) make it possible to download a movie within a few minutes.

The onscreen display was never intended as a way to show movies that your system can't play at all (i.e., movies that you would be putting into an external player). Not saying it's a bad idea -- it was just never something that was even considered. But this is why movies that are cataloged, but for which the system contains no compatible players, are not shown.
I recommended providing my recommended functions as options, one of which would be what is now being done. But with ~10 minute downloads, the ability to watch a movie that is not on my Terra or one I cataloged "almost now" only adds to desirability of these recommended features. Would it be helpful if I ran a poll on AVSForum to see if others feel as I do (I know a few who have already said they want this capability)?
 
Ah, it's good that you use Control4. I do, too. There is support for both skip to letter and filter. Exact function depends on which driver and remote you're using. Your Control4 installer should be able to help you figure that out. I use SR-250 remotes at home, and their number keypads have letters on them as on a telephone keypad. It's very easy to jump the right spot in a list of movies by just pressing one of those keys a couple of times.

Jump/filter is not currently supported in the covers view, since its normal mode of operation is to shuffle each time you select a movie.

As I said, we are re-evaluating the ability to display movies that are not currently downloaded, exactly because downloads are now fast enough that you can pretty easily download a movie in the time it takes to pop some popcorn.
 
Ah, it's good that you use Control4. I do, too. There is support for both skip to letter and filter. Exact function depends on which driver and remote you're using. Your Control4 installer should be able to help you figure that out. I use SR-250 remotes at home, and their number keypads have letters on them as on a telephone keypad. It's very easy to jump the right spot in a list of movies by just pressing one of those keys a couple of times.

Is there a specific Kaleidescape C4 Driver I need to do what you are describing?
Jump/filter is not currently supported in the covers view, since its normal mode of operation is to shuffle each time you select a movie.

While it presents a very cool looking interface, I found the shuffle mode completely useless. So I switched to the view with no shuffle and in alphabetical order
As I said, we are re-evaluating the ability to display movies that are not currently downloaded, exactly because downloads are now fast enough that you can pretty easily download a movie in the time it takes to pop some popcorn.
Glad to hear that. And please at least consider the option of including movies that have cataloged!! I can download those in ~10 minutes as well. And you make more money as I purchase movies from K that I have on other media (disc or NAS server).
 
Our Control4 drivers have supported the jump-to-letter for many years, so if you're using one of our drivers, you almost certainly have that. I don't recall whether we had support for the FILTER_LIST command in earlier versions, but we just released a new version a month or two ago that has that command, and allows customizing which commands are triggered by which buttons. There's also a third-party driver from Chow Main. I'm not sure what functionality it supports exactly, but I know it's quite full-featured.

Thanks again for your feedback and suggestions!
 
Just a note ( and maybe poke C4 for their over site), the Sr250 and original sr260 remotes had standard alpha characters with the number buttons. The Sr260s shipping for about a year or more have omitted this alpha text.

Their reasoning was very few drivers used the alpha function.

With that said, it still functions and I use it all the time. If your remote does not have the alpha characters, just think back to early texting or your touchtone phone!

Want to jump to C? Hit 2 the times. S? 7 four times.

Kevin D.
 
Yeah, I have them memorized at this point, but that's a shame that they took it off the remote. I don't think it's rendered on touch panels either, which is also unfortunate (although it would be easier to fix).
 
One other useful addition to web interface of the Alto (assume a costar connected Strato would be the same?) would be to add 2 additional columns:
- Collection (that shows the collection/collections a title is assigned to)
and
- A Cataloged, Downloaded, or Offline (available for download) status
 
These are all great suggestions. I’ll throw out another reason to show all downloaded and cataloged content that might move this up the priority list. I think Kaleidescape would get more spontaneous 4K purchases if the cataloged Bluray titles showed up on the OSD for those of us with Strato/Terra systems. When I jumped into KScape I already had well over 100 4K discs that I had to catalog as bluray plus I had about 250 Blurays and 800 DVDs. Now when I show visitors my collection none of the Blu-ray’s show up, so there is no chance they could look at the onscreen collection and pick out one. If it was a D2D movie with a $4.92 or $8.59 4K HDR upgrade I’d probably do it. Same for an on-sale movies that are below a high D2D price.

So there are lots of consumer reasons to improve the OSD but there are KScape media sales reasons too.
 
As I said, we are re-evaluating the ability to display movies that are not currently downloaded, exactly because downloads are now fast enough that you can pretty easily download a movie in the time it takes to pop some popcorn.
Hi Mike,
This request was dated way back in Dec 2021. Any updates on this feature? I'm reluctant to buy too many TV series and movies because they fill up the drive very quickly, so being able to view the movies I own (but not downloaded in the Terra) is a very desirable feature. I've been ripping my collections of blu-rays and 4K blu-rays for more than a decade and have around 3000 movies and 200 TV shows. They are all in my NAS server that's playable on my PLEX and Zappiti (for my 4Ks). I will never be able to watch 10% of the content I own in my lifetime and busy schedule but I do enjoy scrolling through all the media that I own and MAY watch when I retire and have nothing else to do. Something that I cannot do with the dozen boxes of physical media that's collecting dust in my garage.

And no, purchasing a 72TB Terra for over $20k is not a solution if the intent is to just to download movies in a server that I probably will never have the time to watch. And even 72TB can fill up fast. And having moving parts, they are prone to failing. Then what? Fork out another $20k? If the Terra server were priced close to how much internal hard drives cost (e.g. Seagate 20TB NAS HDD being $400 today), I would pay $3k for a 100TB system in a heart-beat (which is $1000 premium to the individual hard drives). But a $20k premium? I would rather use that money to buy content from your K-store.

Lowering the price point for the Terra server by 80% may be out of the picture. Offering a DIY solution where customers bring in their own NAS and hard drives will just destroy the user experience and introduce compatible issues. So adding a feature to view PURCHASED but NOT DOWNLOADED content is a good middle ground. At least until storage prices drop which I don't expect to happen until a decade from now. When that time comes, then I'll download all my content in a physical Terra server (or whatever it will be called by then).

I work in development and understand that it will take at least 6-12 months to do system integration testing and validation. But it would be a great to have this feature as a 2022 Christmas present.
 
^^ I am hopeful (fingers crossed) that at CEDIA, Kaleidescape will announce some much needed UI improvements.

I would also LOVE to see an option to view "Cataloged" movies from the main screen as well. In my case, those are on my NAS so I would then have a single place to look for any movie I owned. And that is also what I mistakenly assumed would be the case when I bought the K system and then spent DAYS cataloging on a borrowed Alto. Heck, I would even consider buying another Alto and DV700 if they were available new and still supported. But I'm 99.99999% confident THAT won't happen.

CEDIA is close - so we shall soon see.
 
Just a quick update - I'm no longer looking for a way to find/view movies that are not in a collection.
Running Second Screen on my M1 mac is more than good for viewing/adding/changing collections.
Cool app.
 
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