Is there any way to have box sets appear within the list view panel? My hope would be to have the list view panel more closely emulate how my actual, physical shelves appear, with the box and its art containing the individual movies within it. I know I could create a box set as a single entry, but I would prefer to have each movie be its own entry.
I have used DVD Profiler in the past, and was a fan of how they used a nesting feature for this purpose. I understand that this is different software, and implementing something like could be difficult, but I was curious if it might be a possible consideration at some point (and, as a CLZ Movies user as well, having a similar feature show up there as well would be ideal).
Thank you for your time and consideration. I remain a big fan of the software in general, and appreciate any and all feedback.
I understand the request, and it indeed would be cool. But I’m curious how we would display it. You’d have the list of movies, and then there is this “box set entry” that would contain movies, which are one level deeper, but still also just “movies” - so on the same level as higher up.
Now for regular understanding (and being close to what you have on your shelf) that feels normal, but technically it feels weird that movies are also found an extra level deeper. Right now if you click a box set, in the details panel you already see all those movies inside, which you can click, to quickly jump to them in your collection.
Another point of thought on this feature: if say 3 movies are contained in a box set and their names are:
X-Men
The Ring
Ant-Man
(yes the greatest box set of all time).
And you would sort by “alphabetical” - and you go to the R. You would not see “The Ring” - because of the “enclosed box set” feature - and that could mean you might think you don’t have that movie - but you do.
In the current situation, the Ring DOES appear under the R. And when you click it you see that it is part of your box set!
This has become a way too long message. I do wonder how DVD Profiler did that - might have to check that out.
As far displaying box sets, the way that DVD Profiler did (still does?) it would be to show the box set art on the “shelves” right along with all of the other non-box set individual titles. The only difference would be a small icon indicating that it included other items nested inside (in their case, a small ‘+’ in the upper righthand corner of the art).
Upon clicking the ‘+’, the nested items within the box set would appear to the right of the box set art as the individual titles that they are, simply pushing the titles that follow the box set further down the ‘shelves.’ If a box set had been expanded, the ‘+’ icon would change to a ‘-’, and clicking it would contract the box set to its initial state.
As for what the details panels might show if one were to just click on the box set art, instead of expanding it, I admit, I hadn’t really thought too much about that, but I suppose it could simply work similarly to how it currently works if one selects a box set from the folder menu, where it shows the box set contents, with the details from the first title in said box set.
In your ‘Greatest Box Set of All Time’ example, yes, it’s true that The Ring would not show up on its own under ‘R’, but that would also be true of an actual physical box set as well. I suppose it ultimately comes down to a question of preference, and I would imagine the ideal scenario would allow users to make their own decisions about how they want their movies displayed. I suppose there may very well be people out there who don’t keep the physical box sets that they buy, and remove all the titles within and display them as individual movies.
Anyway, this has also become a way too long message, but I very much appreciate the engagement and consideration on your end. I look forward to hearing any more thoughts on the matter.
Thank you for your detailed reply. With the data that the app stores for box set, something like you’re suggesting would likely be possible indeed, and I will take note of your request here.
For now the only way is the way you already found out: adding the box set as “one entry” where the movie titles will appear in the Plot of the movie. Just a workaround for now, but probably not the one you should take.
Other than that you can of course click the folder icon top left, and then group by Box Set to quickly see all your box sets grouped together.
Man, this is great. It’s great to know that someone else has thought about this as much as I have. I too would have preferred the method of a nested drop down scenario. I never used anything else other than CLZ to catalogued my collection, so I didn’t think it possible for something like this.
I was myself about to post a suggestion to see if something like this was possible, but then I saw this post.
This not only affects the items that are strictly boxed sets, but also double features like the Spies Like Us & Funny Farm set. Not at all a boxed set, but categorised this way due to its packaging.
Just wanted to throw in my two cents worth on this.
The way I’d like to see this working is similar to how Frostillicus described. There would be two new checkbox settings. A “Display box sets in the list view” and a sub-setting under that of “Always show box sets expanded in the list view”. When enabled, the list view would continue to operate exactly as it does now (in all layouts) except the box sets would be injected into the list view as separate items, with some sort of indicator to denote that they’re box sets. The non-applicable fields would just be empty. When clicking on a box set, the details view would only show the box set details. What happens when you click on the box set indicator would depend on what layout you’re viewing. For example, here’s a mockup of a possible way to handle the list view (please forgive my hack job photoshopping skills).
In this example, clicking the box set indicator would expand to show the movies it contains below it, using different row colors to indicate that those movies are part of the box set. Note how the “Hannibal” blu-ray is now listed in the list as both a stand alone movie as well as part of the box set. For the other layout types, clicking the box set indicator would display the box set movies to the right, with some sort of indicator to show that they are part of the box set. Perhaps a different shade of color behind them or a colored line around them.
Also, note in my example mockup that I used two different box images for the box set items. The larger image indicates box sets and the smaller images indicate movies that belong to a box set. I like the idea of being able to click on the large box set image to expand the box set items and clicking on the small images to jump to the box set entry. I like the idea of being able to see at a glance which entries are box sets and which ones belong to box sets. I have a lot of box sets and store them separate from the rest of my movies, so it would make it a little easier to know where to go looking for a particular movie.
Lastly, just to address the sorting issue that CLZ_AJ brought up… I’m guessing that the list being displayed is being stored in an array. So, I’m imagining that the box set items would then be stored as an array within that array. So, when sorting the overall view, the box set movies would never get sorted with the other movies. They would always stay sorted in the order that they are listed in the box set, and be displayed next to the box set. I suspect sorting the box set items themselves is a bit of an edge case request given the solution I’ve illustrated here. Although, it could still be done (maybe with a performance hit though).
It would be awesome if y’all could implement this! If I can offer any more explanation (or crude mockups) on this idea, please let me know. Keep up the great work!
