Documentation

Collections, editions and special features

Film series collect themselves. Your own collections can hold anything in the library. A film keeps its other cuts, its trailer and its extras on its own page, so they don't crowd your shelves.

Who can do this. Anyone can browse collections and play editions and special features. Curators and the administrator make and change collections, choose which edition plays and tidy up special features, all in a web browser. The apps show collections but never change them.

Film series from TMDb

When a film is matched, TMDb says which film series it belongs to, if any. Home Stream fetches the whole series and lists it under Collections → Movie Collections. Each one is marked TMDb and shows how many you have, such as "3 of 8". Series appear after a scan, as your films are matched.

Films you don't have are included too. They're dimmed and marked Not in library, so you can see the gaps. Their posters and descriptions are downloaded along with the rest.

A series with only one film isn't shown as a collection. Once a series has been fetched, it isn't fetched again automatically. When a new film joins it, a curator can choose ⋯ → Refresh from TMDb at the top of the collection's page.

Collections of your own

Collections → Custom Collections holds the collections your household makes. It might be Christmas films, a franchise that spans film and television, or a crossover told in one episode each of two shows. A custom collection can mix films, whole TV shows, single episodes, albums and songs. A title can be in as many collections as you like. Collections belong to the whole household, not to one person.

  1. Start one

    In Collections → Custom Collections, choose + New Collection and give it a name.

  2. Pick what goes in

    Choose a kind: Films, TV Shows, Episodes, Albums or Songs. Search, and tick what belongs. You can switch kind and keep going, because your ticks are kept. Episodes need a search first, since a whole library's worth is too long to list. If something is already in another collection, you're told, and it stays there as well.

  3. Save

    Choose Save.

You can also start from the title. In the ⋯ menu of a film, show, episode, album or song, choose Add to Collection…. Tick the collections it belongs in and untick any it doesn't, or type a name to start a new collection with it. Then choose Save.

Changing a collection

The ⋯ menu on a custom collection's card, or at the top of its page, has three choices:

Order and cover

You can't rearrange a collection. Its entries are grouped by kind and then sorted by release date, so a crossover appears in the order it aired. A collection without its own poster shows a mosaic of up to four pictures from inside it, one of each kind before a second of any.

Where else collections show

A show's page and an album's page have a Collections tab if they're in any collection. It says whether the whole show or album is in the collection, or only part of it, such as two episodes. Films have no such tab, because you'll find them in their collection.

Seasons aren't collections

Seasons, under Settings → Seasons, are times of year, not shelves. While a season is over, anything in it is left out of shuffle, suggestions, the shelves and the carousel. While the season is on, it's brought forward. It's never hidden: you can always browse to it, search for it or play it.

While a season is on, up to three of its films and shows lead the big banner at the top of Home, straight after whatever you're part-way through. They change every day and work through the whole season's list before repeating, and each season that's on gets a turn. Once you've watched one this season, it isn't featured for you again until next year.

To put a film, show or album in a season, choose ⋯ → Seasons…, or use Settings → Seasons. You can narrow the Films and Albums grids to one season from the list on the left. See Seasons.

Editions

A film can come in more than one form: a director's cut beside the theatrical release, or a colourised print beside the black-and-white original. Home Stream shows them as one title and lets you choose which to play.

Naming editions

Put each edition in the same folder as the film, with the same name plus an edition tag, written the way Plex writes it:

Scrooge (1951).mkv
Scrooge (1951) {edition-Colour}.mkv

The file without a tag is the film itself. Files are grouped only if they're in the same folder and have the same name once the tag is removed. Nothing is grouped by guesswork, and a library with no tags scans exactly as before. If every file has a tag, the first in alphabetical order stands for the film. Two copies of the same cut at different qualities aren't editions.

Episodes work the same way, for a box set that put one episode on the discs twice:

S05E12 - Novel Connection.mkv
S05E12 - Novel Connection {edition-Commentary}.mkv

Choosing an edition

On a film's page, the editions appear as tiles just below Play, each showing its length, picture and sound. Click one, then choose Play. An episode's details window has the same tiles. A title with only one file shows no tiles.

If nobody chooses, the default plays, marked Default. That's the untagged file, unless a curator has picked another with Play by Default in the tile's ⋯ menu. If the default won't play, the page starts on one that will.

A curator can also give an edition a friendlier name with Rename… in the tile's ⋯ menu, such as "Original" for the black-and-white print. That only changes what the library calls it; the file keeps its name. The untagged file is called Original until someone renames it.

If you've watched one cut, the film counts as watched. Where you stopped is remembered separately for each edition, so stopping halfway through the director's cut doesn't drop you into the middle of the theatrical one.

When a film is renamed to match its match, moved to another folder or deleted, its editions go with it.

Special features

Extras from the disc, such as featurettes, deleted scenes, interviews and trailers, are filed with their film or show. They appear on a Special Features tab on its page, grouped by kind, and nowhere else: never in browsing, search or on the home screen.

You can file them two ways, as with Plex: a word added to the end of the film's file name, or a folder beside the film:

Movies/The Matrix (1999)-featurette.mkv
Movies/The Matrix (1999)/Behind The Scenes/Making Of.mkv

The folder names are Behind The Scenes, Deleted Scenes, Featurettes, Interviews, Scenes, Shorts, Trailers and Other. The matching file-name endings are -behindthescenes, -deleted, -featurette, -interview, -scene, -short, -trailer and -other. Both ways work for television too, in a show's folder or a season's. A show's list labels extras that belong to a particular season.

Trailers

When a film has a trailer, a trailer button appears beside Play on its page. The trailer comes from one of two places:

A trailer always starts from the beginning. In a browser, both kinds play in the same window with the same controls. On Apple TV, a YouTube trailer opens in the YouTube app. A trailer in your library is also listed under Special Features.

Anyone who'd rather not see YouTube trailers can turn off Settings → Preferences → Show trailers from YouTube. It affects only their own account, on every device, and trailers in your library are still offered. See Preferences. Child accounts are never offered a YouTube trailer. They're offered a trailer from your library if the film's rating allows it.

Favourites and My Watch List

These are personal, not curation. Every account, children's included, keeps its own, and adding to yours changes nobody else's shelves. Add a film or show from its ⋯ menu with Add to Favorites or Add to My Watch List, or tap the heart on its card. Albums, artists and songs can be favourites too.

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