After using a flow like that for some time, I decided to add Local Folders to the mix so I don’t just have 200 files in a single view, and of course this led to some more difficulties here…
If I try to organize my local files by moving them to a local folder, they’re no longer connected with Plex as far as syncing watch status. So now it seems what I need to do is:
Navigate to the smart playlist
Hit select
One by one select each episode
Hit download
Go to File view where there’s no sorting of the contents. (If I’m ‘syncing’ multiple playlists they get intermingled.
Hit select again
One by one select each item I just downloaded
Select Move to folder
Click on the episode to play
When I’m done hit select
One by one select each item I just played
Remove from folder. Oh now they’re all unwatched!
Afterwards long press the episode and mark watched
Hit select
One by one mark each one I just marked as watched again
Hit delete
Repeat everything each time there’s new content.
A) Video’s in a folder not being connected with Plex seems like a bug right?
B) Is there a reason we don’t have a ‘Select’ option to mark played?
C) I can download an entire ‘Season’ from Plex, but I can’t download a Smart Playlist.
I think what you are seeing is expected at least for now.
Videos added outside of Plex are not linked with items which may be stored in Plex. These will be linked if you are using a non-media server connection (SMB, NFS, WebDAV, etc…) as Infuse will sync watched history for multiple copies of the same title. This is trickier with Plex, since the remote copy is using Plex metadata and manually added video is using Infuse metadata.
This is something which needs to be added, and I’ve added to our list.
This is also not possible right now, but sounds like a good idea.
Thanks for the response James, I think you missunderstand the first point though.
I navigate a smart playlist in Plex, long press an episode of a show and say download. It goes to the root of folders on the iPad, if I watch the show there it’s synced with plex. If on the iPad instead I say ‘Add to folder, new folder, test’ and watch the show inside that folder, it is not synced with plex. If I longpress on the show after watching it, and select remove from folder. It is no longer watched. If I then long press on it and mark it as watched, it is now marked as watched in Plex.
IE: It’s ‘linked’ with Plex as long as it’s in the root folder. Moving it to another folder unlinks it, moving it back to the folder links it again, but without it’s watch history.
At no point do I add it through anything other than Download from within a plex smart playlist.