Collections (New Subscriber - setting things up)

[Tango]

I’ve used Infuse in the past, dropped it because of some issues that have since been fixed. I’ve been trying to get time to test it out and set it up because I want to drop what I’m using now for local video playback. I’ve had some good help here, but I’m still trying to get my system set up.

We have multiple Apple TVs in the house and I use Infuse on my iOS devices and sometimes on my Mac. (I have a Pro membership.) So I have a lot I’m trying to get used to on Infuse. I have set up Trakt for the instance of Infuse on my Mac and on one Apple TV - so I can set things up and test 'em and get what works before I set up things on every Apple TV in the house.

I understand there are “smart” collections, like all James Bond movies. (And I like that - since I have a number of old movie serials and it’s nice they’re all set up in their own collections.)

I’m trying to create collections of my TV shows and movies so I can classify them as I want (as opposed to automatic genre classifications).

1. Is there a way to share the collections I make on one device across other devices? I spent about half an hour, last night, making a few collection and putting some of my shows in them on my Mac, but the collections don’t show up at all on my Apple TV. (I did realize the TV wasn’t connected to Trakt, but I did connected it and came back later to check. While I think Trakt just does watched/unwatched, I thought it might help.)

2. On my Mac, on Infuse, I have a line that’s just my collections - here the 3rd row down:

   
   How can I do the same with collections on Apple TV? I see “Collections” as a category that can be added, but it doesn’t add the collections like the desktop app does. Also, is there a way to have that section “Collections” show in multiple rows, so I don’t have to scroll to the side to see it all?

3. Is there any way to have sub-collections or collections in collections? For instance, I have a number of SF TV shows, and that includes several Star Trek and several Star Gate series. Is there a way to include a Star Trek collection inside the SF&F collection? (I do have a separate Star Trek collection and have the same shows in the SF&F, but it’d be nice if they showed up in SF&F like a subfolder does in the file system.)

4. I have dozens of TV shows. Is there a way to select more than one at a time to add to a collection?

[Tango]

I have an answer for #1: Collections are automatically shared from system to system on the same account.

[james]

In general, Infuse uses iCloud to sync everything between devices. This relies on having the same iCloud ID in use on each device.

One caveat, is that Infuse will treat collections/playlists for ‘local’ files separate from streamed files. For example, if you have some local videos in your Movies folder on Mac these can be added to a collection. However, since these files were added to Infuse locally they wouldn’t be playable on an Apple TV. In this case, the collection itself would not sync via iCloud since the files it contains cannot be accessed on other devices.

To avoid this, you would want to add the Mac connection as a remote connection (EG SMB). This sounds a little counterintuitive when setting it up on Mac since if the files are local you won’t need SMB, but if the SMB connection points to the same device you are using (EG your Mac) the files would be accessed locally anyways and not involve the network.

You can select multiple items at once. Simply right-click on an item and choose the ‘Select’ option, click any items you want to add, and then choose the Collections option near the bottom (under the More tab).

Adding collections inside of collections is not supported at this time. We may need to get in touch with Xzibit for that one.

[Tango]

Thanks! So I have Collections working - and things like that are SO much easier to set up on the Mac than on Apple TV, so I’m doing that (and marking a lot of shows watched) on the Mac and letting them sync.

Right now I’ve been testing on my Mac and 2 Apple TVs in the house. There was an old barn here when we bought the lot and it wasn’t hard to renovate, so we did, which gave us a guest bedroom, and some other useful rooms, so we have some Apple TVs in there. Now that I know the important stuff, I may be setting up Infuse on the ATVs down there. (I’m not sure - I may wait until I get extra profiles added on my Apple account, so family guests won’t be changing our metadata for tracking watched/unwatched data.)