Hello, love Plex, can’t live without it. But…
Before I submit a feature request, I’m just wondering if other people see this behavior. I used to use the two automatic options for library scanning (on changes and in changed folders only), and I was quite happy with how it worked. I split up my movie folder alphabetically which cut scanning time dramatically, especially when adding X-men movies 
But recently I started doing a lot of optimizations and noticed the above mentioned constant scanning. As long as PMS is working on an optimization while automatic scanning is enabled, both my tv and movie libraries are scanned back and forth non-stop no matter whether it’s an optimization of a tv show or of a movie. Weird.
So I created separate folders for optimizations for each library, outside the main library folders, thinking that might help, and yeah I think that stopped it from scanning the main library folders, but as the optimization folders got bigger, it turned out to be the same thing - constant scanning back and forth of both libraries. I could just ignore it, but constant disk activity is something you don’t really want to see, especially if you’re dealing with an array of disks. And if that activity is unnecessary, well that just kinda stings, speaking as someone who deals with lots of HDDs, as I’m sure many people here do.
For now I run command line scans on the TV library each hour as a scheduled task in Windows, the movie library I can do manually. So I’ve cut 60 minutes per hour of unnecessary scanning down to around 7 or 8. I’m happy with that, but for obvious reasons I’d really like to use the auto scan feature. I like it. I like it a lot. The obvious solution would be to have a temporary folder for encodes in progress, maybe user configurable on the General page under the field for DB path? I mean unless anybody sees a reason I did something wrong, or that I’m just full of ■■■■, I think that’s what we need here.
It could be related to that bug. Would need to see your scanner logs to verify.
Also, it could be the “Update my library automatically” option. This tells PMS to scan your entire library when any changes are found. If you were to only use “Run a partial scan when changes are detected”, then the scanner would detect that the change was in a media optimize folder and not scan anything. Again, would need to see the logs.
Hang on, you’re saying when I uncheck the first option, the second option stays in effect? I feel like I tried that and I didn’t get any automatic scans ever. I’ll try again.*
I do know for a fact that when I had both options checked (and no optimizations running), I didn’t get full scans each time I added something. It would just scan the affected folder and boom. Done. Like in my X-men example.
To be clear, this only started being a problem when I started optimizing stuff. It sure seems like whatever folder the optimization is happening in is being scanned continuously because of the fact that the file is constantly changing. Right? I accept that I might be crazy. I mean I don’t feel crazy but that doesn’t prove anything.
*Tried again and same result. My steps:
- Make sure Update my library automatically = unchecked.
- Make sure Run a partial scan when changes are detected = checked.
- Stop optimizations. (Wait for current file to finish after hitting Pause)
- Make sure server is quiet, no scans.
- Add files to both TV and Movies.
- Wait forever.
I got nothing. So I moved the files out, checked “Update my library automatically”, made sure the other one was still checked, and then I re-added the files. I got quick scans, files show up, all nice and tidy. I would try it again with the second option unchecked but I think we know that would just result in full scans. This is how I’ve always understood automatic / partial scanning to work.
Are you saying you run with only the second option, and you get automatic updates? That’s the exact opposite of my experience for a number of years.
Edit: Forgot to mention this is version 1.12.3.4973 on Win7 Pro if that matters. I’ve pretty much always run the latest version.
@G3H8B0R2 - Try latest Plexpass version 1.13.0.5003 to see if your scan issue is corrected.
The update didn’t correct the behavior*, but I may have figured out something about what’s going on.
So when this started, I had a crapload of stuff in the optimizer queue. The scanner would bounce between the movies and tv libraries. I noticed the same titles popping up during the scan every time. Turns out those titles were unmatched, or at least manually matched. So for the time being I got rid of those titles, and that focused the scanning to just the Optimized folders.
So I looked at the logs and saw a long list of “{Library} will be updated because of a change in {Path to optimized folder}”. I’m doing lots of 3 meg custom encodes, so those all show up in their own “Custom {1234}” folder.
There were so many folders listed I thought it was scanning the whole Optimized folder for each library, but it turns out the folders being scanned were empty.
Ah ha!
I thought maybe those were the folders of older optimizations that I deleted. So I removed the empty folders. But they came back.
Ah ha!
The folders weren’t old. They were brand new and waiting to be filled with the encodes still in the queue. Apparently it’s scanning the queue. No matter which library is being optimized, every new folder in the queue gets scanned every few minutes. I hope this info helps.
*The new beta seems to have introduced a new issue. Now I’m getting optimization failures on some titles, but only a few. I will go back to the last version to see what happens.
Updating to 1.13.0.5023 has reduced the frequency of scans to the point where I consider this resolved. Thank you.
