Faster Movie Cover Art Loading Possible?

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#: 1.16.3.1402 (Synology DS918+ NAS with 8 GB RAM)
Player Version#: 7.20.0.11992 (Shield Plex)

I notice whether I use the Plex web interface or the Shield Plex App and I’m scrolling through my library, there can be a second or two before some of the movie cover art is loaded. (Yeah, I’m kinda picky when it comes to speed).

I’m using a Synology DS918+ to store my media. It has 8 GB of RAM / Quad-core 1.5GHz burst up to 2.3GHz. It can also use 2x M.2 NVMe 2280 SSDs. So I’m wondering if adding 2x SSDs will help generate the cover art quicker as it may be held in cache due to the addition of the SSD’s?

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I know the Plex for Windows app is extremely fast at picking up the newly added content and loading the posters are super fast. I would imagine the team will do the same for all clients.

Did a few tests and the app detected and loaded the poster as fast as 15 seconds.

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Well, I primarily want them to load faster on Plex for the Nvidia Shield as that is what I’ll be using likely 99% of the time. I’m thinking this could be accomplished if I add some SSD’s to my NAS for cache. I think there should be a way of moving the NAS Plex metadata to the Synology SSD’s? There’s probably a guide some where.

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There aren’t any guides per se but the process is simple.

  1. Stop PMS

  2. Rename the Plex share to OldPlex

  3. Create a Shared Folder on the SSD volume named Plex

  4. Make ownership and all permissions match those of OldPex (Control Panel - Shared Folders - Permissions )

  5. Open FileStation,

  6. Using FileStation, copy *Library and tmp_transcoding to this new Plex share

  7. Start Plex.

If you have any difficulties, recheck the permissions using FileStation as viewed using Properties for each.

As a last resort, uninstall the Package and reinstall it. The installer corrects any permission problems it can detect when it starts.

Once safely running, you may delete OldPlex unless you wish to have a hot-spare backup

1 Like
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Ok thanks, maybe I’ll get around to trying that sometime, BUT I am hearing from people that it doesn’t really make a difference in terms of cover art/metadata loading. Can you confirm if it does or not? (For the Shield App/Web Interface).

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What it does speed up is the Disk I/O to-from the database and metadata directories

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Errr, uh ok. So it does speed up the cover art loading in the Plex Shield App or is the Plex Shield App going to be the bottleneck? And if I decide to get 2x SSD’s, how large/what kind would you recommend?

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be careful, many Synology NAS only allow the use of the two NVME SSD for read / write cache. you can’t use it as an SSD volume like Chuck is suggesting. PS my experience with read write cache was mixed. It seemed to help but once it got (edit) full it actually was worse than without. I am picky about plex smoothness as well, and I noticed (at least with the older apps) that running it off an SSD volume really did help it load the posters etc as you popped around in the player apps.

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That’s why I said Volume and thanks for raising that again.

SSD buys nothing unless the SSD can be mounted as a true JBOD volume (/volume2, etc)

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On the 918+, the M.2 NVME SSDs are only for read/write cache.

If you want a SSD based volume, you have to install a 2.5" SATA SSD in one of the drive bays.

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Hmm ok, I think I am confused at this point lol. I’m really new to NAS and fairly new to Plex as well. So, you only recommend using the SSD’s as a volume? I noticed in another thread people were talking about installing DSM on the SSDs as well…is that necessary? This is all sounding a bit convoluted at this point. Was the extra speed increase on the poster loading worth it and it never slowed down over time when set up as a VOLUME? Did you get 128 or 256 and what brand did you use? I mean, is there even any point in buying a second SSD if you’re using a 256 GB as a volume? That is more than plenty for Plex metadata and whatever else I can think of using it for.

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Ok, thanks for that. That actually sounds kinda familiar when I looked into this a year ago. I literally had this NAS sitting around for a entire year without using it lol, so I forgot everything I actually researched. So, since those SSD’s can only be used for read/write cache, is there any point? Sounds like these guys are saying it could actually make performance worse or not make any difference at all.

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I’ve a 918+, primarily used for Plex. I did not put in SSDs. Everything I read said it would not help.

From Synology:

SSD Cache
The objective of enabling SSD cache is to increase the performance of random access to a small portion of data that is frequently accessed in the storage space. For example, both large sequential read or write operations (e.g., HD video streaming) and entirely random data reading patterns lack re-reading patterns, and thus will not benefit significantly from SSD caching. For general applications, it is recommended to enable the Skip sequential I/O option, so that sequential I/O can still pass through to the drives of the storage space.

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I filled a 256GB Read/Write Cache when I had one. If I were to try again, it would be with two 512GB drives. It is quite an investment for something that sometimes helps, usually doesn’t, sometimes makes things worse. One thing I notices is that it made a big difference when I did a library scan. performance boost there is hardly critical, but it was there.

SSD Volume always helps. My Plex install is on my RAID5 (of Micron 1TB SATA SSD) and plex is smooth scrolling, way better then when it was on HDD.

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