I am new to Rasplex although I have had PMS for a while although I rarely use it as I have a SageTV based system as my primary media client/server system. I fired up Rasplex and all looks well except that I have now been pre-caching for about 3 hours. I have lots of show on my PMS as I have several TB including lots of kids shows where I have tons of shorter episodes. I probably have at least 8000 video files. And I also have tons of photos and music files. Is there a maximum number of items in Plex that can cause a problem for Rasplex?
Well, when it comes to generic server functionality I'm sure PMS has a lot more to offer than SageTV, while SageTV has more to offer when it comes to direct storage of received television broadcasts, so hopefully these systems can complement each other.I am new to Rasplex although I have had PMS for a while although I rarely use it as I have a SageTV based system as my primary media client/server system.
I fired up Rasplex and all looks well except that I have now been pre-caching for about 3 hours.
3 Hours means that it's stuck. That operation is not going to complete, ever.
This assumes that you are using a fairly recent version of RasPlex, as Some ancient versions could take that long...!!!
But recent versions will not take that long, even for a VERY large Plex library.
You may have to forcibly disconnect the RPi to regain any control over it.
I have lots of show on my PMS as I have several TB including lots of kids shows where I have tons of shorter episodes. I probably have at least 8000 video files. And I also have tons of photos and music files. Is there a maximum number of items in Plex that can cause a problem for Rasplex?
There could be a problem if you have a huge amount of 'top level' items in one media section.
By 'top level' I mean individual Movies or 'TV Shows' entries, but not the sub-entries for show seasons and/or episodes.
For example, I currently have a "Movies" section with 1462 movies which still works fine, and a "TV Shows" section with 1016 shows which also works fine. I'm not really sure how many episodes this represents, since the shows vary greatly on that score, but I can safely say that I have a lot more files than you've mentioned.
Returning to the problem at hand:
Did you start that precache operation as part of the initial configuration 'Wizard', or did you do it by using the "Precache Controls" command in the side menu after completing other configuration. The latter method is what I recommend.
When I install RasPlex from scratch on a fresh RPi unit I always skip through the initial wizard, without doing any of the things it suggests, just passing through all the pages with the 'Next' command. Then I go through all the "System Settings" and "Preferences" menus to set things up like I want them, doing the myPlex login as the last of these steps. At this point (if not sooner) RasPlex should display the PMS media sections in the main menu, but I still don't use them yet, as this is the time when I use the "Precache Controls" command. That precaching normally succeeds in somewhere between 5-10 minutes (should be less for a smaller library), and when it has succeeded I use the "Restart" command in the side menu, so as to reboot with a fully working config and precache.
Hopefully the same procedures will work for you as well.
In case it still won't work, we need to look at other possible reasons for the failure, such as the quality of the SD card and its flashing, the RPi PSU rating and reliability, and of course the network connection. But we can return to those things in future posts.
Best regards: dlanor
This was run via the upon the first bootup. Tomorrow I will do as you suggest and skip this step during the wizard. It turns out that some of the folders that I was using for my libraries no longer existed as I added some new hard drives a few months ago and moved some of my media shares on my server - maybe that was causing the problem.
This was run via the upon the first bootup. Tomorrow I will do as you suggest and skip this step during the wizard. It turns out that some of the folders that I was using for my libraries no longer existed as I added some new hard drives a few months ago and moved some of my media shares on my server - maybe that was causing the problem.
Those missing media and drives may very well have confused PMS and RasPlex during the precache requests.
Make sure that PMS itself is fully up-to-date with its media scanning and then use the PMS command to 'Empty Trash', so that absent media are forgotten, before using RasPlex "Precache Controls" again.
That's partly to avoid new hanging, but also because it's pointless to cache obsolete info.
Best regards: dlanor
Well, when it comes to generic server functionality I'm sure PMS has a lot more to offer than SageTV, while SageTV has more to offer when it comes to direct storage of received television broadcasts, so hopefully these systems can complement each other.
SageTV was, and still is, the best PVR software despite the fact that it was discontinued when Sage was purchased by Google over three years ago and integrated into the Google Fiber project. The good thing about Sage was that it had very good hardware extenders so that you could get full functionality on lightweight clients. Sage was also very much a client/server type of implementation unlike some of its competitiors such as WMC. Now that we have Plex, especially on lightweight clients like an RPi or Roku, there are some very good replacements for much of what Sage can do. And a Sage Developer has written a Plex Scanner that exports metadata from Sage to Plex using the SageTV API so it makes Plex a viable front end to a SageTV backend.
But there are still some things that don't seem to quite work as well on Plex and, obviously, you don't have the TV scheduling front end. In my experience Plex isn't great when you are watching shows that are still being recorded and when you do lots of skipping around in the file. I do both of these a lot as I will often watch hockey (and other sports) an hour or two after the game starts but before it has ended. I skip through stoppages in play and commercials and in my limited testing on Plex it seems that the skipping is slow and you lose sync (this was using PHT for Windows on a fast Windows PC). With Plex you don't generally get LiveTV but I don't care about that.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
