To start, I am a big fan of plex!
I have a very, very, large collection witch comes with some preformance problems.
Library scans, take forever. Mainly because plex server is doing way more then it needs to.
This can be improved dramatically with (what I think) some simple scan adjustments and options.
These features would also improve plex and scan performance for smaller collections.
-Exclude show feature.
Most of the plex users have finished tv series in there collection. Meaning there are no new episodes airing. Why scan them? A small toggle switch option on a tv show could ‘include’ or ‘exclude’ the show from future scans, therefor speeding up the active show scans.
-Exclude on source level.
The option to exclude one of the sources in a section will allow you to populate specific source locations with finished tv shows. You can still have all tv shows in one section but that specific source would be excluded from the scan.
-Exclude on a section level.
Same feature as above only on a section level. Some sections just don’t need to be scanned, every… single… time.
-Scan source priority order.
As the collection grows new storage locations are added. The new locations are probably being populated with new shows. Having the ability to set a scanning order allows you to let the plex server scan the new storage locations first when scanning the section. It will find your new content faster, speeding up availability of the new content.
I have requested the exclude feature before and got an option back to add a hidden file to each directory that informs the server to skip it. In all honesty, its highly inconvenient especially with a large collection and I havent been able to get it to work on a smaller test scenario.
I think that these features can be a great improvement for all plex users.
2016, hope the plex team could respond to my post or implement my idea’s. Because 95% of my library scan’s are a waste of time and take forever. The plex server needs to be smarter.
Seems to me it would be better to have server scanning optimized instead of bogging the server down with options. Not sure if Plex is able to look at a folders “last modified” date, but if it could that’d be a simpler way to improve scan speeds, though mine are already pretty fast.
What could be done is to add a new option to the library setup which is a simple as:
Manual Refresh Only
What might be better yet is to move the “Manual Refresh Only” checkbox to the section where you add libraries/directories. You could then set it per directory.
This was you can setup your libraries to automatically refresh or to be ignored by the auto refresh/scanning mechanisms. Then for example you could have two TV Show libraries/directories (one for ended and one for ongoing).
Anytime you change data in one of your “manual” areas you would of course need to manually update the info by triggering a manual refresh.
I have 45TB of media spread over 14 NAS drives. The “manual refresh only” would be a great start.
I believe the meta data gathered on thetvdb website includes info on active or ended status of a show. Maybe that data could be used during a “quick scan” version of the scans. Excluding ended shows, or even completed seasons.
@spawn666
You mention 45TB across 14 drives, but what kind of CPU and how much RAM does your PMS box have?
Are all these drives in the same box that runs PMS?
What OS and version of PMS are you running?
For comparison, running Update Libraries takes just over 2 minutes on my server, a full minute of that time is just for the Music library. Updating just the Movie or TV Library is 30ish seconds each. (16 drives in 2 - RaidZ2 arrays)
My PMS runs on a mac mini late 2012 model, 2.5GHz Intel Core i5
8GB 1600 MHz DD3
I have one 15TB custom mini atx freenas setup,
The rest are WD my book nas drives (some with the white light bar, the rest latest model.)
slowly expanding the freenas setup to increase network access speed performance.
The WD nas drives respond a bit sluggish when accessed from a mac.
alle media runs smoothly btw. I can run scans and play media at the same time without glitches.
Never the less, every unnecessarily scanned file is one to many. The option to manually flag a section, show or season would be a great improvement. (prioritising data locations would be a nice idea too.)
@spawn666 said:
My PMS runs on a mac mini late 2012 model, 2.5GHz Intel Core i5
8GB 1600 MHz DD3
I have one 15TB custom mini atx freenas setup,
The rest are WD my book nas drives (some with the white light bar, the rest latest model.)
slowly expanding the freenas setup to increase network access speed performance.
The WD nas drives respond a bit sluggish when accessed from a mac.
alle media runs smoothly btw. I can run scans and play media at the same time without glitches.
Never the less, every unnecessarily scanned file is one to many. The option to manually flag a section, show or season would be a great improvement. (prioritising data locations would be a nice idea too.)
I agree, being able to customize the scanning process would be great.
I was referring to your initial statement, though, that Library scans take forever.
I was interested in the reasons/causes it might be taking forever
@hthighway ,not literally “forever” just long. Aseptically because the newer empty drives contain recent new shows, and are scanned last. waiting for the new episode to appear feel like forever.
My dad also sorts active and ended shows that way. It does improve on manual scans but personally I dislike splitting too much. Already have, reality shows, cartoon shows, anime shows and docu series. I also dislike losing the watched episodes status.
My tv series section, which is already split in old shows and new takes 7 min an 30 sec to scan.
I hope plex can improve the scanning system. This takes to long. I don’t want to spit it up again in running and ended, it looks messy.
waiting for the new episode to appear feel like forever. 
