Server Version#: 1.29.0.6244-819d3678c
Player Version#: 7.0.17.8028-d94b3a6bf-Plex (Roku)
I have a large (>1 million) folder tree of photos. Library scan has located all of them, and has made thumbnails for some of them. The ones it has make thumbnails for are kind of random - mostly near the top and bottom of the main folder sorted alphabetically, but some scattered in between.
I have tried restarting Scan Library Files several times, and it just won’t thumbnail any more of the photos.
All of the photos use exactly the same naming convention, and the subfolder structures are exactly the same.
Don’t enable auto scanning when media is added.
Don’t enable auto tagging photos.
Enable debug mode logging on the server.
Start your photos library from scratch via a plex dance
Reboot the PMS computer. Add 10k at a time, not 1M.
Why should auto scanning be disabled for new media? How else can I be sure new media is detected? Do you suggest a manual scan each time new media is added? Additionally, are you referring to disabling one, or both of these settings:
“Scan my library automatically”
" Run a partial scan when changes are detected"
When scanning, I’m assuming Plex ignores previously scanned files that have not had changes. Is that right?
I have some additional questions, not referenced by you:
Generate video preview/chapter thumbnails “as a scheduled task.” or “when new media is added”
If I decide to leave this as a scheduled task for the future, where do I schedule this task, or does it happen automatically if I do not enable this?
For Music and Photos, I’ve left Plex to scan overnight, only to discover that while Plex window was still open, the scan stopped and was incomplete. I have a lot of files, but still, the scanning feature seems lacking. How do I ensure full scans?
Hello again. Let me try to answer your questions. I think it will work the way you want, but you should get there incrementally.
Do to the overwhelming nature of your media collection, we should be sure to incrementally achieve success during the initial adding of files. Disabling automatic scanning is part of simplifying your initial load. We don’t want you to get stuck in case of a bad file after days of scanning. I’m suggesting have it scan 10k files for an hour or two, who knows maybe it takes 5min. But you’ll see it succeed or not.
Once your 1M files are happy, you can turn on the automatic detection of new media.
Personally I always do manual scans, but I add maybe 3 videos a day, sometimes none.
During initial load in, disabling both. Refer also to the Plex articles on Server Settings, in this case the Library section when you’re trying to decide the scope of each setting.
When instructed, it watches folder by folder for changes to the contents. So dividing your media into manageable folders is a good start. Within a folder that’s had changes, PMS ignore previously scanned files that are unchanged, yes.
I hate to say this, but you schedule that task in the Scheduled Tasks section
There you configure the span of hours it will occur. The rest is explained in the Plex article on Video Preview Thumbnails.
VPTs take all the horsepower of your CPU. Don’t do any of those until your entire collection is scanned in and stable. Also as I suggested, don’t introduce your entire media collection to PMS at once. You’re asking for problems. I did 10 TV series, then 100, then the rest. Next I did films.
I think it’s important to scan in your media during the day but have that finished by bed time. I want scheduled tasks to go off by themselves on an idle system. They are complex tasks.
Finally once all media is scanned in and you move on to generating VPTs, you may want to increase the time frame in scheduled tasks to from like Midnight to Noon. But then you walk up to your computer at 10am and want it to stop the scheduled tasks. To do that, you simply go into your Settings and change the stop time to something less like 9am, hit save, and it stops right away.
Thank you for your detailed response. That was very helpful and clear. And I appreciate your patience with my silly and obvious question about scheduled tasks. I just seemed to have always overlooked it. My next question is how to optimize scheduled tasks for efficiency and without wasting time overloading the system. I have enough HDD space and will only adding files periodically once my library is fully set up. Any advice on what I have below?
tl;dr
For the most efficiency during the days you’re loading up PMS with your media, and given your screenshot, do not select Extensive Media Analysis unless you see the Butler idle at 6am.
VPTs, and Intro Detection add a ton of work to Extensive Media Analysis that’s already doing a lot.
When tasks are doing something, you’ll see you dashboard spinner icon in a Plex Player. You can also watch each task complete in Settings → Alerts. Because so many things are covered under Extensive Media Analysis, it’s something I don’t do unless the Butler is always idle at 6am for example.
More things that slow down tasks.
Intro detection compares one episode of a show with the next and the next and so on. If you have 200 episodes, you massively increase the work it has to do comparing them all.
VPTs on a 4K obviously take a lot longer than a 1080p.
VPTs are done single threaded and too often, like once every 2sec of video not once over 10ec. You should change that default in Advanced Hidden Settings, if you choose to create VPTs.
VPTs can be done multithreaded and in HW if you have an NVidia card and like to hack, and it’s crazy fast like can do 10k films a day not a 20.
Instead of using a plex dance, which appears to just clear the metadata associated with library, can’t I just delete the library and recreate it from scratch?
omg I thought Gomipanda was the OP and he even posted screenshots in your thread. what a disaster all that wasted effort not helping you. there’s no chance I’m adding more time into this beyond saying the plex articles are the user manual.
I just want to say, coming into my question and asking unrelated questions, to the point that nibbles doesn’t want to help me anymore, sucks. Why not ask your own question? Thanks a lot.
