One of the main complaints about photo libraries, if not the biggest complaint of all, is that phototranscoder is too slow. It is unusable on ARM platform, and even on Intel it requires passmark > 1500 to be usable.
All players support jpeg’s natively, why do we have to put phototranscoder in the middle ? It’s a mistery that made many users adopt other solutions and not Plex for photo management.
Viewing same photos via internet using Google Photos is so much faster and smoother than viewing via local PMS.
It’s been like this since ever and the only client that’s decently fast browsing photos is OpenPHT.
@wally007 said:
Viewing same photos via internet using Google Photos is so much faster and smoother than viewing via local PMS.It’s been like this since ever and the only client that’s decently fast browsing photos is OpenPHT.
… and PlexConnect. Seems that only non-official clients have “not so bad” performance…
@moody_blue said:
@wally007 said:
Viewing same photos via internet using Google Photos is so much faster and smoother than viewing via local PMS.It’s been like this since ever and the only client that’s decently fast browsing photos is OpenPHT.
… and PlexConnect. Seems that only non-official clients have “not so bad” performance…
yea, XBMC/KODI based … so ’ fast’ that they had to get rid of them 
@moody_blue How else can we generate thumbnails?
If you run OpenPHT on a low end ARM device, it generates thumbnails slow too. 
Google Photos is fast because it generates them serverside, also is not dependent on the local infrastructure. This is cloud vs local, so not an accurate comparison.
@keithah said:
@moody_blue How else can we generate thumbnails?If you run OpenPHT on a low end ARM device, it generates thumbnails slow too.
Google Photos is fast because it generates them serverside, also is not dependent on the local infrastructure. This is cloud vs local, so not an accurate comparison.
Im running it on 8 core 16 thread XEON processor, 32GB RAM, 10Gb Network (wireless is AC), photos are stored on SSD and viewing photos in web client, PMP, iOS clients are still slower than Google Photos.
Way slower that even my girlfriend who can’t be bother with many things refuses to use Plex for Photos.
Only reason why we keep Photos in Plex is to be able to browse them on TV (using OpenPHT).
Maybe you should give Google Photos on iOS device and on the web a try to see what Plex is missing… fluid browsing without loading screen.
RE Cloud vs Local, of course it is accurate comparison. Who cares how you do it, experience is what count. Noone is stopping PMS from pre-generating bunch of thumbnails, various sized photos for iPad, web, iPhone etc etc …
@keithah said:
@moody_blue How else can we generate thumbnails?If you run OpenPHT on a low end ARM device, it generates thumbnails slow too.
Thanks, but my concern with thumbnails is not so much “why generate them” but “when generate them”. If thumbnails were generated when the library is created (or updated), taking into account the characteriscs of devices (which are, or could be stored in the Plex folder), this would not hurt viewing so much.
Also, some clients seem to always force phototranscoder during viewing (or slideshow) when it would only be necessary to analyze the “rotate info” and request transcoding in the few photos that need rotation. This creates unnecessary CPU activity, which may be affordable or not, depending on CPU speed.
I also don’t get why there is no option to pre-create thumbnails in certain sizes on the server on/after adding them to the library.
Transcoding will always be slower and for me too slow compared to just loading a smaller pre generated JPEG file from the server.
Also: why would we generate thumbnails on the fly for every singe device? No other service is doing this. Let’s have 3-4 thumbnail sizes and the client depending on the display solution will fetch one of those.
Please, please add this feature. Plex is not usable for photos like this!
Thanks
Daniel
I agree that this SLOOOOOOW speed of the photo display, put Plex Server in a very bad position for photo Librarys. I like the idea to get all my media library (Photos, movies and videos) at the same place using a single application, but the current speed dont allow Plex to be a good alternative for photos.
Would love to have full-size images as “back in the days”. It was faster back then, and now we have to live with bad resized images, that you can’t zoom on because of resolution. Also, one needs to download the image into the camera roll, to preview them full size. Mine hangs a lot, so if i could help with any of my logs - let me know.
I’m using a Skull Canyon with a I7-6770HQ, fast M.2 SSD disks and 32gb memory.
Please, please, please provide an option to create thumbnails and downsized versions in advance and not on-the-fly. This is sooo slow. And: Not every device needs a specific resolution to display. ALL other services are doing it that way. You precreate around 3 different downsized versions and they will get fetched depending on the device. Plex is unusable for photos like this!
any update on creating thumbnails in advance so browsing and flipping through photos is comparable to Google Photos or Apple Photos ?
For me it takes 2-3 seconds to go from one photo to another if I flip through the photos in quick succession.
I appreciate the extra features like maps and faces that sell Plex Pass but maybe look at the underlying feature implementation. As it is, on iOS device this is far far too slow.
One of the main features I bought into with Plex Pass is camera upload. The functionality is awesome and I wanted to use it to replace amazon/google photos, but alas, my wife is so frustrated with how long photos take to load, she won’t even use it. PLEX team, please take a look at creating thumbnails in advance!
PLEX iOS version 4.17
PLEX server version 1.8.1.4139
@keithah I have to say my experience has been like others here so much that i revisit photos every 6 months or so hoping instead of finding new ways to add “features” and brag about photos on the blog that you have actually found a way to make it usable. For me I add the library, let it scan for days, about 1/3 of the photos actually get thumbnails even though plex declares all is good. I have a windows 10 servere with SSD, I7 Processor on Gigabyte network trying to view on a shield tv, not weak devices. If you view them it is painfully slow. You spend more time saying “wait it will pop up” than actually viewing photos. I eventually just remove the photo library and try again 6 months later. I use plex for TV, Shows, DVR, Live tv, Movies, Home videos and all is great, this feature just doesn’t seem finished. I admit I am not a programmer but as an end user something seems fundamentally flawed with the way plex approaches this that we are this far into the life cycle of a released feature and it is still just not really usable because of how slow it responds. I actually came here hoping to find something that told me I was an idiot instead it seems others have the same issues and it seems you are saying “all is as intended”
Absolutely got the same feeling using Plex to view my Photos, whether on my iPhone 6S, NVIDIA Shield TV or Plex Web App (LAN or Distant). Pictures take a long time to preview, and then a long time to view full screen.
The Photos section of the software would need a great pass of optimization now that the features are there!
+1 for slow photos. Even when I sync them (resized) to my Plex App offline on my Galaxy S8 it’s slow while viewing them.
Wouldn’t it be easy to give users an option to display fullsize photos without any transcoding?
Is there any official answer from Plex team? I have been looking for some solution or at least a statement from Plex for quite a lot of time but it looks like that Plex is simply not usable for photos and there is no solution at all.
I second that request. I tried to watch some vacation photos via PLEX on ATV4 last night, and it literally took forever. This can’t be the best they can do, there must be ways to speed things up.
I just tried watching vacation photos on a Synology ds918+ through Apple TV last night. It took an absurdly long amount of time (`10 seconds) to load a single photo. This is horrible performance. Is this a known issue? Anyone working on making the photos feature perform acceptably?
