So this issue actually exists on all the clients I’ve used(Apple TV, Web, Plex Media Player, and Roku) except for the Nvidia Shield(even though it seems like the shield is loading the data the same way). I’m posting this here since UNO is going to be brought over to all the different platforms.
The Issue
When I click on a video, in the worst case scenarios it can take up to 30 seconds before everything on the video details page is able to load. This issue seems to be specific to videos linked to collections. More specifically videos using collections that are linked to many other videos. It seems the client loads every(if not all then certainly a lot more than it needs to) video linked with the collection all at once. It is interesting that it looks like videos linked with actors are not loaded the same way. Only a few are loaded at a time here. Seems like an assumption was made that collections would be kept small. But that’s not the case. Some servers have collections that are linked to thousands of videos(highest I’ve seen is 2112 videos in a collection).
I realized this is the same issue that is causing videos to take forever to play(this is specific to the Roku client). Because the Roku client loads all that information again before anything is played.
Suggested Solution
My suggestion here is to handle the loading of collections on the video details page the same way you handle videos linked to actors on this page. Only load a few at a time.
I want to draw some more attention to this issue. This collection issue is more problematic on the Roku client compared to others due to how the collections are loaded twice(once when getting to movie details view, and again when you attempt to play a video). I like the updates that have been made in the preview but the slow load times to play a video mainly due to the described issue makes this Roku client almost unusable for me. It may be that this is an issue that needs to be addressed in the server software. Where ever the issues lies I would like to see it fixed. I appreciate all the progress that has been made with this client. I would love to be able to use it to actually play media.
The loading of rows like collections should be in the background. We request only the basic details first, to display the preplay screen, and the extras are loaded secondary. What you are describing is not expected, and not something we have had a report of before. If you could, please follow these steps so we can analyze the issue.
Install the Preview version if you haven’t already
Star the Plex Preview channel
Enable Remote logging in the settings
Replicate the issue by: clicking on a video to load the details (preplay) screen.
Disable remote logging.
Report back with the time/timezone and username when the test was complete.
UPDATE: I can replicate the slower to load when I have a movie with 2k items in a collection (thanks for that info!). We will investigate, and see if there is a way to page into the collections. They are fetched in the background, but the background seems to fetch them all instead of paginating them, which may be a current API limitation, or a regression.
We have tracked the issue down, and it is only related to the related collections. The server was not limited the results returned, even though the client asked for limited results. I don’t have an exact ETA, but the fix will be in a newer server version.
Ya it looked like the number of results return were not limited with collections in the same way it was with related movies or movies by actors. It’s good to hear a fix is in the works. Thanks for keeping me updated
Sorry, but I missed the update after this was fixed. This issue was fixed in PMS 1.15.4.919 on April 11th. Thanks again for the report and extra details!
