I’ve experienced slow menu browsing in Plex since I started using it. I’m running the latest Plex Server app on my Synology rack server and latest Plex Media Player on a Mac Mini from late 2012 with SSD and latest OS X.
The delay from clicking on a movie/TV show ranges from 3 to 8 seconds before opening the details. Content plays fine but the slow browsing experience isn’t ideal.
I also run Kodi with the same setup with no issues. Any help would be great.
It might be worth optomizing your database. That sometimes works for me: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200392106-Library-Actions
That should be a scheduled operation however. I take it you are accessing the client on the same network as the server?
Hey Rossdargan - thanks for the reply. I’d already tried optimizing the libraries and emptying the trash. Didn’t appear to help much.
Would the amount of files in the library contribute to this issue? I’ve currently got about 1500 movie files, all in the same folder.
I wouldn’t have thought that it would be the issue - there are certainly people with more!
It also shouldn’t be touching your nas until you start playing a file.
Could you try creating a small library with just a few films in and see if that works for you.
Good idea.
I’m guessing it works similar to Kodi, keeping a local library file.
I get a similar slow speed on OSX PMP, and freezes when when I change audio tracks or some stuff like that… Never really investigated though because I moved on to ShieldTV, which works perfectly for me in this regard.
I created a new library with only 6 movie files. All works as it should.
Could the number of movie files in my other library be the cause?
Is the delay listing the films, or clicking into the details of a film?
Both but mostly getting the details for a film.
I’m recreating my library to see if that helps.
So, I reinstalled Plex Server on my Synology box and Plex Media Player on my Mac Mini. Still the same behavior. Getting into movie details from the main film list is between 7 and 15 seconds. Then another 20 or so for the movie to start.
As someone stated before in this thread, film data is stored on the client machine and doesnt hit the server until user chooses to play the film. Is that correct?
BTW, also getting the same behavior using Plex on the Xbox One.
Any ideas?
@hedkase said:
Would the amount of files in the library contribute to this issue? I’ve currently got about 1500 movie files, all in the same folder.
I say: yes, definitely. You should not do that, especially if your media storage is a NAS which can be quite slow.
Here is more info on this topic: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1151833#Comment_1151833
As someone stated before in this thread, film data is stored on the client machine and doesnt hit the server until user chooses to play the film. Is that correct?
?
All metadata are stored on the Plex server. Media files themselves are stored either on the server directly or on a NAS/network storage server.
Some clients can cache metadata (web browsers with Plex Web or Plex HomeTheater/OpenPHT), so these are a bit faster.
But even the cache doesn’t help if PMS is checking the movie folder for changes (see my link above).
Since I encode all my files to have the subs enclosed in the movie container, would organizing by genre be better for my setup? Unless I’m missing something, it seems pointless to enclose each movie file into its own folder if only the movie file will live there.
That sound right?
@hedkase said:
That sound right?
Not quite.
Unless you deactivate ‘local media assets’ altogether, the file check will be performed if the movie folder is marked as ‘changed’. No matter if there are actually local media assets for your movie present or not.
If the folder holds 1500 files, then it will take a while to scan them all through.
If the folder has much less files in it, the scan will be much faster and thus, entering the preplay screen of a movie won’t go with a big delay.
ok - starting to make more sense. I never had this issue before with Kodi and still don’t. Doesn’t Kodi and Plex handle libraries similarly?
I saw a mention for File Bot on that thread you linked. If I need to modify my file structure, is there a way to keep the library intact or will I need to nuke it?
@hedkase said:
ok - starting to make more sense. I never had this issue before with Kodi and still don’t. Doesn’t Kodi and Plex handle libraries similarly?
Kodi is Kodi
Plex is Plex
I saw a mention for File Bot on that thread you linked. If I need to modify my file structure, is there a way to keep the library intact or will I need to nuke it?
If you didn’t make many manual metadata edits, there is no harm in just moving the files.
But if you extensively edited and corrected metadata, you must order Filebot to not move the files but copy them. So that you at one point have two copies of a movie - one in the old place and one in a new folder of its own. Plex scans the new files and hopefully recognises the copies and attributes them to the already existing library items. Once all your posters show little ‘2’ s on their posters, you can erase the old files and update the library again. It is basically a similar method like the one described here.
This requires storage space of course, so it might not be possible to perform it with all movies at once
@OttoKerner
Guess my main concern would be loosing play count, favorites, watched/unwatched.
watched/unwatched will be retained, as long as you are using the same metadata agent you used before.
I’m unsure about playcount. But it is probably stored the same way as unwatched, so you’ll be good.
Favorites I don’t know. How do you mark an item as favorite?
Maybe I’m thinking of Kodi for favorites. I’m trying to make the switch to Plex exclusively. Hoping to get this performance issue sorted.
Thanks.
So hedkase and I are friends and often compare notes on issues we run across and how we have things set up. My movie collection is currently ~1200. My media is all on a Synology DS-1812+.
I tried running Plex Server from my Mac Mini (8GB) and was never very successful. Main issue was judder during playback. Happened consistently throughout whatever video was playing.
I can’t ever recall having issue like hedkase where his problem isn’t with performance during playback but just in the UI. Seems odd to me given relatively similar setup.
Honestly, even if I used a script to move my movies from one folder to subfolders the idea of having one subfolder for each movie seems like overkill and not conducive to how I browse my movies. I browse through my movies quite often on my desktop via Finder and having to go through subfolders would be annoying.
What about breaking down into smaller chunks though such as trying to average 100 movies per folder? I assume that would help if indeed the size of the collection is the issue.
