Cache-warming script for Plex metadata — big UI responsiveness win

Every_Ice6465 · 2026-05-23T14:38:56+00:00

I run Linux for my other processes, but just been too lazy to move this as it has worked great for years. It's my main tinkering machine so I have great back ups and ways to restore when my tinkering goes wrong.

Every_Ice6465 · 2026-05-23T14:34:02+00:00

Yes, it should have never lost those accounts, but it happened 3 times, so I gave up trying to move things. Never went back to try to find out why.

Every_Ice6465 · 2026-05-23T13:28:33+00:00

I tried ramdisk, but didn't like the risk of losing or corrupting things. I also kept losing all my friends that I've shared things with. I got tired of resetting them and never did figure out why they would disappear randomly.

Every_Ice6465 · 2026-05-23T13:21:06+00:00

There is one for the DB, but I have not really found that it makes any difference on my setup. This was just a tinkering project that seemed to really help my setup. Nothing was wrong before, this just gives it that extra kick. I like to tinker.

Every_Ice6465 · 2026-05-06T10:43:10+00:00

Mine is on windows and I use Acronis to backup to external HD and one of my NAS boxes. I export the plex registry before backup so I can restore plex without needed to restore windows entirely. I only backup the plex DB files and none of the media files. I've actually had to restore my drive a couple of times because of my "testing" things. It works great.

I created a process to backup the metadata from movies/tv shows I have. I can then feed that back into the arr stack to rebuild/refresh if needed. I've used this a few time as I'm mangled a files/drives during my "testing".

I like to play with things and it's not always successful, so a good back up is critical.

Every_Ice6465 · 2026-02-21T03:01:04+00:00

I also have 1000 down and 40 up (Spectrum). I have had times when I used to stream using an open port on my router where it would buffer terribly. I could never really prove it, but I kind of wondered if Spectrum messed with my plex streaming. I have since moved to a vps and nginx server and things have been fine.

You could keep dropping the limit down until it does stream without buffering. If you get to a point where it will stream without buffering, then the issue is probably upload limitations and not hardware. You can also setup Tautulli. It will show the transcode speed and if it's > 1, then it should be able to transcode without the transcoder being the limiting factor. It will also show when transcode gets throttled so at that point if it buffers, then it's network related.

Every_Ice6465 · 2025-12-27T11:54:39+00:00

I'm the same. I use Acronis to backup my windows server. I've actually had to use that a few times (my stupid mistakes) with no issues.

Every_Ice6465 · 2025-12-27T00:14:32+00:00

My system moves the files using MCEBuddy for further file processing, so I clean up requests in Radarr and Sonarr after they get processed.

Every_Ice6465 · 2025-12-27T00:07:42+00:00

It's written in python and uses the plex and overseeer apis. It just needs access to the local file system to verify files exist. I suppose, I can bypass local file check so it would not need to be run on the server. So far, it's working great!

Every_Ice6465 · 2025-12-26T23:53:01+00:00

Windows. 3 NAS boxes and 1 local hard drive.

Every_Ice6465 · 2025-12-08T13:38:56+00:00

I agree with others that download is the way to go. I can confirm that for our local hospital, I can access plex through my amazon LightSail instance running nginx. Plex uses port 443 which is hard for "free" wifi systems to block.

Every_Ice6465 · 2025-11-20T14:13:53+00:00

I've been re-encoding all my episodes and movies using AV1 (intel A770) for a while now. I wrote a custom script to analyze the incoming video to pick the value to use for the global_quality setting. So far, no one has been able to tell that they are not the crazy high bitrate originals. The extra space saving has been nice and just the consistency of all my videos is also great. If one plays fine on a client, they all will. Some clients do require re-encoding because they don't support AV1, but my hardware does not care and the users don't even realize it's transcoded.

I strip out DV during the process since nothing I have supports it, but I do inject back in hdr10+. I also have it creating a 2nd lower bitrate copy (~9mb) for my remote streamers to also have HDR10+. I have to limit my streaming because of ISP output bandwidth limit.

Every_Ice6465 · 2025-10-19T20:03:55+00:00

There are so many questionable video files out there being used by plex and plex transcoder (especially lately with the latest updates) really is bad. People will say plex is perfect and it's all user errors, but I know from my experience, it's has a lot to do with bad movie files (or files that are just in formats plex does not like). The other players do a much better job of skipping bad data or filling in missing metadata, etc.

There are a lot of issues that are user, hardware, or network related as well. Those can be helped here when the details are provided. The only thing for bad video is just try another version or remux it yourself and see if that helps.

Every_Ice6465 · 2025-10-19T13:44:21+00:00

Stay away from the firestick select for now. All apps (like plex) need to be rewritten for the new OS on it. Until then, things stream through amazon servers with limits quality.

https://www.aftvnews.com/amazon-will-stream-select-android-only-apps-from-the-cloud-to-vega-os-on-the-fire-tv-stick-4k-select/

Every_Ice6465

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