gui rescan interval (1 Viewer)

[bwg]

I don't think this is answered elsewhere, have searched quite a bit:

I have noticed that new files added to watched folders do not get picked up instantly (as in TV-Series). I am wondering what the rescan interval is? I have my watched folders added as UNC paths (the drives themselves are local atm, but I am going to be moving them to a file-server eventually). Is there a different rescan interval for UNC paths than for watched folders added as local drives?

I went through the Advanced settings and found the option to specify minutes for "automatically rescan network paths" - does this mean that it does not happen automatically by default? If so, what action initiates the scan? I have set this value to 60 min, there is a warning that it will mean that drives will not spin down. Would this be the case anyway if the watched folders were added as local drives?

 

[fforde]

Moving Pictures will do a full file system scan on launch. After this all movies that are imported are detected based on file system events from the OS. This works perfectly fine for most types of drives but if you have a samba based UNC share, events are not always properly handed off to the OS and in turn are not always properly handed off to Moving Pictures. I personally have this type of file system and in my experience maybe 1 in 10 movies are missed. I have heard some people have more frequent problems.

So in the very latest releases we added the option to trigger automatic full rescans every so often. As you said, this is only available in the Advanced Settings dialog right now. This will solve the problem of files getting missed but as the warning text states, if you are trying to save on your electric bill or increase the life of your drives by spinning them down when not in use, this auto rescan will thwart your efforts.

For our next release we will have more intuitive controls to manage this stuff in the main settings panels. We will also have a menu item in the GUI to manually trigger a full rescan for people that don't want their hard drives pinged every half hour but want to be able to force a rescan when needed. This work is already done, we just have a few more things to squeeze in before we release.

To be totally honest the whole situation really pisses me off. My goal with Moving Pictures is for things to "just work" but there unfortunately is not an ideal solution to this problem that will work for everyone that I have been able to figure out. In any case I hope this information is helpful. Let me know if you want more info or if anything is unclear.

 

[bwg]

Wow, thanks for a very comprehensive response, fforde! I am blown away with the work you have done on this plugin, and the attention you give to the finer details, and informative responses to questions from the end-user.

By "full file system scan on launch", do you mean when entering the plugin whilst still in MP, or do you mean when launching MP? i.e. I leave MP running all the time on my HTPC, would I have to exit and relaunch MP for a full rescan to be triggered?

The manual trigger for a rescan in the hidden menu sounds great, I will definitely use it in the future version.

By the way, I seem to have no issues with new files being scanned by TV-Series, which also has watched folders added as UNC shared format. The difference is I am managing my movies via Ember, perhaps this is interfering with access to the files as mentioned in the other thread here.

 

[fforde]

Yes I meant that a full scan currently occurs when launching MediaPortal, not entering the plugin via the home menu.

As for MPTV-Series I can't speak too much about how their system works, perhaps DamienH or someone could provide a few details. I do know that they hook into the same file system events we do though. And anecdotally I periodically have files that are not immediately picked up in MPTV-Series requiring me to trigger a "local scan".

EDIT: Regarding the use of Ember I have not heard of any problems. Moving Pictures will delay importing a file if it is locked for writing, but it is extremely obvious what is going on in the log file. If that were happening you would probably know. The only application I have heard of that keeps a lock on a file when it shouldn't is uTorrent.

 

[ltfearme]

In TvSeries we do a re-scan @ the configured interval (default 15mins I think) for remote shares. For Local Drives we hook into the file system events as it seems reliable enough for that.

So for the next version of movingpics it will be pretty similar to how tvseries works and hopefully this issue will go away

 

[bwg]

OK, have had some time to play with this. It seems it was Ember that was causing the delays in scanning the file. My standard practice had been to run Ember on my movies folder, which is also my Moving Pictures watched folder. I ran Ember on a couple of movie files in a location separate from the Moving Pictures watched folder, then exited Ember and moved them over to the watched folder and they were picked up immediately by Moving Pictures (file system event trigger).

Thanks for your help