Best settings to use for local use only (and general questions)?

[qazwsx16 0]

TL:DR: Redoing my entire EMBY server and was hoping I could get some questions answered so I can do it correctly (Question below in bold/underlined).

@cayars @Happy2Play

I'm in the process of migrating all of my media to a new system as well as do a full upgrade of my system. I figured I would redo my whole EMBY server from scratch, but wanted to make sure I selected the correct options to begin with, so I did have a few questions.

My overall goal is to improve the EMBY experience by increasing the speed of the server as well as making it user friendly for doing upgrades or minor migrations in the future.

General set-up:

• Emby Server will be installed on a Windows 11 desktop on an NVMe.
• Media will be stored on a combination of internal harddrives as well as external harddrives
  • Internal drives will contain media that are newer or more frequently watch (e.g., commonly watched TV shows)
  • External drives will contain media that are less likely to be viewed or be used to contain media that has already been seen and not likely to be viewed again.
• Only two apps will be utilized:
  • LG C8: LG will be mainly utilized for ease of use since one extra remote is required for the Nvidia Shield.
  • Nvidia Shield: Shield will be utilized for movies since I will be able to handle DTS-HD and TrueHD passthrough.

Questions:

1. Should artwork be saved with media folders? I know this will make it easier if I ever move my media in the future, but would saving the artwork in my metadata folder on the NVMe be significantly faster than saving it on an internal/external harddrive? Or will the cache on the NVMe make this a moot point?
2. Do thumbnail images take up a significant amount of space? I'm considering utilizing the 10 second intervals, but wasn't sure if it takes up a large amount of space.
3. Should thumbnail images be saved with media folders? Similar to the first question, will it be a non-significant change by saving it on spinning disks vs NVMe?
4. For subtitles, I only want Forced, English, and Spanish, which option should I select? Under "Subtitle Downloads", I don't see an option within "Download Languages" to select "forced", so I wasn't sure if forced and non-forced subtitles were mutually exclusive. As a note, I do require a hash match.
5. How to handle media that I move between drives? I plan on keeping new media that I want to watch on the internal harddrive since it will read faster and after I watch it move it to my external harddrives. Should I just cut/paste the media from the internal to the external? Or would it this affect anything else when a new scan is run? Will this break anything in collections?
6. How to a retain the original "Date Added" from my media? Although I'm planning to start from scratch again, the only thing I was hoping to retain was the "Date Added" field. I wasn't sure if I should keep the original NFOs when I move my media over or just manually had the dates. It would be a little tedious with a large library to do it manually.
7. How to move the metadata folder? The NVMe may be too small and I might need to migrate in the future. I've read, I should just copy the metadata folder to the new drive, change the path with in the server, and then rescan. Is it that simple?

[Happy2Play 8357]

14 hours ago, qazwsx16 said:

Should artwork be saved with media folders? I know this will make it easier if I ever move my media in the future, but would saving the artwork in my metadata folder on the NVMe be significantly faster than saving it on an internal/external harddrive? Or will the cache on the NVMe make this a moot point?

From a local media standpoint, I wouldn't think it should matter but have not dealt with any external drives. 

14 hours ago, qazwsx16 said:

Do thumbnail images take up a significant amount of space? I'm considering utilizing the 10 second intervals, but wasn't sure if it takes up a large amount of space.

Depend on how much media be say between 2-7 MB per item.

Example for just over 4000 movies

14 hours ago, qazwsx16 said:

Should thumbnail images be saved with media folders? Similar to the first question, will it be a non-significant change by saving it on spinning disks vs NVMe?

Don't believe there is any real difference here.  I keep them with my media.  I think this is only a factor if you have Cloud based media.

14 hours ago, qazwsx16 said:

For subtitles, I only want Forced, English, and Spanish, which option should I select? Under "Subtitle Downloads", I don't see an option within "Download Languages" to select "forced", so I wasn't sure if forced and non-forced subtitles were mutually exclusive. As a note, I do require a hash match.

Not on this one don't believe there is much for Forced only subs.

14 hours ago, qazwsx16 said:

How to handle media that I move between drives? I plan on keeping new media that I want to watch on the internal harddrive since it will read faster and after I watch it move it to my external harddrives. Should I just cut/paste the media from the internal to the external? Or would it this affect anything else when a new scan is run? Will this break anything in collections?

Overall, you should not have any issue especially if you write nfo files with media.  If you don't then only issue, I can see would be Custom Collections as moving the item removes it from the database so the collection linking would be lost on move.

14 hours ago, qazwsx16 said:

How to a retain the original "Date Added" from my media? Although I'm planning to start from scratch again, the only thing I was hoping to retain was the "Date Added" field. I wasn't sure if I should keep the original NFOs when I move my media over or just manually had the dates. It would be a little tedious with a large library to do it manually.

If you write nfo files with media it will be read.  Otherwise files creation/date imported option will be used.

14 hours ago, qazwsx16 said:

How to move the metadata folder? The NVMe may be too small and I might need to migrate in the future. I've read, I should just copy the metadata folder to the new drive, change the path with in the server, and then rescan. Is it that simple?

Not that simple as path info is recorded in database so moving it would/coukd basically cause things to not be found.  Once things are imported and go to a specific path they can't just migrated to a new path.  You would have to shut down Emby and manually update the database.  As changing the path in Emby UI only applies newly imported items not existing items.

[Carlo 4331]

15 hours ago, qazwsx16 said:

1. Should artwork be saved with media folders? I know this will make it easier if I ever move my media in the future, but would saving the artwork in my metadata folder on the NVMe be significantly faster than saving it on an internal/external harddrive? Or will the cache on the NVMe make this a moot point?
2. Do thumbnail images take up a significant amount of space? I'm considering utilizing the 10 second intervals, but wasn't sure if it takes up a large amount of space.
3. Should thumbnail images be saved with media folders? Similar to the first question, will it be a non-significant change by saving it on spinning disks vs NVMe?
4. For subtitles, I only want Forced, English, and Spanish, which option should I select? Under "Subtitle Downloads", I don't see an option within "Download Languages" to select "forced", so I wasn't sure if forced and non-forced subtitles were mutually exclusive. As a note, I do require a hash match.
5. How to handle media that I move between drives? I plan on keeping new media that I want to watch on the internal harddrive since it will read faster and after I watch it move it to my external harddrives. Should I just cut/paste the media from the internal to the external? Or would it this affect anything else when a new scan is run? Will this break anything in collections?
6. How to a retain the original "Date Added" from my media? Although I'm planning to start from scratch again, the only thing I was hoping to retain was the "Date Added" field. I wasn't sure if I should keep the original NFOs when I move my media over or just manually had the dates. It would be a little tedious with a large library to do it manually.
7. How to move the metadata folder? The NVMe may be too small and I might need to migrate in the future. I've read, I should just copy the metadata folder to the new drive, change the path with in the server, and then rescan. Is it that simple?

While Happy2Play already gave you good answers I wanted to give you a few links to read from our Knowledge Base as well:

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159102-movie-naming
https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159110-tv-naming
https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159241-new-media-date-handling

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159936-configuration-backup

For Downloading subs I'd just use something like this.  Check/enable Spanish as well.

I would always keep graphics, thumbnails, extras, downloaded themes (video, audio) as well as subs with my media if stored locally. The only exception for me would be if I had my media stored in the cloud.  In that case I'd likely use strm files pointing to the media and have the normal folder on disc locally just as if everything was local (only with an strm file).

Besides the organization, you will have a cache folder already on SSD which is where your graphics are loaded from so keeping the images with media allows this to be kept on 2 different disks.  As you system grows larger and larger little things like this matter.  It's the difference between being able to run from a single TB SSD or not. Thumbnails are a lot smaller than they used to be but still can take up a bit of room.  I see no sense in storing this information that only gets used infrequently on fast SSDs.

Anything not saved with local media will only be found in the metadata folder which isn't easily traversed by humans.

That keeps everything organized and you can move files around on disc much easier. The only thing that could get broken this way is playlists.
https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001849016-playlist-manual-migration