Improved responsiveness?

[sebasmiles 8]

So I have been wondering of any ways to improve responsiveness of my emby instance. When I scroll down, it can easily take 8+ seconds (or even longer, see image below) for it to start populating names and images for movies(~2500)/tv shows(~185) and livetv using channelsdvr. I am running this in a docker on unraid and viewing on the chrome browser on windows over ethernet. Server is a bit of an older system (i3-1225 v2 + T400 GPU + 32gig ram + appdata files on ssd), so it might just be a limitation on my system.

What I have tried:

• Set db cache size to 2gig. Analysis row limit to 1000. Vacuum on restart.
• Art is saved to the metadata folder (ie not the media folder). Additionally Downloading images in advance is enabled. What I don't know is if it was always like this, perhaps many years ago the artwork might have been saved on the media folder and its still linked to that? not sure how to check.
• Chapters are generated at 5min intervals, but video preview thumbnails is disabled
• Subtitles are saved to the media folder though not sure if this would affect responsiveness.
• For plugins, not sure what is non-standard but I have auto box sets, trailers, cinema intros(which I don't use), kodi companion (which I could drop), musicbrainz (which I could drop), plus a few others that I guess are standard

So the question is, is there anything I can do? This is an install with over a decade that has some side issues so wiping and starting from scratch would erase everyone's viewers status. Perhaps a way to force allocate more ram or maybe the thumbnails and such are still stored on media folder and I need to force it to redownload for them to end up on the metadata folder?

Thanks for any tips!

Edited November 17, 2025 by sebasmiles

[Luke 42077]

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[guunter 49]

13 hours ago, sebasmiles said:

So I have been wondering of any ways to improve responsiveness of my emby instance. When I scroll down, it can easily take 8+ seconds (or even longer, see image below) for it to start populating names and images for movies(~2500)/tv shows(~185) and livetv using channelsdvr. I am running this in a docker on unraid and viewing on the chrome browser on windows over ethernet. Server is a bit of an older system (i3-1225 v2 + T400 GPU + 32gig ram + appdata files on ssd), so it might just be a limitation on my system.

What I have tried:

• Set db cache size to 2gig. Analysis row limit to 1000. Vacuum on restart.
• Art is saved to the metadata folder (ie not the media folder). Additionally Downloading images in advance is enabled. What I don't know is if it was always like this, perhaps many years ago the artwork might have been saved on the media folder and its still linked to that? not sure how to check.
• Chapters are generated at 5min intervals, but video preview thumbnails is disabled
• Subtitles are saved to the media folder though not sure if this would affect responsiveness.
• For plugins, not sure what is non-standard but I have auto box sets, trailers, cinema intros(which I don't use), kodi companion (which I could drop), musicbrainz (which I could drop), plus a few others that I guess are standard

So the question is, is there anything I can do? This is an install with over a decade that has some side issues so wiping and starting from scratch would erase everyone's viewers status. Perhaps a way to force allocate more ram or maybe the thumbnails and such are still stored on media folder and I need to force it to redownload for them to end up on the metadata folder?

Thanks for any tips!

I would 100% do metadata not inside the media folders. Especially if those media folders are not SSD. It should improve the performance of navigating the menu since it will pull the metadata from ssd.

[GrimReaper 4739]

16 minutes ago, guunter said:

I would 100% do metadata not inside the media folders. Especially if those media folders are not SSD. It should improve the performance of navigating the menu since it will pull the metadata from ssd.

OP has already stated d that they don't save images with media

13 hours ago, sebasmiles said:

Art is saved to the metadata folder (ie not the media folder).

As for unknown items

13 hours ago, sebasmiles said:

What I don't know is if it was always like this, perhaps many years ago the artwork might have been saved on the media folder and its still linked to that? not sure how to check.

You can't check, but you can enable library option to Keep cached copy in the server's metadata folder - if there is some artwork next to media, over time, your HDDs should eventually cease to spin during browsing. 

13 hours ago, sebasmiles said:

So the question is, is there anything I can do?

You can provide server log(s), as per:

10 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

So query times could be observed and if anything stands out - culprit potentially identified. 

Edited November 18, 2025 by GrimReaper

[Happy2Play 9780]

13 hours ago, sebasmiles said:

Set db cache size to 2gig. 

The 4.8 method for db cache size becomes somewhat obsolete in 4.9 with multiple db connections.

Need to see a startup server log as the new method can chew up a lot of Ram depending on the setting you ended up with.  5 x 2GB or 20 x 2GB

But screenshot suggests a cache issue.

 

4.9 the server default is 128 with 5 dbconnections will only apply to clean/new install.

[sebasmiles 8]

So my ram usage is quite limited as it stands right now, I would need to check but total across all dockers is like 3.6gigs.
Attached are the logs but I would need to re-create the situation. As I got on a moment ago, I tried scrolling down quick and there was a delay as before (a few seconds) but I guess after that it stores to my browser or the server cache so I couldn't replicate it a second time. I restarted the server after this so I could also provide a log file of the re-start.
I will start with enabling the option to store a cache in the metadata folder and see if that solves it. Also I will try without the wrapper (I run muximux which is like a frontend with all my apps in one place, maybe its messing with it but I doubt it). My main question at this point is, should I enable debug mode when I do my tests?

embyserver-63899086143.txt hardware_detection-63899086161.txt embyserver (2).txt

[sebasmiles 8]

Ok, attached is the log in debug mode. I looked at the movies instead since there are many more. If I don't scroll super fast, it keeps up with it populating however if I scroll down past was is populating I get into the same image as above where there isn't even titles until I guess it catches up (also, I have a sense that perhaps it gets overloaded and goes a bit slower). still from looking at the file, I think what I am seeing is that indeed many of the images were probably in the media folder and they just got cached to the sdd due to the recommended setting. Maybe going forward it will be smoother, I will keep an eye on it and test it in the future.

embyserver (3).txt