Are large casts problematic?

[podonnell 51]

Hi,

Just had some media added to Emby that has an exorbitant amount of people listed under cast. 750+ were added to one item.

My Emby server also got hung around this time.

I'm worried that future metadata refreshes might also be a problem with this. I imagine adding that many to the DB at once could have choked the I/O.

Once they're in the database, should I care about this? Or is it worthwhile for me to edit metadata and lock the item? Would this actually clean up the db, or would the people added still exist there?

Thanks for any advice.

[tedfroop21 102]

Every movie, TV show, and actor is an item to lookup.  So 750 actors is like 750 movies when it comes to lookup.

They are each a separate item for which Emby needs data and a picture, and for some no data exists. Plus there are limits for the number of lookup's in a day from some providers.

Once they are in the database they are in the database. Emby can use one instance of the actor data for many shows.

When you dump that many on it it may slowdown for a while. 

 

Edited 1 hour ago by tedfroop21

[Luke 43151]

It's not something you should have to worry about.

Quote

So 750 actors is like 750 movies when it comes to lookup.

No because on initial import we get the actor name and image from the movie or series metadata. We don't do an individual person lookup until you click on them. So that's an on-demand process, not an up front one.

Your database probably has more rows of person objects than any other type, so yes, in extreme cases they can impact overall browsing performance, search performance, etc. But that is extreme cases only. What we'd like to do at some point is give them a little more separation in the database so that don't have any impact on these things.

[podonnell 51]

Just now, Luke said:

It's not something you should have to worry about.

No because on initial import we get the actor name and image from the movie or series metadata. We don't do an individual person lookup until you click on them. So that's an on-demand process, not an up front one.

Your database probably has more rows of person objects than any other type, so yes, in extreme cases they can impact overall browsing performance, search performance, etc. But that is extreme cases only. What we'd like to do at some point is give them a little more separation in the database so that don't have any impact on these things.

Thanks, great info. I'm just debating if it's worthwhile to manually edit the show itself and remove all the people that got added, and then lock the people section. It's a reality show so they are people that are never going to show up in any other content and it feels wasteful. If it's mostly harmless, I can keep it. But 750 felt like a big number and the impact to the server at the time definitely made me concerned.

[Luke 43151]

That is a lot but for just one series I wouldn’t worry about it.