Optimizations for Remote File Systems

[rednoah]

Disable File I/O

FileBot uses MediaInfo to read properties like {vc}, {ac}, {channels}, {resolution}, etc from the container file.

FileBot does parse file headers to read embedded media properties. This is typically quite fast since MediaInfo only reads the first few megabytes of each file, but if File I/O is expensive or just extremely slow, then you'll want to configure FileBot to not parse embedded media properties at all. You can set net.filebot.media.parser and net.filebot.files.heuristics via the Advanced Settings to reduce file system interactions as much as possible and thus dramatically speed up the process in cases where File I/O is the bottleneck.




You can use the -no-probe command-line flag to enable all remote file system optimisations for a single filebot command-line call:

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-no-probe

You can disable media parser permanently via the net.filebot.media.parser system property for both GUI and CLI:

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filebot -script fn:properties --def net.filebot.media.parser=none

You can enable file name heuristics via the net.filebot.files.heuristics system property to reduce file system queries and drastically speed up file tree traversal for both GUI and CLI:
** assume that any directory entry that looks like a file (e.g. *.mkv, *.jpg, etc) is always file and never a directory

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filebot -script fn:properties --def net.filebot.files.heuristics=true

Precompute and store MediaInfo tables to .xattr folders

FileBot uses xattr (i.e. Extended Attributes / NTFS Alternate Data Streams) to store full metadata in filesystem attributes. These xattr are not to be confused with traditional tags that are embedded in the file content, but additional data streams stored in the file system for each file that are not part of the file itself. As such, xattr requires a filesystem that supports xattr, and xattr may be silently lost if files are moved to a filesystem that doesn't support xattr.

Remote file systems typically do not support Extended Attributes so we first need to configure FileBot to store metadata into a .xattr folder / plain file structure, i.e. set net.filebot.xattr.store=.xattr in the Advanced Settings configuration file.




Enable xattr metadata via .xattr folders and plain/text files permanently via the net.filebot.xattr.store system property for both GUI and CLI:

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filebot -script fn:properties --def net.filebot.xattr.store=.xattr

After you have configured .xattr folders (on both client and server) then you may run the mediainfo script on the server-side to locally precompute mediainfo tables and store them to xattr ahead of time, so that remote clients can then instantly access mediainfo without reading any media file contents:

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filebot -script fn:mediainfo /input --mode raw

Disable Windows Trash

The FileBot Desktop application for Windows will integrate with the Windows Desktop by default. Disabling Windows Desktop integration may (or may not) speed up file system operations.

Disable Windows File Operation integration permanently via the useNativeShell system property:

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filebot -script fn:properties --def useNativeShell=false

Disable Windows Trash integration permanently via the net.filebot.UserFiles.trash system property:

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filebot -script fn:properties --def net.filebot.UserFiles.trash=Delete