Is there a way to store media posters in appdata *and* in the media folders?

[Hostile_18]

Hi,

I store lots of custom images in the media directories. This works great for organisation. However the downside is when using Jellyfin it spins up my hard drives just browsing the available movies/tv shows. Is there a way for this not to be the case?

If it has to be in appdata *or* media folders, is there a way to move it all to the appdata without having anything replaced? (as it took me many, many hours to get it all sorted).

[TheDreadPirate]

Maybe? If the images aren't named "properly" named Jellyfin shouldn't use them. See this document for what is "proper" and avoid them.

https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server...es/#images

But you would need to add them manually since I don't think they would have stored a copy in appdata.

[34626]

You can just disable Jellyfins function to monitor your libraries :-)

Go to dashboard -> Library -> Edit the libraries -> Turn off "Real time monitoring".

[Hostile_18]

Thank you both for your replies.

My Jellyfin files are named correctly 100%.

So I've done some experimenting and once its loaded the page i.e this morning, I click on the same assets again and it dosn't spin up the hard drives, so they must be copied over to the app data as it is being browsed at least once. The problem is app data cache by default is set to wipe every 24 hours I believe by default under scheduled tasks. Would there be a downside to scheduling this deletion once every say 6 monthly or yearly (or never?).

I mean in a perfect world I would have thought a copy of all meta data would be read from the media directories and copied into app data permanently and only changed if there is a manual user request? (and so would be updated in both locations).

It begs the question is my custom art work even being saved on the app data back up tool if most of it is not kept in the app data by default? For those with art in media directories how do you back it up, when its amongst so many video files?

@34626 Would that work? I fear doing that might get Jellyfin to update the art work from the internet if it cant find it and replace the custom art work stored in directories? Just sounds risky for the amount of time its taken to get it to where I am with it now.

[Efficient_Good_5784]

For those with art in media directories how do you back it up, when its amongst so many video files?

You can include/exclude certain file types from a backup task using tools such as rsync. Just tell rsync to only transfer over only image type files, or everything but the video type files.

[TheDreadPirate]

I am pretty sure whatever you are seeing is temporary caching and not permanent storage. Hypothetically you could disable the cache cleanup job, but I would not recommend it.

[Hostile_18]

I'm on Unraid, though I can see the app data and media folder directories directly though my windows 11 pc. I'll have to look at the most user friendly way of doing it (I can't see a program called RSYNC on the Unraid App store, but a few that look to use it somehow.

Ultimately if I have a copy of the app data, and I have a copy of my media directory (minus video files) that should cover me in terms of not having to start from square one with Jellyfin? (Tons of custom art work, organising of special episodes of tv series, custom movie collections etc etc). Just trying to avoid having to do all that work ever again lol. I have the SSD appdata is currently on mirrored with an identical SSD (and a back up copy of app data on the array), just from the sounds of it it's just the art work and .nfo files I need to look at.

It would be so much simpler if the app data had a copy of all the images, Nfo's etc. Hopefully a update further down the line

[Hostile_18]

Just in case anyone is reading this from the future, thought I'd post my solution.

I used a program called Drop it. it perfectly copies over file structures, minus any files you don't want. So now I have an exact directory copy of everything (apart from the actual video files) and if say a complete jellyfin rescan happened, or I had to rebuild data base I can just copy and paste it back over in a couple of minutes!

http://www.dropitproject.com/

As for my original problem I'll keep an eye on how often the discs spin up browsing Jellyfin and go from there. I suppose now I have this directory I have nothing to lose setting it all to app date, rescan and replace and then paste over the saved directory.