Infuse Loading Times

General
1

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share my experience with Infuse and discuss what I believe to be the biggest issue with the app - the loading and search times. I’ve been using Infuse for a while now and while it’s great at playing virtually any type of media file, the time it takes to load the app and search for content can be quite frustrating.

In comparison to Plex, Infuse appears to load in entire libraries which can take some time. Plex on the other hand seems to read the content without having to load the entire library. As a result, the loading times for both opening the app and searching for content on Infuse are significantly longer than on Plex.

That being said, once Infuse is playing content, it excels. The playback is smooth and seamless, and I haven’t experienced any issues with buffering or playback errors. It’s just the initial loading and search times that can be a bit of a nuisance.

I’m curious to know if anyone else has experienced similar issues with Infuse or if there are any potential solutions to improve the loading and search times. Overall, I love Infuse and its ability to play any type of media file, but I do think this issue needs to be addressed in order to improve the user experience.

I use infuse on ipad, iphone and Apple TV and I would probably say the Apple TV seems to be the slowest but that isn’t to say it’s perfect elsewhere. It probably best on the ipad but not phenomenal.

I have unchecked folders from the plex shares to try and reduce times but it’s been negligible. I have reinstalled the app both “app store” version and test flight. I have also removed and readded plex shares. No significant difference as a result.
Will a 2022 Apple TV make a significant difference?

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic

2

As compared to what?

Which Apple TV are you currently using? And which iPad and which iPhone?

Generally, newer, more powerful hardware will perform objectively better than older, less powerful hardware, resulting in the impression of a quicker, more smoothly responding UI.

Other possible bottlenecks may be the speed of one’s internet connection (needed for metadata downloads, iCloud syncing, and streaming from remote servers), home Wi-Fi, or local file source (be it an NAS, portable hard drive, or desktop/laptop computer).

How large is your library?

3

I think you’ve highlighted my biggest issue with infuse.

It’s a great app that can handle virtually anything you throw at it. But it’s really slow with Plex and only gets slower the larger your library.

I could be wrong but I think I know why the plex app is so much faster than infuse.

Plex seems to query the server for its items it displays, search queries, up next, libraries meaning that it’s just getting that list and data from somewhere else.

Infuse seems to use its own database, with its own posters, metadata etc meaning that all of that information is stored on your device, rather than on your plex server and only leaves the video on the server. With large Plex libraries it is a massive amount of data to look through, resulting in really slow loading times.

I’ve got both the 1st gen and 3rd gen Apple TV 4K. The 3rd gen makes a difference, but not a lot.