Trying make emby play movies ASAP

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I have an Emby media server where storage is attached via rclone mount. The backend is served through an app called Altmount (similar concept to nzbdav). My goal is to get movies to start playing in 1 second or less. Currently there's a noticeable delay on first play before Emby can start streaming the file.

rclone v1.73.1
- os/version: debian 13.3 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 6.12.73+deb13-amd64 (x86_64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: amd64
- go/version: go1.25.7
- go/linking: static
- go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using?

Altmount — it exposes a WebDAV endpoint locally, and rclone mounts it as a VFS. Here is my current rclone config (from my app's YAML):

rclone:
  path: /config
  password: ""
  salt: ""
  rc_enabled: true
  rc_url: ""
  rc_port: 5573
  rc_user: admin
  rc_pass: admin
  rc_options: {}
  mount_enabled: true
  vfs_name: altmount
  mount_options: {}
  log_level: ERROR
  uid: 1000
  gid: 1000
  umask: "002"
  buffer_size: 32M
  attr_timeout: 5s
  transfers: 32
  cache_dir: /config/cache
  vfs_cache_mode: full
  vfs_cache_poll_interval: 10s
  vfs_read_chunk_size: 32M
  vfs_cache_max_size: 100G
  vfs_cache_max_age: 8760h
  read_chunk_size: 32M
  read_chunk_size_limit: 2G
  vfs_read_ahead: 2G
  dir_cache_time: 5s
  vfs_cache_min_free_space: 1G
  vfs_disk_space_total: 1G
  vfs_read_chunk_streams: 4
  allow_other: true
  allow_non_empty: true
  read_only: false
  timeout: 1h
  syslog: true
  no_mod_time: true
  no_checksum: true
  async_read: true
  vfs_fast_fingerprint: true
  use_mmap: true
  links: false

Paste command here

The mount command being used (reconstructed from the YAML above):

rclone --config /config/rclone/rclone.conf mount altmount: /mnt/altmount \
  --buffer-size 32M \
  --transfers 32 \
  --vfs-cache-mode full \
  --vfs-cache-poll-interval 10s \
  --vfs-read-chunk-size 32M \
  --vfs-read-chunk-size-limit 2G \
  --vfs-read-ahead 2G \
  --vfs-cache-max-size 100G \
  --vfs-read-chunk-streams 4 \
  --dir-cache-time 5s \
  --attr-timeout 5s \
  --allow-other \
  --allow-non-empty \
  --async-read \
  --use-mmap \
  --no-modtime \
  --no-checksum \
  --vfs-fast-fingerprint \
  -vv

rclone config redacted

[altmount]
type = webdav
url = http://localhost:8080/webdav
vendor = other
user = usenet
pass = *** REDACTED ***
Key Value
rclone version v1.73.1
OS Debian 13.3 (64-bit)
Kernel 6.12.73+bde13-amd64
Running in Docker Compose
Backend type WebDAV (Altmount, local network)
Cache dir /config/cache (SSD)
Emby version latest
2

welcome to the forum,

test kodi and compare that to rclone.

as a test, reduce the size of
--vfs-read-chunk-size-limit
--vfs-read-ahead

and check the debug timestamps to see what is causing the delay(s)

3

I installed Emby for kodi and I lowered both as you said to:
```yaml
vfs_read_chunk_size_limit: 128M
vfs_read_ahead: 128M
```
but it took like 6s to start in kodi

and Thank you <3

4

might test not using the cache, without --vfs-cache-mode

what was the original noticeable delay?

kodi supports webdav. so can test that without using rclone mount

5

I disabled mode and It was ~4s and on webdav it start like 2-3s on 91.7 GB file movie

tested in webdav a 17gb movie, it took 2sec so I assume its combination of useent and emby that add overhead?

Is there any config or something i can do to make it faster in emby? thank you