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The Scheduler

TitleCardMaker runs all core tasks on schedulable intervals. These can be adjusted by accessing the Scheduler page under Settings > Scheduler (or at the /scheduler URL).

The Scheduler can be in one of two modes: basic (the default) mode, and advanced mode. These two modes can be switched between at any point by clicking the green button at the bottom of the page. All intervals are reset when switching from basic to advanced mode.

Minimum Task Frequency

In both modes, the fastest a single Task can be scheduled is once every 10 minutes.

TCM will also not start a Task while it is already running, so if a given Task takes longer than its assigned frequency, the second run will be skipped.

Modes

Basic Mode

While in basic mode, all scheduled Tasks happen on fixed intervals. These intervals are relative to whenever you first launch TCM (i.e. they are not guaranteed to start at the top of the hour). In addition to this, only a subset of the total available Tasks (the most commonly adjusted ones) are displayed.

How often these Tasks occur can be changed by editing the text in the Frequency column of the table. This information can be entered as text, and any combination of "seconds", "minutes", "hours", "days", and "weeks" are supported.

Example Frequency

A frequency string can be as simple as 4 hours, or as complex as 1 day 4 hours 12 minutes 23 seconds.

Advanced Mode

In advanced mode, scheduled Tasks happen according to a "cron" expression. These are expressions which allow for succinctly describing when something can occur, and can be as simple as */30 * * * * - meaning "every 30 minutes" - to as complex as 0 2 * * 1-5 - meaning "at 02:00 AM, Monday through Friday".

Advanced mode also make all Tasks available to be rescheduled.

When Tasks run can be adjusted by editing the cron expression in the Schedule column of the table. A live human-readable description of the expression is given in the next column. There are many online resources to creating cron expressions, but a helpful resource is linked at the bottom of the page.

Tasks

Below is a table which provides a bit more detail on each Task defined in The Scheduler.

Task Description Advanced Only Recommended Interval Details
Backup the database and global settings Once a day Details
Check for a new release of TitleCardMaker Once a week1 Details
Create all missing or outdated Title Cards Once a day23 Details
Clean the database Once a week Details
Download logos for all Series Twice a week Details
Download posters for all Series Twice a week Details
Load all Title Cards into media servers Once a day2 Details
Refresh all non-built-in card types Once a week Details
Set Series IDs Once a week Details
Sync and add any new Series Once a day Details
Take a database snapshot Every few hours Details

Database Backup

Perform a backup of the system database and settings. This does not backup any image files, and so cannot be used to truly restore TCM from a data failure.

These backups are stored in config/backups.

New Release

Check GitHub for a new version of TCM. This does not affect those on the develop branch.

Create Title Cards

Perform all the individual steps required to create Title Cards. This actually does the following, in order:

  1. Refresh Episode data - i.e. look for new Episodes (if the Series is monitored)
  2. Update the watched status of all Episodes
  3. Add Episode translations (if the Series is monitored)
  4. Download Source Images (if the Series is monitored)
  5. Create or update all Title Cards

It is important to note that Title Card loading is performed in a separate task.

Clean Database

Remove any "outdated" data/objects from the database. Specifically, this does the following:

  1. Remove the loaded records for any outdated Cards
  2. Delete Card records (and files) which are not associated to with a Series or Episode
  3. Delete Episodes which do not have an associated Series
  4. Delete duplicate Episodes - i.e. Episodes of the same Series which have the same season and episode number.
  5. Delete duplicate Cards (if Multi-Library File Naming mode is disabled)

Download Logos

Attempt to download any missing Series logos. This does not attempt to download season logos if a Series has per-season assets enabled.

Download Posters

Attempt to download any missing Series posters. TCM prioritizes posters from media servers (i.e. Plex, Sonarr, etc.) over those from "generic" sources like TMDb, or TVDb.

Load Title Cards

Load Title Cards into all media servers for Series which have assigned libraries.

This will not "reload" Cards which have disappeared from the server if they were removed in a way which TCM cannot detect - for example selecting a different image manually in Plex, or if the Episode metadata was reset (typically from a file upgrade). In order to do this, you need to select the 'force reload' option for the Series/Card.

Refresh Card Types

Pull updated card type data from GitHub and re-parse any local card files.

Set Series IDs

Look for database IDs (e.g. TMDb, TVDb, Sonarr, etc.) for all Series. This is done to aid in matching content across all Connections.

Sync Series

Run all defined Syncs and add any new Series to TCM. Once a new Series is added, database IDs are queried, posters and logos are downloaded, and Episode data is refreshed. It is important to note that Title Cards are not created until the Create Title Cards Task is run - this is so you have time to edit the Series as desired.

This also adds any undefined libraries to the Series; such as those defined in the Sonarr Library Path setting. It does not remove invalid libraries from those Series.

If the global Delete Unsynced Series setting is enabled, any Series which was not found on any defined Syncs will be deleted (including any associated Title Cards).

Database Snapshot

Take a "snapshot" of the database. This is a count of all Series, Episodes, Fonts, etc., as well as a file size summation for all Cards. These snapshots can be graphically displayed on the Graphs page, but serve no functional purpose within TCM.

  1. This Task does nothing while the UI is only available to sponsors. ↩

  2. If you are not using any of the "fast" integrations - such as the Tautulli or Plex Webhook - then it might be benefitical to run this twice a day. ↩↩

  3. For those with very large (or small) servers, I recommend having this Task run ~1/10th the time. So if you see this Task typically takes about 2 hours, try and run it roughly every 20 hours; if it only takes 20 minutes then you can increase the frequency to about every 200 minutes (~3-4 hours). ↩