I am not sure about this idea, but it is an idea to try.
File::Find calls the "wanted" sub for each "file" that it finds.
A directory is actually a special kind of a file.

When File::Find enters a directory, there is a pre-process sub that can be called for example to sort the order in which the files in that directory will be fed to the wanted() sub.

Perhaps it could be that using this preprocess sub may make things faster? I don't know. I've never had to worry about performance at this level

All of this File::Find stuff works upon the volume directory. All of that info will quickly become memory resident. The size of the disk and how much data is upon it doesn't matter.

For your application, the number of directories matters. If you know all of the directories, the file system can determine quickly if the .ignore or the target file '2012.avi' exists in that directory or not. That sort of query could potentially be multi-threaded.

There are ways in which your program can be informed by the O/S when a new directory is created. I suppose that if you know what the result was one hour ago, that might help with the calculation of the current result? The details of your app are a bit unclear to me.

Anyway, below is an idea to benchmark. I don't know what the result will be.
Code hasn't been run.. just an idea..

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find;

my @found;
my $target = '2012.avi';


my %options = (preprocess =>\&preprocess_dir,
               wanted     =>\&wanted
              );

find( \%options, "C:/test");


sub preprocess_dir
{   
    my @avi_path=();
    
    foreach my $this_name (@_)
    {
       return () if ($this_name =~ /\.ignore$/);
       
       # defer judgement if $target is found
       push @avi_path, ("$File::Find::dir/".$target) if $this_name =~ 
+/$target/;
    }
    
    # ./ignore wasn't found
    
    push @found, @avi_path;
    
    return (); #Nothing for the wanted sub to do...
}

sub wanted
   {return();};  # nothing to do here
                 # because list of files is always empty
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