Could someone from Plex acknowledge that this is a known issue?
I was running into permission issues on my side but was finally able to get it to work after lots of googling. I use Unraid and after setting UMASK_SET to 0000 it started working properly, no more permission issue and video preview thumbnails started creating.
Issue for me on 1.21.3.4021. As mentioned, on a PMS restart, all is good until the scheduled task occurs, then anything added does not generate until a PMS restart again.
Really wish Plex would acknowledge this issue. Frustrating paying for Plex pass and having an issues that never gets fixed. I’m running latest PMS on Mac and have the same issue. Restarting PMS and manual analyze works on content that did not generate thumbnails.
Same issue for me for a long time on Mac OS X. My workaround is going into Library settings, changing “Generate video preview thumbnails” to Never, and then changing back to “as a scheduled task and when media is added”. After I do that, Analyze works again… until scheduled tasks run.
So, restarting PMS hasn’t been necessary. Can anyone else that usually restarts their PMS confirm that this workaround works for them as well? If it does, then IMHO the issue is that PMS is not correctly recognizing or keeping the Library setting, and for some reason internally it’s being seen as “as a scheduled task” until that flag is flipped again.
This has been going on for almost a year can’t speak for others but Plex if you don’t know how to fix it I would rather you say " Havnt got a f*****g clue but we are looking at it" that would at least let us know your bothering to try and sort out something instead of ignoring us all and giving us the most needed and antisipated update of a fancy moving plex start up on apple tv. and other crap. I like others have been a Long Long time supporter and I dont relish my issues being ignored when we contribute to your living standard Just accnowledge the issue Please FFS
1 Like
Just a thought: when you add crap like this that eats up CPU cycles and churns hard drives, make it an opt-in setting. I can’t remember the last time I used a new forced feature. Plex TV & Movies? Seriously? Yeah, you’re really filling a huge hole in the market there 
Still can’t use cue sheets in music libraries. Still can’t do subtitle offsets. But hey, let’s throw this in (still broken, apparently, judging by the age and length of this thread). Brilliant.
I switched over to Ubuntu as well and when the video previews stopped being generated I followed your advice by setting the video preview generation from “as scheduled task” to “none” then saved it, then reversed the order and now the video thumbnails will generate when I select analyze but only for a short time, something is switching the preferences back or wiping them out because I have to do this same process just about every time i add new videos.
Any suggestions?
I cannot believe this issue is still happening. Can there be some acknowledgment from the Plex team on this that you are at least aware of it and it’s on the roadmap to be fixed?
1 Like
Any acknowledgment that this is an issue? At all?
Bueller…?
+1
Using the Latest version: 1.22.3.4523
I can confirm that this is still an issue, video preview is not being generated on analyze.
Restarting Plex doesn’t solve it either (worked in earlier versions as a workaround)
Paging @ChuckPa to this thread as well - this is clearly not just me having this issue. Is there any way you are able to follow up with @StSimm1 and check on the status of this?
Thank you!
To everyone in this thread that has been dealing with this issue for far too long, I wrote a quick little bash script to automate disabling/enabling thumbnails(I know this post is technically tagged server-windows, but this issue is pervasive across server-linux and server-freebsd as far as I can tell from the comments.) This is far less disruptive to me & my users than restarting the server. I plan to run this daily right after my Scheduled Task window is over.
Sadly I might still miss media that is added after the Scheduled Tasks are complete, but before the Task window is actually over, but that’s an extreme edge case.
Just enter the host IP address and run the script as a cronjob, etc… Also has Pushover notification support. 
Hope this helps those out there who can’t STAND “seeking in the dark” when their media doesn’t have thumbnails.
#!/bin/bash
#Required Plex Server/Port variables
X_PLEX_HOST=
X_PLEX_PORT=32400 #Default is 32400
#Optional notification variables
PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN=''
PUSHOVER_USER_KEY=''
#Disable Thumbnails
curl -X PUT http://$X_PLEX_HOST:$X_PLEX_PORT/:/prefs?GenerateBIFBehavior=never
if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - INFO: Disabled thumbnails."
else
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - CRITICAL: Error disabling thumbnails."
if [[ ! -z $PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN && ! -z $PUSHOVER_USER_KEY ]] ; then
MESSAGE="CRITICAL: Error disabling thumbnails."
curl -s \
--form-string "token=$PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN" \
--form-string "user=$PUSHOVER_USER_KEY" \
--form-string "message=$MESSAGE" \
https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json
else
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - INFO: Pushover variables not set."
fi
fi
#Enable thumbnails
curl -X PUT http://$X_PLEX_HOST:$X_PLEX_PORT/:/prefs?GenerateBIFBehavior=asap
if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - INFO: Enabled thumbnails."
else
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - CRITICAL: Error enabling thumbnails."
if [[ ! -z $PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN && ! -z $PUSHOVER_USER_KEY ]] ; then
MESSAGE="CRITICAL: Error enabling thumbnails."
curl -s \
--form-string "token=$PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN" \
--form-string "user=$PUSHOVER_USER_KEY" \
--form-string "message=$MESSAGE" \
https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json
else
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - INFO: Pushover variables not set."
fi
fi
I had a request for a Windows version - here is a Powershell script that should do the same - you may need to explicitly allow Windows to run Powershell scripts - How to enable execution of PowerShell scripts? - Super User
#Required Plex Server/Port variables
$X_PLEX_HOST=''
$X_PLEX_PORT='32400' #Default is 32400
#Optional notification variables
$PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN=''
$PUSHOVER_USER_KEY=''
#Disable Thumbnails
$PLEX_URL="http://$X_PLEX_HOST`:$X_PLEX_PORT/:/prefs?GenerateBIFBehavior=never"
$PLEX_DISABLE_RESPONSE = Invoke-WebRequest -Method "PUT" -Uri $PLEX_URL
if ( $PLEX_DISABLE_RESPONSE.StatusCode -eq "200") {
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - INFO: Disabled thumbnails."
} else {
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - CRITICAL: Error disabling thumbnails."
if (! $PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN -eq "" -And ! $PUSHOVER_USER_KEY -eq "" ) {
$MESSAGE="CRITICAL: Error disabling thumbnails."
$PUSHOVER_URL="https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json"
$PARAMS = @{
token = $PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN
user = $PUSHOVER_USER_KEY
message = $MESSAGE
}
$PARAMS | Invoke-RestMethod -Method "POST" -Uri $PUSHOVER_URL
} else {
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - INFO: Pushover variables not set."
}
}
#Enable Thumbnails
$PLEX_URL="http://$X_PLEX_HOST`:$X_PLEX_PORT/:/prefs?GenerateBIFBehavior=asap"
$PLEX_ENABLE_RESPONSE = Invoke-WebRequest -Method "PUT" -Uri $PLEX_URL
if ( $PLEX_ENABLE_RESPONSE.StatusCode -eq "200") {
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - INFO: Enabled thumbnails."
} else {
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - CRITICAL: Error enabling thumbnails."
if (! $PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN -eq "" -And ! $PUSHOVER_USER_KEY -eq "" ) {
$MESSAGE="CRITICAL: Error enabling thumbnails."
$PUSHOVER_URL="https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json"
$PARAMS = @{
token = $PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN
user = $PUSHOVER_USER_KEY
message = $MESSAGE
}
$PARAMS | Invoke-RestMethod -Method "POST" -Uri $PUSHOVER_URL
} else {
echo "TOGGLE_THUMBNAILS - INFO: Pushover variables not set."
}
}
4 Likes
I’m a bit late but I’m joining the “party”. Exact same behaviour. I didn’t update my server for a long time, and after being recently forced to do so, I’m facing this issue (among many other new ones).
Video Preview Thumbnails, after a while, don’t generate automatically anymore, and the analyze button doesn’t work either. I used to restart my server but I just found out your workaround and it works. At least now it’s easier, so thanks.
But I really don’t want to have to “babysit” my server every time and check if video preview thumbnails have been generated.
I notice that this has been an issue for over a year… wow… and to think that this is one the most important features for me.
Devs, get it together.
Out of curiosity, does ButlerTaskGenerateMediaIndexFiles have any relevance? It’s hidden and defaults to off, so I doubt it.
(Or GenerateIndexFilesDuringAnalysis? I haven’t tested and I’m not sure if it still has any effect.)
Looks like the devs are making some progress on this issue - TV Shows library - video preview thumbnail not being created at add time - #12 by BigWheel
1 Like
This issue does appear to be fixed in the latest version. I have not restarted Plex Media Server or changed the settings for several days and the preview thumbnails have been generating automatically for newly added content.
Setup:
Mac Mini 2012 running Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7
Plex Media Server Version 1.23.4.4712
2 Likes
Thanks for the heads up. After the update and a couple of days, it seems like it’s fixed for me as well.
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