I’m sorry, what that means: …should take it from here…
Do you have another idea?
Which is also a bit strange for me. I have created a mkv file by makemkv and there I see the thumbnails. I created the same episode from the same ISO with handbrake and there I have no thumbnails. Even when I change the view in the windows explorer from “Details” to “Large Icons”, this files which I created by Handbrake I just see the VLC icon.
Don’t do that. MPEG2 is a very old codec and inefficient and also incompatible with a lot of Plex client types.
If you do re-encoding, use H.264 as target.
(Because otherwise, why re-encoding at all – when you don’t save any storage space and the quality is still getting worse due to the re-encoding.)
The storage space is no problem for me. More important for me is to get the highest quality. But if you say with H.264 I get a better video and sound quality than MPEG2 I can do this. But I think my common problem with the thumbnails will be not sloved when I changed the codec right?
You had never problems with the chapter thumbnails when you created mkv files by handbrake?
Why do you recommend to use the “Avg Bitrate” with 3750kbps instead of “Constant Quality”? What will happend if I set for example the “Avg Bitrate” to 5000 or 10000kbps?
Frankly, this with your eyeballs I didn’t quite understand. How do you find out which is the best bitrate for you? Just by watching on the TV? Or is there a way how I can determine which is the best Bitrate (for video and sound quality)? I notice the same as you has written. If I set a too high bitrate value, the files is going bigger and bigger, but the quality will not more better.
Unfortunately the chapter thumbnails are still black. Is it possible, Plex generate the thumbnails, but unfortunately it’s always black pictures? When you have a look to my first post, (Printscreen number 2 the 3 picture), there we can see, the thumbnail is not 100% black. We can see there is something like bridge.
Can I ask you something else? Do you have experience to avoid ripping the same episode/track? I notice this somtimes when I wan to rip a DVD. The DVD contains 5 episodes, but HB shows me 12 epiosdes. If this here is there wrong place, I can also but this question somwhere else.
That’s the only way I know.
Make some 240 Second Previews, put them in an Other Videos Library, watch them.
Go to MakeMKV forums - get the correct Playlist.
Everything that matters, I’ve always found there.
Sometimes the DVD will contain several versions - Widescreen/Full Screen.
Always rip out the files with MakeMKV first - so you can see what they are.
I used to guess - then I got tired of guessing wrong.
(that actually didn’t happen more than about once)
I used a long time MakeMKV to rip my movies and tv-shows. But I had the problem, MakeMKV ripped the episodes in the wrong order. Then I saw, many tv shows they have one big track which contains all episodes. But unfortunately, this track was sometimes skipped by MakeMKV.
But back to my real question
Can I do something else for my black thumbnails? Or I have to live with that?
Is it possible that the chapter breaks coincide with a black screen in the video file? The chapter previews could have been picked at this exact moment.
They can be quite precisely placed, as this example illustrates:
The Multi-Episode-Files I can easy split in multiple files. so i can be sure that the episode order is correct.
@JuiceWSA, @OttoKerner, I think you guys are right, I could check it quickly by one episode and there is really when the chapter change for one second a black screen. I think its not possible I can add own thumbnails? Or change timestamp from Plex to take this thumbnails?
