[Forum Preview] Credits Detection for Plex Media Server

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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Something we teased a little while back (for those of you who follow closely) was the ability for the media server to detect end credits, and this feature has finally arrived, in this forum preview at least.

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It’s already out there

We actually deployed an iteration of our credits detector earlier this week for our free to watch VOD catalog but the algorithm had to be further refined before we set it loose on your personal media collection. So if you don’t feel comfortable running pre-release software you can still enjoy this feature on any of the thousands of movies and shows in our own catalog.

93.18 percent of the time, it works every time

While our algorithm is already on version 4 now (you can thank my fellow Plex employees for testing the earlier iterations), the detection will not always get things right. We use a mixture of different data points like the entropy of analysed frames, text detection and other magic sauce so you may run into specific credits that trip our detector up.

If you do happen to confuse our detector then we have added an advanced option on movies and TV shows to disable detection markers on these specific items, we would also love if you could report these anomalies to us so we can improve things going forward.

Toggling detection for an item:

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Credits detection is enabled by default when you install this preview build, if you wish to change the configuration then you can do so globally in Settings → Generate credits video markers, or per library in [Your Library] → Manage Library → Edit… → Advanced → Enable credits detection.

Marker submissions via api

Something else related we’ve been working on is a new cloud based marker api where detected markers can be submitted and then retrieved again later without having to run computationally heavy detection processes locally again. This is super useful when you have to recreate a library for some reason or do a clean re-install, so instead of taking hours for local detection to churn through everything it will take seconds to retrieve again.

When submitting these markers no user identifying information is passed along, we use a hash which is unique for every different file but you can also configure this behaviour in the settings. Marker submission is enabled by default but you can set it to do local detection only.

This feature only works with credits markers currently.

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It’s been watched

Another new feature along with this is the ability to use credits markers to determine when an item is marked as “played”. You may have noticed in our latest beta that you have the ability to change the percentage at which your server marks something as played, we’ve now expanded this allowing you to use the credits markers data.

There are few ways to configure this depending on how you watch your content:

  • at selected threshold percentage: if you want to keep it old school and don’t want credits markers involved at all.
  • at final credits marker: mark the item played when hitting the last credits (which would be after any potential post-credits scenes).
  • at first credits marker: mark the item played when hitting the first credits (which would be before any potential post-credits scenes).
  • earliest between threshold percentage and first credits marker - use the first credits marker only if it is earlier than the manually set percentage, otherwise use the manually set percentage.

You can find this under Settings → Library → Video play completion behaviour

Client support

All our shipping clients will support this feature out the gate.

Here is a list of the supported versions:

  • Plex Web from version 4.91.1
  • Plex for LG from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for Samsung from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for Vizio from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for Xbox One from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for PlayStation 4 from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for PlayStation 5 from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for VIDAA from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for Xbox from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for X1 from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for Fetch TV from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for Smart TVs from version 5.46.1
  • Plex for Mac from version 1.54.1
  • Plex for Linux from version 1.54.1
  • Plex for Windows from version 1.54.1
  • Plex HTPC for Windows from version 1.25.1
  • Plex HTPC for Mac from version 1.25.1
  • Plex HTPC for Linux from version 1.25.1
  • Plex for iOS from version 8.9
  • Plex for Apple TV from version 8.9
  • Plex for Android (Mobile) from version 9.8.0
  • Plex for Android (TV) from version 9.8.0
  • Plex for Roku from version 7.0.18

Before you proceed

The server builds listed below are pre-alpha releases and have not been fully tested so we always advise caution. Make sure you have recent database backups and preferably run these builds independently from your main media server if possible and create new libraries to test pre-release software.

With that out the way…

Downloads

Desktop Platforms

NAS Devices

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Troubleshooting

Please see this support Article:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/credits-detection/#toc-5

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What about PMS running as a Docker container?

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Happy holidays!

I thought credits detection would be a mild nice-to-have, but linking it to Video play completion behavior is amazing.

A hint to others - use https://app.plex.tv.

It has the required version of Plex Web, and displays the Detecting Credits activity correctly.

The local/bundled version doesn’t show it in Activity yet.

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Will this feature hit a snag with all those pesky movies with mid/after-credit scenes? coughMarvelcough

Would hate to “whops” and skip one of those.

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It would be REALLY nice if the new data that end credits provides can eventually seamlessly transition into the next episode or film with a pip action instead of having the 15 second timer. How cool would that be!

I guess the problem I foresee is that SOME tv shows literally have funny gags or finish up their punch lines at the end while the end credits are rolling. I suppose it’s very unlikely this would work correctly on every single tv show.

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Yup. There is an option per show to turn this off, so you don’t miss things like this.

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It’s super slick. It attempts to detect those. You get prompted to Skip credits and it jumps to the mid-credits scene.

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Yeah, I’ve tried it on a few films with animated/colourful credits and mid/post credit sequences, and it handles them all pretty well in my testing so far :plexheart:

This list is pretty good if you want to go test things out :slight_smile:

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Same question here. Thinking of developing my own image.

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Any chance of getting that final-credits marker tied to a new web hook so I can automatically turn my theater lights back up without having to reach for the remote and end the movie?

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If memory serves me correctly, I believe TMDb API exposes if a movie / show has a credit scene, could this data be used to speed up the detection of credits where that specific criteria is met?

Such as a low effort credit detection when plex notices TMDb doesn’t have that specific variable?

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We don’t think it’s as reliable to rely on things like that, and the credit detection as is doesn’t require an extensive amount of processing power. We’re quite confident in the results we get at the moment :slightly_smiling_face:

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Oh ofc,

I’m looking forward to testing it out, but there’s no docker image so I’ll have to wait hahaha.

I was just curious if TMDb was used in any way.

Also, the skip credits button makes sense when there is a credit scene, but when there’s no credit scene what happens? Do you still get a skip credits button? Or does the movie / show automatically zoom out to the post play screen and start the countdown for the next episode?

(If not, that would be cool)

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It does vary a bit from client to client. Clients that are capable of inline playback will go to the PostPlay automatically, with the video shrinking down, while others will go to the PostPlay upon clicking the “Skip Credits” button. We’ll be working to also improve this experience and make it as consistent as possible across clients

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Sounds great, looking forward to playing around with it!

You’ve also mentioned in the post that there now “Marker submissions via api” that “only works with credits markers currently”, is this hinting to the future possibility of manually editing the credit markers (and intro markers?) within the edit menu or will this have to be done using an external tool made by the community?

Also, on this note:

I know Plex doesn’t really discuss what they have planned, but will this improved experience include client specific features such as the native tvOS Player UI (or PIP?), and whatever the Android equivalent is? I can’t speak for Android specifically but on tvOS almost all of the major streaming apps have now adopted the new UI and as a result Plex is looking a little dated. I also find the UX of the skip buttons in the current implementation quite finicky compared to native experience apple provides via an API (which can be implemented over any player, not just their native player).

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Has anyone with a decent size anime library tested this yet? Would be interested in how it does with opening/ending/preview parts. I have skip the intro on my TV libraries but haven’t gotten around to turning it for anime libraries yet.

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Any info on impact on disc space? Hoping it’s like intro detection.

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It’s like intro detection, so very minimal. For movies with no mid/post credit scenes, it’ll be the exact same as intros, for each scene, it’ll add an extra marker entry.

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