GPU-accelerated tool that generates Plex video preview thumbnails much faster

Dev Community Apps & Creations
1

Hey everyone,

A while ago I built a tool to speed up the generation of video preview thumbnails (the images you see when scrubbing through a video on the timeline). Why? Because on a large library it can take many days since Plex’s built-in approach is CPU only.

Recently it’s been upgraded with a web UI and integration with Sonarr/Radarr/Tdarr. I’ve never posted it anywhere so I thought I’d share it here in case others find it useful.

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Plex Generate Previews - uses your GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, or even Apple Silicon) to generate BIF files way faster. On my setup it’s roughly 5-10x quicker than Plex.

What it does:

- GPU-accelerated thumbnail extraction via FFmpeg (CUDA, VAAPI, QuickSync, D3D11VA, VideoToolbox)

- Configurable parallel GPU + CPU worker threads

- Web dashboard for managing jobs, schedules, and settings

- Radarr/Sonarr webhook integration — new media gets thumbnails automatically

- Custom webhook endpoint for Tdarr or any external tool

- Cron and interval scheduling so you can set it and forget it

- CPU-only mode if you don’t have a GPU

- Docker image with a setup wizard

Links:

- GitHub: https://github.com/stevezau/plex_generate_vid_previews

- Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/stevezzau/plex_generate_vid_previews

- Docs: https://github.com/stevezau/plex_generate_vid_previews/blob/main/docs/getting-started.md

2 Likes
2

Omg… you’re the developer? Thank you for making it. That really helped me out a lot when I changed the Plex GenerateBIFFrameInterval to 10. I had to scrap all the previews and start over.

I talked about your script 3 years ago on reddit.

I can’t believe there’s now a UI. That’s awesome!

4

Glad it helped!

1 Like
5

Hi Steve, if once generated with your script, can I safely turn on the Plex generation?

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Hi @andreasmaks if you meant turn it off, yes you can. You can also leave it on as Plex will skip if they already exist.

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Hi @stevezau, no, I meant turn off your script and let plex generate the thumbnails for new entries afterwards.
First your fast script → then the Plex default generation.

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Yes, that will work. This tool follows the same process Plex does, you can use either at any time.