When generating thumbs at my house Plex uses - and always has used - every squirrel available (and buses in a Squad of Reds from the UK).
Trust me - I just spent the better part of a week creating a new Plexiverse -and thumb generation is something I am VERY familiar with…
AFAIK Hardware Encoding isn’t used in VPT generation:
from 2018, but still may ring true…
