I’ve started recording sporting events that happen while I’m asleep and putting the recordings on my Plex server to watch later. The problem is, there’s a random screengrab from somewhere right in the middle of the event showing up as the preview image, and it usually has the freaking scoreboard in it. I can try my hardest to not look at it, but sometimes that just doesn’t work.
If I see from the thumbnail that it’s tied halfway through the third quarter, it completely spoils the game up until that point–if one team gets ahead, I know there’s going to be a comeback. It really ruins the experience.
I’ve turned off ‘Enable video preview thumbnails’ in the advanced settings for the sports library, but it doesn’t seem to work–I still get the results spoiled. What else can I do?
Server Version#: 1.21.1.3830 (linux)
Player Version#: 4.29.2 MacOS (but also all other players)
Video Preview Thumbnails are something else. Those are used when seeking/scrubbing during playback. Turning them off won’t help with Posters being generated.
For normal movies and TV shows, Plex will try to download a Poster image. Or you could supply a local Poster.jpg.
But if you don’t supply a Poster, and Plex can’t download one, it extracts one from the media. I don’t think it’s possible to disable that.
You could browse the Library in Folder view, I guess.
Do you know some scripting? You could generate thumbnails yourself using ffmpeg and naming them as Volts suggested. Just take a screenshot of the minute 1 of each file and save it with the same name of the video file adding the suffix -poster.jpg
You have summed up the Plex “experience” in a nutshell!
If it’s not having shows forever ruined because I can’t disable spoiler thumbnails from episodes I haven’t watched yet, it’s the intolerable mess that is the entire DVR bugfest.
Don’t waste any cash on this product, that’s my review.
