Hi guys, I’ve subscribed a Plex Pass in the hope to have the “skip intro” feature, but so far nothing works.
I pressed “analyze” on my libraries and it got stuck on “detecting intro: [random serie]” without any progress bar for more than 20 hours.
I restarted my NAS and everything seemed ok (well, at least nothing started to process). I clicked “analyze” on some of my tv series and it ended immediately, no idea if it was really analyzed or not. I started to watch one and no “skip intro” appeared.
Then I added a new season of a serie and now it’s stuck on detecting intro since hours and I don’t know what to do.
Some questions:
1- Is this feature actually working?
2- if so, how to make it work?
3- is it reliable?
4- is it possible to actually talk/chat with a Plex operator to solve problems?
5- how (in the worst case) to have a refund on the pass?
It works best with TV shows recorded by Plex with a tuner. It will get hung up on badly formatted files which you will have to either reacquire or temporarily remove from Plex. You can tail the scanner.log or ‘Plex Media Server.log’ to see if it keeps scanning the same file.
The process only uses the CPU so a weak cpu will go really slow on a large library if you scan everything at once. Better to turn off scheduled and do it show by show.
As Tierbierius wrote… works generally fine here.
Does your setup meet the described requirements from the linked support article (e.g. PMS version, client used, Enable intro detection being activated for the library in question…)?
Given you’re doing this for a full library, the process might take some time – depending on the library size.
If you want to “force test” it…
Pick a show with a 20s+ intro and perform Analyze (not the entire library right away)
Wait for the job to complete (this will probably take several minutes)
When it’s done, re-load the web app and navigate to an episode you know to have that intro (preferably from a regular season, no specials… those tend to have intros from various seasons)
Open Get Info > Show XML for this episode
Check for a <Marker> element with a type="intro" attribute – e.g.
My NAS has, I think, a Celeron CPU, so for sure it’s not a beast. I’ve stopped the Plex app and restarted it and tried to analyze only one TV Serie (Grendizer cartoon, 76 episodes at 720p).
Now, after a pair of hours (can’t remember exactly the time, but more or less when I wrote the first post), I can barely see a tiny (what I think it is) progress bar:
So I guess it’s something really slow to process (can’t imagine it on 4K episodes). If it’s just a matter of (relative) time, no problem, I can wait. I just wanted to be sure it worked because the initial impression was it was all stuck, as I didn’t see any perceptible progress.
I still didn’t understand where I can see the log of what the server is doing, all I’m able to see is the “consolle” that shows me strange debug info, but I don’t think they’re related to the skip intro feature:
Update to the progress: now we’re almost at 4 hours and the progress bar is still at the same one tiny pixel of the previous image. Should I get worried? You said it should take “several minutes”. Now my NAS is not a Powerful PC but, if this is just 1% of the total (on a single season), it means it could take almost three weeks.
If this is the expected processing time, I guess Plex Pass is not for me. O_O
It’s usually a few minutes; maybe a little over 10 on a slow system I suppose. Shouldn’t be several hours.
Intro detection is using the audio track for which Plex will process the 1st 50% of each file, creating a sound print. Server logs should help figure out what’s causing this getting stuck.
1st look… it seems the process is just super slow on your system.
extract from Plex Media Server.log, filtered for intro detection related lines – that’s approx. 0.5% progress every 40 minutes
Jan 01, 2022 10:59:19.706 [0x7f42becd6b38] DEBUG - Scheduling an intro detection job for 15711
Jan 01, 2022 10:59:19.706 [0x7f42bef33b38] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:50836] 200 PUT /library/metadata/15711/intro?force=0 (11 live) GZIP 7ms 195 bytes (pipelined: 21)
Jan 01, 2022 12:09:22.911 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 66dbcec2-70da-4de6-a32a-3e9425f51403 - completed 0.6% - Detecting intros
Jan 01, 2022 12:09:22.911 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - IntroDetector: Initializing for "" (15713)
Jan 01, 2022 12:47:58.962 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 66dbcec2-70da-4de6-a32a-3e9425f51403 - completed 1.1% - Detecting intros
Jan 01, 2022 12:47:58.962 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - IntroDetector: Initializing for "" (15714)
Jan 01, 2022 13:26:35.878 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 66dbcec2-70da-4de6-a32a-3e9425f51403 - completed 1.7% - Detecting intros
Jan 01, 2022 13:26:35.878 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - IntroDetector: Initializing for "" (15715)
Jan 01, 2022 14:05:11.109 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 66dbcec2-70da-4de6-a32a-3e9425f51403 - completed 2.3% - Detecting intros
Jan 01, 2022 14:05:11.110 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - IntroDetector: Initializing for "" (15716)
Jan 01, 2022 14:43:48.532 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 66dbcec2-70da-4de6-a32a-3e9425f51403 - completed 2.8% - Detecting intros
Jan 01, 2022 14:43:48.532 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - IntroDetector: Initializing for "" (15717)
Jan 01, 2022 15:22:25.272 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 66dbcec2-70da-4de6-a32a-3e9425f51403 - completed 3.4% - Detecting intros
Jan 01, 2022 15:22:25.272 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - IntroDetector: Initializing for "" (15718)
Jan 01, 2022 16:01:01.427 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 66dbcec2-70da-4de6-a32a-3e9425f51403 - completed 4.0% - Detecting intros
Jan 01, 2022 16:01:01.427 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - IntroDetector: Initializing for "" (15719)
Jan 01, 2022 16:39:38.455 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 66dbcec2-70da-4de6-a32a-3e9425f51403 - completed 4.5% - Detecting intros
Jan 01, 2022 16:39:38.455 [0x7f42c0264b38] DEBUG - IntroDetector: Initializing for "" (15720)
I’ve noticed you’ve placed all episodes in 1 flat folder per show.
Could you try reorganizing this one show to match the naming schema used for Plex to see if this helps speeding things up? With all files in a single folder, Plex will compare the sound prints of all those files instead of only those in the same season… this is multiplying the workload (and can slow things down significantly).
volume1
Media
Cartoni animati
Goldrake
Season 01
Goldrake - s01e01 - Koji e Actarus.mkv
Goldrake - s01e02 - Actarus, chi sei tu?.mkv
Goldrake - s01e03 - Pericolo alla fattoria.mkv
...
Though I just noticed this show is listed as a single-season one anyway… so it might not have the desired impact
Thanks for your suggestions.
I always try to follow Plex structure, but in case of old cartoons (this one is 1975), most of them where just one season, with tons of episodes, in this case 74:
The folder “Speciali Goldrake” is a custom one with some featurettes, that I organized as it was a second season (but it doesn’t exist in tv show databases):
I’ve noticed the same slowness even in other TV shows, with less episodes, like Dexter (I’ve left it like 12 hours and the progression bar was about 10% for only one season):
So I think it’s super slow independently from the numbers of episodes (of course having almost 100 it doesn’t help). I don’t think I ever changes most of general preferences, as I prefer not to touch things I don’t know.
Processing only audio files shouldn’t be a problem even for a Synology NAS, so I fear there could be something wrong. Most of my TV shows are h265 and h264.
Edit: I just noticed I’m using custom names for seasons folders instead of the one you suggested (Season 01). Do you think this could confuse Plex?
I’m going to stop the Plex server app, create a folder called “Season 01” and place just 3 episodes; will let you know if something changes.
Try to stick to the naming schema to the letter when it comes to tv-shows.
e.g. don’t name the season folders Stagione X but Season X, don’t use additional folders (e.g. Speciali Goldrake… if it’s actual specials, use Specials or Season 00… if it’s season 2, use Season 02).
All those can have an impact on how Plex deals with your media.
I created a new library of TV shows type, created the correct file structure, named it Firefly but I’ve used the first 3 episodes of Grendizer (just because they’re small files, at 720p), named them correctly:
Let it run overnight to see if it works.
If your server is this slow, you better don’t get started with Plex’ sonic features (though they’re absolutely worth the extra load while scanning your music)
Well, if my NAS is that slow (I hope not, I mean, I can run Handbrake on it and have a slow but acceptable h265 encoding), I think I’ll ask for a refund, because it’s a feature I won’t be able to use (let’s say, I add a new season tomorrow and have to wait for 6 months before I can watch and skip intros).
I hope someone with a Synology NAS (mine is a 718+, not really so old) could help me to understand if it’s really this way or not (that’s why I hoped to talk to a Plex stuff member, just to have a quick answer).
I’ll let it go tonight (so far still 0%) and see, but I’m not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Ok, my NAS was able to process the first 5 episodes of the TV serie and the skip intro does work.
There are two problems:
1 - It takes around 2 hours for episode, and the video files are pretty small (~500 MB each).
2 - It’s not possible to activate the intro scan clicking “analyze” from a TV serie or a single season. It simply does nothing. The only way to make it start is from the library root, and this of course triggers the detection of all the series (at least it’s what I guess, as it only shows the processing of the first one, and then it stays there forever).
The file size doesn’t matter when it comes to intro detection. Plex isn’t comparing the video itself but analyses patterns in the audio. Still… even audio processing and pattern detection / comparison takes some CPU power.
From what I remember, if you click Analyze on the show or season, it’ll start detecting intros – but that activity won’t necessarily show in the activities (though it should still happen).
Oh, nice to know about the “analyze” menus. I started to click “analyze” everywhere and the real detection showed only when I did on the library menu (I just added 10 more episodes, but the pace is still the same).
Yes, you already told me that only the audio stream is being processed (and it sounds logic), but I preferred to feed Plex with small files anyway (even if the difference would have been minimal).
I’m starting to think the process is encountering problems with the encoding but, if at least it succeeded, I don’t think it’s the case.
I was contacted by the billing section of Plex (thanks Kevin) and they asked for this thread to make it check by the support team.
I hope they’ll be happy to help me (as you’re doing, many thanks again).
