Folks,
I’ve been chatting with the transcoder team.
Can any of you give me a sample (long enough of a snippet) of a video file which recreates the transcoder failure?
The forum allows up to 30 MB in a ZIP so 
Hey ChuckPa, if it helps, Plex Transcoder segfault - #16 by Sam_NZ
Noticed something about this issue (Thumbnail preview generation) over the weekend.
Server: Version 1.29.2.6364, OS: Ubuntu 22.04.1, current on updates.
Player: Roku 7.0.19.8058-54d0393d3-Plex
I’ve noted earlier that this issue seems to be intermittent. Part of this may be that I often timeshift only by a few hours. Record the news @ 6:00 pm, watch it at 7:00 pm, for example.
Sat. night/Sun. morning I recorded several classic Irwin Allen shows on MeTV. Watching them on Sunday afternoon, I noted no thumbnails on any of them.
Went back and looked at them this morning, and all had thumbnails now.
I also noted this pattern for the 6:00 O’Clock news, I deliberately did not delete a few recordings after watching so I could check
I have generate thumbnails set to “As a scheduled task and when media is added” under Library, and thumbnails is ticked on in the advanced settings for the TV libraries page as well.
But it seems to be generating the thumbnails overnight during the scheduled tasks period only, which I have set to 1:00 am to 6:00 am.
This might be helpful in figuring this out.
@Annoyed - I also noticed the behavior you described in your post. I usually record the news, then watch it about an hour later, using thumbnails to skip the news stories I don’t care about or commercials that commercial skip misses. Since this problem started, I have not had thumbnails for news unless I manually analyzed the recording and got lucky that the thumbnails got produced. However Plex didn’t delete some unwatched news episodes from the day before that I just checked, and those episodes do have thumbnails now. I also I have generate thumbnails set to “As a scheduled task and when media is added”. But it seems that thumbnails are not getting generated when media is added - only as a scheduled task overnight.
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Something else I noticed and confirmed today is that, in order for thumbnails to work when I manually analyze a show, I have to dig down to the actual episode and click analyze for that episode. Thumbnail production doesn’t seem to work when I analyze a season, or the higher level show - I have to go to the specific episode and click analyze for that epiisode.
I am also seeing this on my Synology NAS. I’m currently running 1.29.2.6364-7000 and recently upgraded, but the problem persisted from the previous release.
Thank you for that suggestion. It seems to work rather well for newscasts., where you want to skip through and watch what you’re interested in.
Plex - any movement on this issue? I’m on Plex Media Server version 1.29.2.6364 at this point, and the issue persists requiring me to manually analyze new media in order for thumbnails to get made.
Manual analyzing, to create thumbnails, is hit or miss.
In other words:
- For a newly recorded show that has NOT been watched, when I click “analyze” there is no indication/no progress that anything is happening and no thumbnails are created.
- For a newly recorded show that HAS been partially watched (within “continue watching”), clicking analyze does work and creates thumbnails.
server 1.30.0.6442
plex for windows 1.58.1.3380
I am also seeing the behavior of no thumbnails generated at time of recording, but getting created overnight in the scheduled task.
I don’t have a random video file laying around to see if it’s only an issue with recorded videos or any new video added to the library.
@brenowitz I have found that I have to dig through the menu to get to the actual episode in order to get “analyze” to do anything. In other words, if I see a new recording on the home screen, or in my recorded TV shows library, I have to click on that, and then go down to the actual episode and click “analyze” to get it to work. Most of the time, that works. Unfortunately, if I have recorded several shows, it seems like I have to “analyze” one at a time. If PMS is analyzing one show, clicking “analyze” on the next show doesn’t do anything, and sometimes it seems to hang up the analysis.
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@ChuckPa – Any updates? This one is killing our ability to use Plex for most news programs… 
Yeah, the user case seems to be people who regularly watch a recorded program before the scheduled task kicks in.
I have my server set to generate previews when media is added, and I’m not watching the program until hours after it airs, so I don’t think that’s the case for me. I think up above we determined that the transcoder which generates the previews was crashing…
@hawkinsb - Yes. My server is also set to generate thumbnails when media is added in addition to the scheduled task, and I get no thumbnails unless I either analyze manually, or wait for the server scheduled task to run overnight.
Interestingly, it appears that commercial skip works again once media is added, instead of requiring me to manually analyze the show after it’s added. This is on Windows 10 PMS, v1.29.2.6364
My media server updated a day or 2 ago. The thumbnail generation problem continues in Windows 10 PMS as of 1.30.0.6486.
I am experiencing the same issues described above. No preview thumbnails are being generated after a Live TV recording has completed. However, they do generate later in the day as a scheduled task. This is a very frustrating issue.
@Ridley I noticed your announcement of Plex Media Server 1.30.2.6563 here mentions the fix below:
- (DVR) Preview thumbs not being created for DVR recordings (#13943)
Do you think that is the same bug as this topic? If so, hooray!!
Can someone on this thread experiencing this issue try the new version and confirm?
I too would be thankful if someone would verify this fix. I’m staying with Version 1.29.0.6244 until Plex fixes this.
Confirmed. I had also been experiencing this issue on the most recent Public release version. After installing Beta 1.30.2.6563, thumbnails are back to being generated immediately after the DVR recording is finished.
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