Server Version#: 1.18.3.2156
Player Version#:3.104.2
Hi, I am having problems with some MPEG2 files not having preview thumbnails generated by the Plex server. I have tried all the usual stuff - scan, analyse, refresh, delete and re-add without success. I’ve included two snips below from the ‘get info’ option, the first one for a file which has thumbnail generated and the second one whereby it does not work. Can anyone shed some light on this? Other than the bitrate, they look identical in terms of file type to me. Thanks.
You are putting these in a movie library not a TV show library? This will be unmatched so the image will be taken from the file at certain set intervals. It’s possible there is an issue with some files so that it can’t generate the image at the needed interval. Have you tried editing the poster to see if there are other generated images you could manually use?
Hey, thanks for taking a look at this - the library type has been set to ‘Other Videos’. The files with working thumbnails allow me to select several different posters via the Edit interface, however the others just have ‘choose an image’, ‘drag and drop’ and ‘enter url’. Any other ideas? Thanks.
So it sounds like PMS failed to extract those images from the file itself. Unfortunately there is no button to have PMS try again. This can happen if there is a flaw in the file. If you Plex Dance the files, that will force PMS to try extracting the images. However, if it failed before, it could fail again.
Why don’t you just use a TV show library which will then use the agent provided image?
I’ve just tried re adding as a TV show library and none of the recordings would show up. Is there anyway I can get further technical support from Plex?
Oh sorry, I didn’t look at your filenames above. Your files look like they are recordings from a DVR so they only contain the actual aired date. You also appear to have multiple episodes on the same day. Plex does not handle that well. Does your DVR have the ability to use the originally aired date or the season/episode format instead? That will help future episodes.
For your existing files you’ll need to rename them in one of 3 ways.
1 - add “-pt1”, “-pt2” to the files for each day so all airings from that day appear as 1 episode.
2 - identify the episode and change the date to the original aired date
3 - identify the episode and change to using the season/episode format
If you don’t care about knowing what the actual episode is, for 2 and 3, you can just name things sequentially. For 2 - start at some random date in the past and just rename each file to be different date. For 3 - you can assign everything to season 1 and just name each file episode 1, 2, 3, etc.
Which naming method did you use? If you are now using a TV show library. the files still need to match up with an episode on TheTVDB so it can grab the image from there. If it can’t match up the episode, it will try to grab an image from the file, but since that isn’t working, nothing would change.
The only other option would be for you to provide me with one of those episodes so I can pass it along to the team to see if they can figure out whats wrong with the file and if there is a fix.
