Thumbnails: way to force removal from HDD?

Plex Media Server
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1

My SSD is filling up and I’m hoping to delete my thumbnails and recreate them at 10 second intervals.

I had made the registry changes and it appears the thumbnails for new content are being correctly created.

Now, I wish to remove previously created thumbnails. I’m testing it out on some smaller libraries, and have selected the “Delete Thumbnails” red button in the Manage Library. What is not happening is that I am not seeing a reduction of HDD usage.

I initially waited for the Scheduled Tasks to fire up last night and so far no change in HDD usage (more usage, if anything). So, I ran a Database Optimization in the Troubleshooting and then Clean Bundles, but no impact on HDD usage.

I do not see thumbnails on the titles in the libraries I deleted when streaming those titles.

Is there a way to force the immediate deletion of the thumbnails?

2

Isn’t that even more frequent than the default?

3

I believe the default is 2 second intervals. (a thumbnail create for every 2 seconds of content)

4

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201105343-advanced-hidden-server-settings/

GenerateBIFFrameInterval

integer

For video preview thumbnails, sets how often (in seconds) we create the thumbnail (default is 2).

5

Sorry, I misremembered. Indeed, the default is 2.

I’d wait at least 1 week before further attempts. A big cleanup of the plex data folder is performed only weekly.

6

So, there is no way to force it?

7

Maybe there is some arcane API call, but nothing I would know about.

8

I’ll give it time and wait and see. I do have some new concerns based on this information, but I’ll see how things go first.

Thanks!

9

I made that change and tested it a few weeks ago and it worked, but I manually deleted the thumbnails (didn’t want to wait for whatever Plex process does it). I think I found something out on Reddit which indicated where to delete them from.

10

Have you tried using Clean Bundles?

11

I’m not sure if DBRepair will clear them out for you but might be worth a try?

I’m just not sure how unused thumbnails are referenced but they should delete after 30 days at worst as Plex cleans up unused files - the “purge” option in DBRepair might clear them out sooner.

12

I did try the Clean Bundles before posting…

However, I just made the leap of faith and Deleted ALL my movie and tv show thumbnails. They appeared to be removed from the drive right away this time. Strange. I honestly was expect to gain more drive space than I did, but it was very obvious something was removed (gained 300 GBs).

Hmm, then I decided to run Clean Bundles again based on your response, and I gained another 300GBs (600 GBs in total). Interesting.

Thanks for the help. Now, to recreate!

13

Hmm, it seems this time the “Create Thumbnails” checkbox became unchecked after “Deleting” and “Saving Changes.” It didn’t do this yesterday. Maybe I didn’t click on “Save Changes.”

14

It took me at least a day to recreate, just on my movies (especially my 4K library LOL!)

15

Yes, I’m planning on several days. My server isn’t very powerful. Currently taking about 3 minutes per 4K movie. I even set GenerateBIFKeyframesOnly to 1:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201105343-advanced-hidden-server-settings/