Video Preview Thumbnails on Apple TV: Why can Infuse 6 do it on the fly, yet Plex still not at all (after 4+ years in the making)!?

So being now on PMS 1.18.3.2156, I thought I give pre-rendered thumbnails another try and accordingly have enabled thumbnail creation "planned and when media gets added“.

The big question now is: With my 1,200+ media files, how can I check the progress of the thumbnail creation, can I conveniently see which media already has the thumbnails? Also: Can I force the thumbnails creation?

From the web client you can Analyze individual items and that should create thumbnails for you.

FYI, here is a real world disk usage report with video/chapter previews enabled.

16G     /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Cache
17M     /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Codecs
15M     /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Crash Reports
0       /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Diagnostics
91M     /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Logs
535G    /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Media
81G     /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Metadata
4.0K    /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/plexmediaserver.pid
205M    /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins
2.7G    /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support
4.0K    /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Preferences.xml
4.0K    /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Preferences.xml.bak
4.0K    /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Preferences.xml.goodmaybe
0       /datascratch/pms/Plex Media Server/Thumbnails
633G    total

main database sizes

-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 1.3G Dec 30 22:36 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 9.8M Dec 30 22:39 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-shm
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 1.3G Dec 30 22:39 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-wal

I’m sorry, but despite having Thumbnail creation activated and don’t see any Thumbnails nor does the CPU activity in the Plex Dashboard indicate that there is any creation happening (CPU activity is more or less a flat line), even if I select „Analyse“ on an individual Media item in an Plex Admin account.

Again my PMS is 1.18.3.2156, my ATV4K is on tvOS 13.3, Plex Player on that ATV is up-to-date (version 2.12).

Do I have look for files with a .bif extension? Where exactly, under which path on the PMS are they located?

Do you have the settings enabled correctly?

Once I had my settings enabled properly and I used Analyzed manually, it showed up in the circle Activity Monitor as well.

I also noticed on the ATV that thumbnails only “worked” when you pause the video first then scrubbed / fast forwarded.

On the fly worked for years with the Plex App, for people like me, that remux to mp4 container, but that stopped working awhile ago.

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Thanks for pointing me to that support page: None of my five libraries had „Enable Video Preview thumbnails“ checked under Library Settings > Advanced. Looks that either I have disabled those options at some point in the past (and forgot), or that option is disabled by default. If the latter is the case it should be clarified on that support page.

At one time, I know I could trigger the generation of vpts with analyze at the show level. Sad to see that go, but…

The generation is so fast now - The Plex Dance is viable solution and would be my choice if I had to generate one episode at a time in say, Stargate SG-1’s 235 episodes…

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Analyze is also available on a per-Library level. But even if one analyzes globally, isn’t Thumbnail generation automatically skipped if the thumbnails for a movie/show already exist, so only those for newly added media get created?

Anyhow, my „problem“ is solved now and Preview Thumbnails while scrubbing works perfectly fine on my AppleTV 4K.

Yea, but @Xhaka has some media without thumbs - and I assume will be Plex Dancing very soon - since what once worked so well, apparently works no more.
(do make sure ‘as a scheduled task’ AND ‘when media is added’ is ticked - just to make it clear you want some thumbs - dammit!)

:slight_smile:

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Lol.
I certainly won’t be Plex dancing anything. That would be more trouble than it’s worth as I imagine I would have to go through each show to find if they already have VPT’s or not.
I do plan on giving @dane22 export tools a whirl at some point in the not too distant future though, as I believe that can tell me what does or doesnt have them generated.
It would be cool however if Plex could show this info natively. But then better yet would as already mentioned would be the ability to do it on a show basis.
Clicking analyze on The Blaclklist is a whole lot quicker than clicking analyze on 170 or so individual episodes. :grinning:

Life was far easier when they looked like crap on the Shield. I cared a lot less.

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Why? You can Plex Dance an entire season of SG-1 in 10 minutes with thumbs… where’s the down side?

Thumb gen is so fast now I don’t even care - see something odd? Dance. Easy.

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For me the downside is ALL my media is now on Gdrive and the server is remote.
If everything was still running locally that would be different.

plex dance = lost play history/status

better to just analyze the whole library

image

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Yeah I suspected that too but wasn’t sure.
My users would not be happy.

ah, well remote gdrive libraries, that is a whole different ball of snot.

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Has never happened in over a thousand years of use… not to me anyway. That info is held somewhere special - like in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls’ porch. A Plex Dance has no effect on status/history.

That would be very different than here…

Hmm, that is weird.

The whole point of plex dance is to remove all previous information in plex, to me that includes status as well.

But cool info, thanks for the correction.

The Plex Dance is The Bundle Fix - Play History - apparently - ain’t in that bundle.
(you’re on Amazon right now shopping for dancin’ shoes, ain’t ya?)

:slight_smile:

I can’t remember the last time I had to do the plex dance, so doesn’t affect me one way or the other, currently.

But it’s good info to know for future.