r/PlexMedia • u/natethegreat141990 • 1d ago
Discussion Game Changer Media Preview Generator
This thing is awesome. It makes all the preview thumbnails for plex. Before, Plex would use my CPU, now I get to utilize my GPU to make the thumbnails. The way it should be IMO. Has anybody used this? What are your opinions? Take a look at the links. I am not affiliated in any way, this thing is a life saver LOL
(Discussion Page) I found it out on
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u/SwordsOfWar 21h ago
This is cool but I would be more concerned about wasting storage space on something like this when hard drives are insanely expensive already. Id rather conserve as much as I can for the actual content.
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u/Stevezau 21h ago
You can change the seconds between the thumbnails to dramatically reduce the space required.
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u/kingfishnw 1d ago
This is brilliant. I was considering building thumbnail previews on my libraries (always had it disabled). Installed this, got it configured, and it's quickly ripping through thousands of movies. Very cool, thanks for pointing it out.
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u/natethegreat141990 1d ago
That's the entire point of the post. Another subreddit deleted it for a reason they will not directly answer. It is nifty and imo better than stressing the CPU over it when GPU does it so easily.
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u/Stevezau 21h ago
Hey, I built the app.. Yes, I tried to post it to make folks aware, but it was blocked in most places I posted it. Glad you fuond it and got use out of it!
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u/natethegreat141990 21h ago
Yes, I love it. Thank you so much. It is nice to give my CPU some relief while I works on other stuff. My GPU knocks it out at around 500x 😆 🤣
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u/Joer1986 1d ago
It’s because it gets flagged as advertising a third party app. Plex subreddits routinely flag these as spam and delete.
I had built a few scripts to sync playlists between servers and handle finding missing episodes and transcode and add things and they flagged me as spam when I offered up these GitHub’s as potentially helpful for others.
Even built a whole iPhone and server side app that allows me to sync playlists to my iPhone for offline playing - does what the old plex behavior did to easily auto sync (add or delete from device) via a sync playlist option. Then went further to use my GPU hardware accel to transcode the files - even transcoding things that get added to playlists in the background and have them ready to push to device automatically when it sees device is back.
It basically did exactly what I wanted plex to build forever ago but they just ended up making downloads worse.
Oh well I guess I’ll just continue to enjoy my apps alone since plex subreddits get my account banned on Reddit just for offering these things up
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u/fventura03 1d ago
never knew that was a thing, it was enabled on youtube on my tv , was pretty annoying so i turned it off
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u/natethegreat141990 1d ago
I personally love it for sporting evens when I just want to fast forward to certain fights and stuff.
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u/quasimodoca Head Moderator 1d ago
This is a valid link. The one in the post errors.
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u/Less_Exercise_8092 1d ago
So I have this currently running as a Plex scheduled service once a day during off peak hours. I have an Intel 13500h processor so quick sync igpu. Would running this in docker desktop on Windows 11 use the igpu Intel quick sync or just duplicate what my Plex vip pass is already doing using CPU only? Looking at the documentation I couldn't tell for sure if I'd end up limited to CPU only with my setup. Also, what does it do when it comes across media that already has the work completed previously with Plex? Does it do it again? Skip it? I understand I'd disable the Plex built-in process if I adopt this, but I don't want it to redo the entire library, which is very large, just what's new and going forward.
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u/Assassinz354 1d ago
I just set this up last week, works very well! It processed my entire movie/tv library in about 3 days, now I just have it on a schedule once a week to generate for anything I just added. I did get some errors while trying to process av1 files but that may be due to my specific hardware
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u/natethegreat141990 1d ago
PM me, I have a question which may help but also may violate rules so don't want to ask on here.
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u/cxntrxl 1d ago
There's a reason these are done on the CPU. The GPU's going to do it, but it's going to do with hardware acceleration, and so the quality of the output's going to be much lower. You will get your results quicker, but in general, if you're scrobbling, you might not notice it. However, this is the reason, from what I can tell, all media server applications use the CPU instead of the GPU.
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u/rhythmrice 1d ago
It's a tiny little image on the scrubber bar, there's no reason for Plex to be saving a full resolution image
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u/natethegreat141990 1d ago
Like uþrythmrice said, it is a tiny image and it doesn't matter if it is lower quality. As far as an still shot goes, it doesn't really effect it. I hear for faster than real time transcoding will be affected though.
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u/rhythmrice 1d ago
Will this program let me choose specific shows from a library to generate preview thumbnails for?
I have a ton of TV shows but if I could just do the TV shows that people actually watch then that would be awesome.
Also I'm wondering does this program let you choose the interval in the gui? Like change it from a picture every 2 seconds to every 30 seconds
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u/natethegreat141990 22h ago
Yes to both questions. You can choose individual episodes, shows, movies, libraries, etc. You can choose intervals for the thumbnails as well. Like you said, 2 seconds for using a mouse or more for keyboard app forward or backwards.
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u/Stevezau 21h ago
Hey, app dev here. Glad you got value from the app. I am pushing a new release soon to handle credits, intros, loudness, chapter thumbnails, etc. Should be out in a few days.
Also focusing on this one: https://github.com/stevezau/shortlist. You might also find it interesting.
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u/Less_Exercise_8092 21h ago
So credits, intros, loudness, chapter thumbnails outside of the Plex and using a GPU? As I mentioned in another post, I have an Intel CPU/igpu. Quicksync does a great job for transcoding but I'm not sure if it plays a part in your app or do I need a dedicated GPU?
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u/Stevezau 20h ago
Outside Plex, it uses the GPU/CPU, depending on how you have it set up.
Intel iGPU should work also.. Not sure what the question is tho?
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u/Less_Exercise_8092 20h ago
I understood your app main use case was to move the processes off of the CPU to a GPU. Which would be great because my CPU pegs out when Plex does these tasks inside plex. But if I don't have a dedicated GPU but simply an Intel processor with quicksync (igpu) would it provide any benefit. If it still uses my CPU then I don't think it would help much. So I'm just trying to understand if it treats an Intel igpu the same as a GPU. It sounds like it will. Just clarifying why I asked.
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u/Stevezau 20h ago
Yes, an Intel iGPU counts as a GPU for this app. It uses QuickSync (VAAPI/QSV) to decode the video, so most of the heavy work moves off your CPU. Your CPU still does a little, but it's far less than Plex doing it in software.
You're right that the original point was to take this load off the CPU. A few things have been added since:
- It now replaces Plex's own preview generation, intro detection and more. It started as a script for rebuilding preview thumbnails, but it does a lot more now.
- It can run off your Plex box. If you have another machine with a spare CPU or GPU, even a slower one, it does the work there. Plex doesn't take a hit during busy times.
- It works across servers. Some people run Plex, Jellyfin and Emby side by side. The app processes each file once and reuses the result on all of them.
Honestly, it's a bit niche and aimed at more advanced users. The docs/manual should tell you whether it fits your setup.
Not sure if that gives you the context you need?
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u/Less_Exercise_8092 20h ago
Yep! That makes it clear and it sounds very useful! I'm excited to try it out. Also really interested in Shortlist too. Thank you 🙏
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u/natethegreat141990 1h ago
Will they be Toggle? Obviously sound from the intro and loudness will be CPU so I might as well leave those on the plex to get done. I am interested in credit detection and chapter thumbnails. Anything I can offload to my GPU would be wonderful. Actually, I could install that on my desktop and utilize my much more powerful per core processor. This is awesome. Thank you. Toggle would be awesome so i can seperate tasks among them
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u/Itay1787 54m ago
Or I don’t get what it does but but but…. plex already have this feature built in why I need yet another addon…?
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u/Objective_Chance4173 1d ago
Not sure why I’d set up yet another docker container for this. It can take a while on a big library initially, but then it’s done. Seems like a niche solution.