What is a BIF file and why do all have -320-10 at end of filename?

[Ronstang 202]

All my older hard drives from my first version of my emby server have a BIF file in each media folder but none of those in my current libraries do.  Are these files the result of enabling "Generate video preview thumbnails:" in the library settings?

I'm re-encoding my older libraries where possible and totally reorganizing everything since I have changed so much in my emby journey over the last few years so should I keep these files in my older libraries?  What are their actual purpose?  I don't really understand what value they add.

Also why is "-320-10" at the end of every single BIF file name?  If I don't need this I would like to delete just that part as it would make renaming thousands of files with BRU much easier.

Thanks

[Spaceboy 2493]

bifs are your thumbnail images either at chapter points or with whatever frequency you set.

320 refers to the resolution of the image

10 shows you set it at a 10s frequency

[Ronstang 202]

Thanks, I understand now.....but, if I remove the "-320-10" from the end of the file will if affect it's function?

Edited September 9, 2022 by Ronstang

[Spaceboy 2493]

no - it will continue to work just fine as long as its named the same as the video file before the -320-10. you'd need to rescan all your libraries so emby picks up the new files but then good to go

[Ronstang 202]

Thanks, that will simplify some things.  I assume it is rather CPU intensive to create these files, I have over 4000 movies without these BIF files.....would it be best to feed them  a couple dozen at a time into an emby server on a different machine to manage the load and then add them to the final server.  I am creating a whole new server as soon as I get my collection organized.....probably 7000 or so movies..

[Spaceboy 2493]

pretty sure cpu use for bif creation is throttled so you may as well just let your server have at the library through the scheduled task. but it will take a while...

[Ronstang 202]

Thanks, that's fine.  This will be on a whole different machine that's only job is going to be the new emby server for my family to use outside the house and as a RDP portal to my other machine with a server and tuner cards.

[rbjtech 4260]

Depending on when you plan to do this, the MediaInfo plugin currently includes a HDR > SDR BIF generator (tonemapped) but there are plans to add a set of other BIF generation tools that allow various options and parallel processes to speed up the whole 'bif generation' process on 'new' builds/rebuilds such as yours.

The emby BIF generator will do the job (for sdr bif's anyway) but it's designed as a low impact background process - and may take a while with a 7K movie library ... possible days/weeks.

Anyway - just thought I'd call out that there are alternative options out there wrt BIF's.

@Cheesegeezer

 

[Ronstang 202]

@rbjtech  Thanks so much for the info, I'll look into that when I start the media population of my second server as I don't have to add all the media at once even if it is physically available and organized....plus even if it takes days or weeks to generate it still is not a big deal as the second server will probably not have much use at first until my family and friends realize how cool it is LOL.  

My current server is a complete mess with many dupes and such in many folders across a lot of smaller hard drives.  I kept learning and changing my encoding strategy and naming schemes and such to reach the point where I am now so my current server is unnavigable except by me as I know what folder to look in for the version I want to check...or watch.  When done and caught up I will delete the current server and rebuild it from scratch similar to my other server yet it will only be for in house consumption.