First Thumbnail, any way to set time so it's not (usually) just black?

[denzoid 57]

Yeah kinda nit-picky but is there any way to have the first thumbnail be a few seconds into the movie so there is an image and not just blank (black)? I have my setting set to 10 seconds already is there any other option available?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

I do not know why you have a different experience than I but almost never do I see an empty first thumbnail. I fact I cannot find even one movie that has such out of the over 4500 movies I have. To top that off even my TV library is good and even only one recording has a blank first thumbnail.

Having said that I do agree that the start position for thumbnails and the position of the image chosen for display when there is no artwork available should be adjustable within limits.

I have also noticed that if something happens and the bif file must be deleted it is not recreated reliably by the automatic process or by starting the task manually.

Emby folks be aware that my health prevents me from deep analysis of this kind of problem but I can verify that the failure to recreate bif files is ongoing and it has been around for a while. The only reliable way for me to fix a bad bif file is to remove it and then dance the files involved to force a full recreation of all support files. I do not really like doing that and I often do not notice the problem when I am in position to perform the fix.

I believe this to be a bug but it is a very minor one as everything important, such as playback, does work fine and the lack of correct bif files does not, for me at least, cause any important problems. It is almost just a cosmetic issue.

[neik 873]

I just opened half a dozen of movies, all of them started with a black first thumbnail for the first chapter (00:00).

[ebr 16187]

Hi.  Aren't you very likely to end up with some half-faded-in or in-motion studio logo or something?  Will that really look better than a black frame which indicates the beginning?

[roaku 842]

In the past, a dev described the initial black image as unavoidable.

I'm not sure how unavoidable they meant, though.

 

[denzoid 57]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Aren't you very likely to end up with some half-faded-in or in-motion studio logo or something?  Will that really look better than a black frame which indicates the beginning?

TBH I'd rather just skip the first thumbnail altogether, the thumbs are very nice to have but who honestly chooses the 0:00 thumb to start playing from? If you're looking at the thumbs it's to go to a part/scene of the movie you want to jump to, not to start from the first frame.

[softworkz 5072]

2 hours ago, roaku said:

In the past, a dev described the initial black image as unavoidable.

I'm not sure how unavoidable they meant, though.

 

The referenced conversation does not apply here. It was about the low-level extraction command that emby uses with ffmpeg and only in a certain case of chapter image extraction where specific time positions are given like

-skip_list 8,94.7,402.9,560.3,815.4,...

In that case, you want the first image at 8 seconds, the second at 94.7 seconds - and so on...

What happens is that ffmpeg always outputs an image at position 0s before it creates the actual images. 
But of course, Emby server "knows" this and always discards that first image.

[softworkz 5072]

5 hours ago, denzoid said:

I have my setting set to 10 seconds already is there any other option available?

 

5 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

almost never do I see an empty first thumbnail. I fact I cannot find even one movie that has such out of the over 4500 movies I have.

 

There's an explanation for the discrepancy. We actually have two different image extraction features:

Chapter Image Extraction

• Either we have information about actual chapter times in a video or if not, we are generating some at a fixed interval of 5 minutes
• Then we are doing single image extraction for each chapter
• For the first chapter, we are adding 15 seconds, so it won't be black
• This kind of image extraction uses a special filter which is making a choice from 22 video frames around the target time to pick "the best" possible image
  Essentially "best" means something like "no blanks, no fades"
• That's affordable in terms of performance because there's often just one or two dozens of chapter images to extract

Thumbnail Image Extraction

• This has a quite different purpose. Those images are for trick-play and scrubbing-preview (= seeing a preview while dragging the timeline slider)
• The frequency is high (every 10s), so we're talking about hundreds of images
• The image content should match the actual video content at the corresponding point in time, so there's no adding of 15s for the first image. When the video is black at 0s, then the image for 0s must be black as well
• "best of 22" can't be done here - because it would be way too slow and it would cause inaccuracy

 

In earlier versions of Emby Server, those two features were separate and independent, but at some time it was changed in a way that you can choose only one of them.
If you choose "10 seconds", it will do "Thumbnail Extraction" and the resulting images (at approximately matching positions) will also be used as Chapter Images.

I assume @Gilgamesh_48has "Chapter Markers" selected (or had earlier at least).

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

22 minutes ago, softworkz said:

I assume @Gilgamesh_48has "Chapter Markers" selected (or had earlier at least)

Then you would be in error. I never have had any desire to use "chapters" at all. Every movie/TV Show/Other has bif files that allow me to perform the "Trick play" functions and every video has a bif file attached to it except for the ones I have manually deleted.

As I said earlier when I manually delete a bif file Emby never recreates it unless I dance the files first to make them like they are new.

BTW: I have a few, very few, very short videos and they, correctly, do not get bifs generated. I was wondering exactly what the threshold is. I do not "need" to know and I cannot see anything useful I could do with that knowledge but I do, even in my dotage, have a strong curiosity bump and it sometimes itches like most other bodily bumps and I just have to scratch.

[softworkz 5072]

Stable or Beta? (I don't remember when the change was made)

How about new videos? Maybe your existing videos have regular chapter images created earlier.

Were the BIFs create by Emby Server or by other means? (there was a plugin for this)

PS: I cannot answer that last question. Not sure whether there's a threshold at all.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

4 minutes ago, softworkz said:

Stable or Beta? (I don't remember when the change was made)

How about new videos? Maybe your existing videos have regular chapter images created earlier.

Were the BIFs create by Emby Server or by other means? (there was a plugin for this)

PS: I cannot answer that last question. Not sure whether there's a threshold at all.

Beta, for now until the release catches up then I am going back to release, I do not know when all the bifs were created but I have had Emby for quite a while (actually over eight years) but I add videos all the time and they get bifs created and they are fine as are the very old ones. I do not know what makes my Emby behave differently than others but I have thought about it a bit and I wonder if it could have something to do with the fact that I store all support files alongside the media. Maybe that makes some difference somehow?

[rbjtech 5284]

Every single one of my titles has a black image at 0:00 - and technically, that is correct unless 'frame 1' has video. (most unlikely).

Maybe display the 'backdrop' or something instead of a black image - as it does look a bit 'odd' ...

This is technically 'easy' to do - as I've had experience of creating the BIF's when I did the HDR>SDR bif generator - you would just replace the first and maybe 2nd jpg image extraction (20s worth) with the suitable scaled backdrop instead prior to saving the bif.

BIF viewer here from @mickle026if you want to see the contents on the bif ..

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/71614-bif-generator-windows-tool/&do=findComment&comment=719762

Edited July 8, 2023 by rbjtech

[ebr 16187]

14 hours ago, denzoid said:

who honestly chooses the 0:00 thumb to start playing from?

I do many times if during the video I want to quickly return to the beginning.

2 hours ago, rbjtech said:

and technically, that is correct

Yep.

2 hours ago, rbjtech said:

Maybe display the 'backdrop' or something instead of a black image - as it does look a bit 'odd' ...

It would be odd to me for the first thumb to be so inaccurate.  I'd be wondering what the heck is going on with this movie with that image at the very beginning...

A black image seems completely appropriate for the very beginning of an item IMO.

[neik 873]

8 minutes ago, ebr said:

I do many times if during the video I want to quickly return to the beginning.

+1

I mean it is extracting a frame @00:00 so nothing else than a black screen is to be expected in >90% of the cases.

[rbjtech 5284]

22 minutes ago, ebr said:

  I'd be wondering what the heck is going on with this movie with that image at the very beginning...

Agree - Unless the Intro's have been stripped or the BIF's have not been created at 0:00 then a black screen is expected - don't disagree at all.

Just leave it I think - plenty of other things that need looking at ..