No Thumbnails for movie extras?

[seashell 42]

I have a mixed media library that I decided to try thumbnail generation on.  I selected 10 seconds, save with media.  Ran the scheduled task.

For things emby decided were movies (based on how it displays things in the web view) it did not generate .bif files for anything in the "extras", "featurettes", etc. folders.  For things it thinks were not movies it seems to have generated .bif files for everything.

Shouldn't movie extras get thumbnails too?

Also, you've asked for info where documentation is lacking.  There is as far as I can tell zero documentation for the thumbnail feature.  Search for knowledge base for "thumbnail".  Or the documentation page.  One hit for image editing and image types.

[seashell 42]

Confirmed in a straight movie library.  Movie extras, whichever of the allowable folder names, do not get thumbnails generated. 

[Luke 42080]

HI, can you try refreshing the metadata on one of them and see if that gets your thumbnails created?

[seashell 42]

It does nothing.  Broken record here, but can you please make your own movie example with an extra and see if you get thumbnails?

[rbjtech 5284]

Do you have 'Image Capture' enabled for that library ?

For TV series, extras, if named correctly, will get the images from the metadata providers, but film extra will not have this - thus they will depend on image captures or self uploaded images.

[seashell 42]

I do but I'm talking about Video Preview Thumbnails, .bif files here.  It is set as a scheduled task and when media is added.  Movies get them when added, extras for movies never get them.

[rbjtech 5284]

1 minute ago, seashell said:

I do but I'm talking about Video Preview Thumbnails, .bif files here.  It is set as a scheduled task and when media is added.  Movies get them when added, extras for movies never get them.

Ah with you sorry ok - my extra's don't have bif files - never have done.

Maybe needs a feature request ?

[seashell 42]

Seems more a bug report to me.  Why would any user experience just decide a random set of videos should have a worse fast forward experience than others?  It's not like there is any technical limitation they're just video files like everything else.

There also seems to be a no thumbnails for short files thing too, I'm not sure the cutoff, but it's certainly too long for for 10 second interval thumbnails.  I haven't fully explored that one though to see what it is or if it is dependent on chapters existing.

Simplify the code.  If a video exists and it's more than 10 seconds make .bif files if that feature is turned on.

Edited February 19, 2024 by seashell

[rbjtech 5284]

I guess some extras are sometimes a reasonable length - 30+ minutes - so having thumbnails for those makes sense.

I disagree on the 10 seconds though - that's just wasting storage space for items that you realistically will never want to browse though - deleted scenes and what not.

Anything longer than the first chapter point (5 minutes) then that maybe needs to have .bif files as well.

Edited February 19, 2024 by rbjtech

[seashell 42]

It's such a tiny amount of storage space for short videos that I really see no reason to leave the UI inconsistent.  It just makes things seem broken.  But the file size cutoff is a separate issue.  If there is a cut off in terms of length it should be DOCUMENTED, but this entire feature isn't in the knowledge base.

And yes I've seen movie extras that are as long or longer than the movie.  Arbitrarily ignoring them really makes no sense.

[Luke 42080]

11 hours ago, seashell said:

It does nothing.  Broken record here, but can you please make your own movie example with an extra and see if you get thumbnails?

Hi there, let's look at a specific example:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks.

[seashell 42]

No seriously.  You have to try these things yourself.  You already have a top contributor confirming the behavior.

[Happy2Play 9782]

Thumbnails and interval images are not the same thing.

As thumbnails appear fine.

So the question I believe has already been answered above but @Lukeshould extras have interval images?

[seashell 42]

They are not but they are confusingly referred to by overlapping terms in emby land.   Emby's naming on this is poor / inconsistent.  Thumbnails as you are now referring are "thumb" by file name, although I think they inherit poster if you have image extraction off.  The .bif files are referred to as thumbnails as the scheduled task is called "Thumbnail Image Extraction".  Let's not drag this into a discussion of those inconsistencies and barely existent documentation. 

It has already been clarified I mean the .bif files and the settings in my opening post clearly apply to them.

Edited February 20, 2024 by seashell

[seashell 42]

Which is to say no, the question has NOT been answered.  Why does "Thumbnail image extraction" not apply to movie extras?

[Happy2Play 9782]

One can argue either way.  But looks like it was removed back in 2020.

 

[seashell 42]

So they accidentally stopped working when it was removed for trailers and hasn't come back in 3+ years.  Great.

And that thread is completely full of confusion of what is a thumbnail (static for library browsing) and what is a thumbnail (.bif file). 

I've had this confusion several times with the settings, the very limited documentation, and here on the forum.  I think some serious consideration of the names of these two separate things needs to be done.  And it then needs to be documented.

Then we could have a clear discussion.

Somehow I'm guessing I'm just going to be stuck without .bif files for movie extras based on that thread.

[seashell 42]

Will emby use .bif files if they exist even for files it deems unworthy of generating them?

[crusher11 1101]

2 hours ago, seashell said:

Will emby use .bif files if they exist even for files it deems unworthy of generating them?

It doesn't appear so. Some of my extras still have BIFs from before the change, and I get no thumbnails while scrubbing, at least on the web.

[seashell 42]

8 hours ago, crusher11 said:

It doesn't appear so. Some of my extras still have BIFs from before the change, and I get no thumbnails while scrubbing, at least on the web.

Thank you.  Saves me some wasted effort creating them.

What an odd (and frustrating) decision by the emby team though.  I have movie extras that reach an hour.

[rbjtech 5284]

On the latest Beta - this has been added - I'm taking thumbnails to mean .BIF    

I have not tested this personally - I just saw it in the release notes, but no longer run Beta as my daily.

Thanks @Luke

Emby Server Release Notes

Version:

4.9.0.5



* Fix .sdh missing from subtitle download file name
* Refresh metadata on tracks when music albums are refreshed
* Fix Referer header in log not being anonymized
* Fix thumbnails for extras not being created

Edited February 23, 2024 by rbjtech

[seashell 42]

53 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

On the latest Beta - this has been added - I'm taking thumbnails to mean .BIF   

Thanks for the heads up.

rant

I'm not running the beta server at the moment either.  Latest hassle is trying to figure out why my roku streaming stick barely works with emby.  First it just randomly stops playing at the end of videos and doesn't go to the next (as set) nor return to the menu.  And now I've noticed it plays 29.97 Hz progressive video at something around half speed while playing the audio normally.  Plus there seems to be no way to show chapters in a playing video.

It would be so nice if it didn't seem like everything is a struggle to get to actually function correctly. 

/rant

And yes, emby [b]seriously[/b] needs to clean up the naming scheme around the different thumbnails and write some documentation.