Feature request: longer intervals for Scheduled Tasks

[Kopernikus 2]

Hello Emby team,

I would like to suggest an improvement to the Scheduled Tasks scheduler.

Currently, for tasks such as Video Preview Thumbnail Extraction, the scheduling options are limited to relatively short intervals such as daily or weekly. It would be very useful to have longer configurable intervals, for example:

• Every 30 days
• Every 60 days
• Every 90 days
• Every 120 days
• Every 180 days
• Every 365 days

Even better would be the ability to specify a custom interval in days.

I run Emby on an Unraid server with a large media library stored on HDDs, while Emby's application data and metadata are stored on an SSD/NVMe cache. My goal is to minimize unnecessary HDD spin-ups and background disk activity.

For example, I would like to use Video Preview Thumbnail Extraction both:

• When new media is added, so newly imported movies and episodes are processed immediately.
• As an occasional scheduled task, for example every 120 days, as a safety net for media that may have been missed or failed during the initial processing.

At the moment, the shortest practical option is to run the task weekly, which is unnecessarily frequent for this use case. Removing the scheduled task avoids the HDD activity, but also removes the possibility of having an occasional automatic safety-net run.

A configurable interval in days would solve this elegantly and would be particularly useful for users with large libraries on HDD-based NAS/Unraid systems.

Thank you for considering this feature request.

[Luke 43037]

Hi, why can't you let the task run more frequently? When there's nothing to be done, it will exit very quickly.

[Kopernikus 2]

Thanks for the explanation.

My main concern is not the CPU/runtime of the task, but unnecessary HDD activity and spin-ups.

I run Emby on an Unraid server with a large media library stored on HDDs, while Emby's application data and metadata are on NVMe. For this reason I try to avoid scheduled tasks that periodically access the media library when there is nothing new to process.

I have now configured Video Preview Thumbnails as “as a scheduled task and when media is added” and deleted the scheduled task. As you confirmed in another reply, the “when media is added” trigger continues to work and the task can still be run manually when needed.

That actually works very well for my use case.

My original feature request was mainly about having a longer scheduling interval as an additional option for users who do want an occasional safety-net run without having to run it weekly.

Would something like a monthly, quarterly or custom interval be possible in the future?

Thanks!