Feature request: Video Preview Thumbnails – 'When media is added only'

[Kopernikus 2]

Hello Emby team,

I would like to suggest an additional option for Video Preview Thumbnails.

Currently, the available options require choosing between a scheduled task and a combination of scheduled task + when media is added.

It would be very useful to have a separate option:

“When media is added only”

This would allow users to generate video preview thumbnails automatically for newly added media without requiring a recurring scheduled thumbnail extraction task.

This is particularly useful for users with large media libraries stored on HDDs/NAS/Unraid systems. A recurring thumbnail extraction task can unnecessarily wake HDDs and scan/process a large existing library, even though the user only wants thumbnails generated for new content.

For example, the desired configuration would be:

• Existing library: thumbnails can be generated manually when desired.
• New movie/episode added: automatically generate preview thumbnails.
• No recurring scheduled extraction task.

This would provide a very useful middle ground between completely disabling automatic thumbnail generation and running a recurring scheduled task.

Thank you for considering this feature.

[GrimReaper 5111]

You can already achieve that, select "as a scheduled task and when media is added" and then delete scheduled task (and you can still run it manually whenever you desire).