Thumbnail creation not working (running Emby in docker)

[tophee 2]

I'm running Emby in Docker (using the image from linuxserver.io) on Debian (OpenMediaVault). It's working fine except that it doesn't create any thumbnails.

• Thumbnails creation during library scan is activated
• "Save thumbnail images into media folders" is also activated
• "Save artwork into media folders is also activated" (if that is relevant at all)
• Metadata savers: Nfo is activated
• emby has write access (it does create bif files, no nfo files, though)
• videos are detected playing them works fine
• there is no thumbnail-failures.txt in my cache folder

Any idea what might be going on here or how I can further troubleshoot this?

 

[tophee 2]

I believe I have been misunderstanding how Emby works. I thought that when emby creates thumbnails during library scan, it uses them to display the video file in the UI (unless other artwork is available). However, unless I'm still miunderstanding something, this is not the case. Rather, the display images are created in another process, namely "refresh metadata", right? And in order to get Emby to display those "thumbnails", it doesn't matter whether it created thumbnails during library scan or not (those are for other purposes), but what counts is that you have "Screen Grabber" activated as an "image Fetcher" in the library settings (where it is hidden away under "advanced settings":

I think this is highly confusing, especially when what you normally see /i.e. without advacned settings activated), is this:

 

I'm posting this here in case I'm not the only one who lost hours on this, in which case I would ask you to reply below and perhaps propose how the UI could be improved to avoid confusion between "screengrabbed artwork" and thumbnails".

 

One thing I still don't understand, though, is: why do I have to select "Replace existing images" even when there are no images to replace?

I would assume that if there are no images, then refreshing the metadata will use whatever image becomes available even without "replace existing images" available. But this is not the case. I suspect that the label for that option is wrong: it should be something like "include images". Whether images will be replaced or not should be be dependent on the "Refresh mode". If "Search for missing metadata" is chosen, then existing images will not be replaced and if "Replace all metadata" is chosen, then existing images will be replaced (if "Include images" is activated, of course). Does this make any sense @Luke?

 

 

 

[Luke 42078]

Hi, yes I agree we can make these options easier.

The display in the UI uses the screen grabber option to generate a single thumbnail, which it looks like you have discovered.

[Luke 42078]

I would assume that if there are no images, then refreshing the metadata will use whatever image becomes available even without "replace existing images" available

 

Yes this is exactly what happens already.

[Luke 42078]

Does this help?

[tophee 2]

8 hours ago, Luke said:

Does this help?

Does what help? If there's supposed to be an image or attachment, I can't see it.

[Luke 42078]

Sorry I meant do the answers given help?