stevezau/plex_generate_vid_previews

Plex Preview Thumbnail Generator

This script is designed to speed up the process of generating preview thumbnails for your Plex media library. It utilizes multi-threaded processes and leverages both NVIDIA GPUs and CPUs for maximum throughput.

Known issues

There is a known issue where AV1 codes are very slow via the docker container. If there are any ffmpeg experts out there, please help here

Features

Accelerates preview thumbnail generation using NVIDIA GPUs and multi-threaded CPU processing
Supports remote generation of previews for your Plex server
Customizable settings for thumbnail quality, frame interval, and more
Easy setup with Docker and Docker Compose
Utilizes the NVIDIA Container Toolkit for seamless GPU access inside the container

Requirements

NVIDIA GPU with CUDA support
NVIDIA Container Toolkit (if using Docker)
Plex Media Server

Environment variables

You can customize various settings by modifying the environment variables. If you are running locally you can create a .env file

Variables	Function
`PLEX_URL`	Plex server URL. (eg: http://localhost:32400)
`PLEX_TOKEN`	Plex Token. (click here for how to get a token)
`PLEX_BIF_FRAME_INTERVAL`	Interval between preview images (default: 5)
`PLEX_LOCAL_MEDIA_PATH`	Path to Plex Media folder (eg: /path_to/plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media)
`THUMBNAIL_QUALITY`	Preview image quality (2-6, default: 4). 2 being highest quality and largest file size and 6 being lowest quality and smallest file size.
`TMP_FOLDER`	Temp folder for image generation. (default: /dev/shm/plex_generate_previews)
`PLEX_TIMEOUT`	Timeout for Plex API requests in seconds (default: 60). If you have a large library, you might need to increase the timeout.
`GPU_THREADS`	Number of GPU threads for preview generation (default: 4)
`CPU_THREADS`	Number of CPU threads for preview generation (default: 4)
`PLEX_LOCAL_VIDEOS_PATH_MAPPING`	Leave blank unless you need to map your local media files to a remote path (eg: '/path/this/script/sees/to/video/library')
`PLEX_VIDEOS_PATH_MAPPING`	Leave blank unless you need to map your local media files to a remote path (eg: '/path/plex/sees/to/video/library')

Usage via Docker

[!IMPORTANT]
Note the extra "z" in the Docker Hub url stevezzau/plex_generate_vid_previews. stevezau was already taken on dockerhub.

Install NVIDIA Container Toolkit

Make sure you have the NVIDIA Container Toolkit installed on your host system and a compatible NVIDIA GPU with CUDA support. The script automatically detects the available GPU and utilizes it for faster thumbnail generation.

To enable GPU access inside the Docker container, you need to install the NVIDIA Container Toolkit on your host system. Follow the installation instructions for your distribution from the official NVIDIA documentation: NVIDIA Container Toolkit Installation Guide

docker-compose (click here for more info)

---
version: '3'
services:
  previews:
    image: stevezzau/plex_generate_vid_previews:latest
    environment:
      - PLEX_URL=https://xxxxxx.plex.direct:32400 
      - PLEX_TOKEN=your-plex-token 
      - PLEX_BIF_FRAME_INTERVAL=5
      - THUMBNAIL_QUALITY=4
      - PLEX_LOCAL_MEDIA_PATH=/path/to/plex/media
      - TMP_FOLDER=/tmp/previews
      - PLEX_TIMEOUT=60
      - GPU_THREADS=5  
      - CPU_THREADS=5
    volumes:
      - /path/to/plex/media:/path/to/plex/media
      - /path/to/plex/videos:/videos
    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - capabilities: [gpu]
    runtime: nvidia

docker cli (click here for more info)

docker run -it --rm \
  --name=plex_generate_vid_previews \
  --runtime=nvidia \
  -e NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e PLEX_URL='http://localhost:32400' \
  -e PLEX_TOKEN='XXXXXX' \
  -e PLEX_BIF_FRAME_INTERVAL=2 \
  -e THUMBNAIL_QUALITY=4 \
  -e PLEX_LOCAL_MEDIA_PATH='/config/plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost' \
  -e GPU_THREADS=5 \
  -e CPU_THREADS=5 \
  -v /your/media/files:/your/media/files \
  -v /plex/folder:/plex/folder \
  stevezzau/plex_generate_vid_previews:latest

Usage running locally

1. Install Dependencies

Make sure you have the following dependencies installed and available in your system's PATH:

FFmpeg: Download FFmpeg
MediaInfo: Download MediaInfo

2. Clone the Repository

Clone this repository to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/plex-preview-thumbnail-generator.git
cd plex-preview-thumbnail-generator
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

3. Configure Environment Variables

Copy the .env.example file to .env:

cp .env.example .env

Open the .env file in a text editor and set the environment variables:

4. Run

Run the script

python3 plex_preview_thumbnail_generator.py

Support and Questions

If you have any questions or need support, please create a GitHub issue in this repository

Feel free to contribute to this project by submitting pull requests or reporting issues.