When watching your favorite TV show, you get the same theme song and credits intro every time. This can be quite irritating. However, the Plex Media Server can analyze TV shows in the background and detect this intro using a sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm. Once the processing is completed, you’ll see a friendly Skip Intro button in the relevant part of the show. All you need to do now is to click this button and get to the interesting part.
Requirements for this feature
You will need to subscribe to Plex Pass if you haven’t done it already.
The feature is currently supported for the following platforms:
- Amazon Fire TV
- Android mobile
- Android TV
- Apple TV
- iOS
- macOS (desktop)
- Roku
- Web
- Windows (desktop)
How to analyze TV shows to find intros
- Open Plex Web App
- Go to Settings > Library
- Set the Generate intro video markers to the desired mode
- Click Save Changes
Here are the available modes for the generate video modes markers:
- Never – Never analyze TV shows to find intros
- As a scheduled task – Do the analysis during regular server maintenance
- As a scheduled task and when media is added – Do the analysis during regular server maintenance and when new media is added
A few notes about the analysis
- Short intros of less than 20 seconds are ignored
- Intros ending more than halfway into an episode will not be detected
- If you have multiple copies of the same episode, only one will be analyzed
Adjusting specific libraries
You can decide to analyze only some of the libraries and not all of them. Here is how to do it:
- Open Plex Web App
- Go to Manage > Libraries
- Under TV Shows click Edit
- Go to Advanced
- Set the Enable intro detection checkbox to the desired mode
- Click Save Changes
Analyze a season or episode manfully
You can even analyze a season or episode manually. Here is how to do it:
- Choose a season or episode
- Click the there dots icon to open the options menu
- Click Analyze
That’s all, now you can click the Skip Intro button, located at the lower right corner of the screen, and save precious time.