At Plex, we know that every second counts when it comes to consuming that sweet, sweet content. And we know what a bummer it can be when those credits start to roll, then keep rolling… and rolling… and rolling… until you suddenly realize it’s been 15 minutes and you’re learning who the backup to the second best boy on the third production unit was on your way to being reassured that no animals were, in fact, harmed during the making of this film. Credit where it’s due, of course (and great for trivia!), but at some point the (next) show must go on!
Ta-daaa. It’s Time to Skip Those Outros
Today, we’re taking the wraps off our brand new Skip Credits feature! It works a little bit like Skip Intro, AKA Intro Detection (though the underlying tech is quite different, more on that in a bit). When the credits start to roll, you get the option to skip them with a single click. Plex Pass holders can enable it for their personal media collection—so if you’ve been on the fence, maybe it’s time to finally make that upgrade. Want to see it in action first? Skip Credits is also available on our ENTIRE free streaming on demand catalog.
Credit detection works for both TV shows and movies, and it’ll even detect and let you skip directly to mid-credits or post-credits scenes (looking at you, MCU) with the same single click!
Our Own Eleven Herbs and Spices
While our Intro Detection logic works super well for TV shows where we have multiple episodes to compare to each other looking for common themes (literally), credit detection is a totally different beast. We’ve worked hard to tune a machine learning algorithm to make sense of several inputs (text detection, the presence of black frames, and a few other secret ingredients) to come up with a reliable set of markers when credits begin and end. It’s a tricky problem, and there may still be some cases where it doesn’t go exactly to plan, but those cases should be few and far between at this point. Hat tip to all the folks in the forums who’ve helped us improve so far!
Ahhh, the Wisdom of the Cloud
All that processing isn’t cheap, so we’ve also created a cloud-based repository to store the results in case you ever need to rebuild a library or do a clean install. By default, the results of all your local credit detection efforts are anonymously submitted to our new service, so if you ever need to do a rebuild or install, the results are available in seconds instead of burning hours of CPU time recomputing them.
Go Forth, Detect, and Skip
This feature works automatically for all the content in our streaming library, but if you’re a Plex Pass user looking to get started on your own library, you’ll need to make sure you’re running the latest Plex Media Server. You can trigger end credit detection for individual items by performing an “Analyze,” and your entire library will gradually be analyzed automatically as part of nightly maintenance (configurable in server settings under “Scheduled Tasks”). Check out our credits detection support article for more.
So go ahead, give it a spin…err, skip rather. Because in the words of Reading Rainbow’s LeVar Burton, you don’t have to take our word for it.