[CutterX]

Trickplay are thumbnails that give a preview of the video on the seekbar while seeking. Jellyfin generates them. It would be great if Kodi supported this feature.

Example in Jellyfin Media Player :

[izprtxqkft]

a couple notes
most people don't navigate kodi using a mouse so what you're indicating in your screenshot would only benefit ~10% of users
a lot of kodi players are lower end hardware which may not be able to pull a screenshot from a video fast enough, i.e. android and raspberry pi devices which struggle already

thumbnails might be nice during fast forward with a remote but would almost have to be implemented in a way that inhibits seeking and instead just moves the seek bar and shows a screenshot, not exactly practical on aforementioned lower end devices

[CutterX]

The feature is not intended specifically for mice. What do you mean by "in a way that inhibits seeking" ? About performance: the thumbnails are stored in a JPG file as a 10x10 mosaic that can be pre-loaded with the video. It shouldn't be too heavy on resources.

[izprtxqkft]

What do you mean by "in a way that inhibits seeking" ?

the way some players implement thumbnail seeking is by removing the instant seek
instead it will just move the seekbar and show a thumbnail from the video position you are at
when you stop clicking a button it then seeks to that position
i suppose it's more of a "scan" than a seek
 

About performance: the thumbnails are stored in a JPG file as a 10x10 mosaic that can be pre-loaded with the video. It shouldn't be too heavy on resources.

the thumbnails have to be extracted from the video in whichever method you implement even if you're saving a 10x10 thumbnail

currently kodi does have a scan option to "Extract thumbnails from videos" which usually adds an unacceptable scan time on lower end hardware and is the first thing i turn off as well as suggest others do
but in order to put a thumbnail of the exact spot you are at "on the fly" kodi will have to extract a video thumbnail from that timestamp

since kodi uses ffmpeg, you can see how long it takes to extract a single frame from a video which ffmpeg usually does by scanning the entire file up to the point you are wanting a thumbnail from

you can see that in action for yourself https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Create%20a%...he%20video
and get a sense of how long it takes even on medium to higher end hardware

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i'm only trying to clarify why this may be a feature that isn't right for everyone, jellyfin can do it because it does it on the more capable hardware of the server instead of on the client

[CutterX]

Yes, extracting the thumbnails takes a long time, although it can be a lot faster on devices that have hardware decoding. The point of this thread is to ask that Kodi show the thumbnails if they are available. An optional script to extract the thumbnails could be nice in case the backend doesn't generate / support them.

A default installation of Kodi doesn't seek instantly, so the feature would work nicely with the default seeking delay. However I don't see why users who chose instant seek would be forced out of it because of thumbnails support.