Moving "live" thumbnails?

[Skytbest]

Is it possible to get live preview thumbnails for videos in my Jellyfin library? Basically when I mouse over (on PC) or navigate to a video (AndroidTV app) I want it to start playing a preview of that video in the thumbnail itself. This could either be the actual video playing in the thumbnail or just a slideshow (maybe using the same set of images that Trickplay collects).

I'm thinking similar to youtube where when you mouse over a video it starts playing silently to give you a preview of the video. I don't necessarily need it to start playing my videos (though that would be one solution), even just a slideshow of the Trickplay images in the thumbnail would work.

[theguymadmax]

Yes, that's the Trickplay feature in Jellyfin.
To enable it:

1. Go to your library settings and turn on Trickplay image extraction.
   
2. Choose where to save the Trickplay images:
   • Next to your media (recommended for easier migration), or
     
   • In the Jellyfin metadata folder.
     You can change this setting later if needed.
     
3. Decide if you want Trickplay images to generate automatically when new media is added, or leave it disabled and generate them manually later using the Generate Trickplay Images scheduled task.
   (Note: I don’t have automatic generation enabled.)
   
4. Navigate to Dashboard → Playback → Trickplay and enable "Only generate images from key frames".
   This speeds up the process, which can otherwise take days or even weeks depending on the size of your library.
   
5. Go to Dashboard → Scheduled Tasks and run Generate Trickplay Images.
   

Once the images are generated, you'll see a preview image appear when scrubbing the timeline in your media.

[Skytbest]

Yes, that's the Trickplay feature in Jellyfin.

I don't think Trickplay is exactly what I want. Trickplay shows you thumbnail previews once you're already watching a video and scrubbing through it. What I want is the ability to see a video preview BEFORE selecting it to watch. In the video selection screen as I'm scrolling through all the videos, when the cursor is over a video the thumbnail would basically "come alive" and start playing a preview of the video before you select it to watch. Kind of like youtube's homepage.

Or maybe I'm missing something about Trickplay?

[theguymadmax]

Yeah, I misunderstood what you meant. No, Jellyfin doesn't have that feature. But that sounds like something a plugin could do.
This is the closest thing I've see to that: In need of a collection library thumbnail

[Skytbest]

Yeah, I misunderstood what you meant. No, Jellyfin doesn't have that feature. But that sounds like something a plugin could do.
This is the closest thing I've see to that: In need of a collection library thumbnail

Ok, thank you.

I'm wondering how difficult it might be to try and code a plugin to do what I'm looking for. Assuming I already have Trickplay generating these images for me I would just need my plugin to access those images for whatever video is selected and display them on the thumbnail in quick succession as a slideshow.

Not sure if there's anything preventing the Web UI from showing changing images on a thumbnail like that though. It does at least look to be possible from the link in your comment, or maybe those are gifs? If that were the case I'd need to compile a gif from all the Trickplay images and then use that as the thumbnail.