Plex users can now skip movie and TV show credits
Good News: Content Bingers: Plex just released Credits Detection, a new feature that allows users to automatically skip the credit sequences for TV shows and movies. Announced through a blog post on Wednesday, Credits Detection is now live and will display a Skip Credits button on a number of different Plex players running on Apple TV, Android TV, iOS, macOS, Windows, Xbox, Roku and more.
If you’re a Plex user, you may have noticed that the service already had the ability to do this skip intros for multi-episode shows. The new Skip Credits feature works the same way for TV shows and movies: it automatically detects where an outro or credits sequence begins and displays an on-screen button that lets you skip them, straight to the end or to hidden mid-credits scenes if available . Plex explains that the new technology is more advanced, but warns that the option to skip doesn’t always appear.
“We worked hard to fine-tune a machine learning algorithm to understand various inputs (text detection, the presence of black boxes and a few other secret ingredients) to come up with a reliable set of markers when credits start and end, reads one Plex blog post on the new function. “It’s a tricky problem, and there may still be some instances where things don’t quite go according to plan, but those instances should be few and far between at this point.”
You can now skip the credits for everything in your library, including free-to-watch content from Plex
Plex says the Skip Credits feature works automatically for all free-to-watch content it offers, and enables the feature by default for all library items stored on Plex Pass users’ personal media servers with version 1.31.0 or newer .
A full list of supported player apps and instructions on how to customize Credit Detection (including disabling the feature and manually analyzing content for credits) can be found on the Plex support page. In our early testing, we found that the Skip Credits feature is available for some content, albeit with inconsistencies, where one movie viewed through the iOS app detects the credits, but not the movie’s intro sequence.
There will no doubt be a few issues at launch, but it’s still early days. There are still streaming platforms like Crunchyroll which frustratingly only provides these skip features for a small selection of the available content, so I’m intrigued by Plex’s automated detection that is available server- and library-wide. I also appreciate that Plex at least gave users the option to disable the feature entirely for those who don’t want an intrusive “Skip Credits” or “Skip Intro” button that ruins their viewing experience.
