In a move that is sure to enrage the thousands of people whose names appear at the end of our favorite movies and TV shows, Plex has introduced a new feature that lets you skip the end credits on the content in your personal library.
The feature works similarly to its Skip Intro option — a far less controversial feature given that most subscription streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video already let you do this. With Skip Credits, the Plex Media Server uses an algorithm to detect the difference between a screen full of rolling text and a screen that has a full image of, well, not text.
Ironically (and probably intentionally), Plex chose to illustrate the new addition with an animation from the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a movie that famously has its credits rolling alongside the final epilogue of the story — you probably wouldn’t want to skip those credits. But Plex has also been crystal clear about who it’s targeting with Skip Credits. In a blog post announcing the new addition, it said, “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!”
I recently found myself wishing for a Skip Credits option as I got to the end of the final episode of the first season of Disney’s Andor. A friend had mentioned there was a post-credits scene I shouldn’t miss. In a ham-fisted attempt at bypassing the credits, I ended up cursing my Apple TV remote as I inadvertently restarted the episode from the beginning.
Given the huge variation in credits presentation within media, Plex has noted that it might not work perfectly each and every time. The work to discover and implement credit detection is done locally on your Plex Media Server. It could depending on your library size, take a lot of compute time to analyze all of your content. Cleverly, Plex automatically uploads a copy of the analysis data to its cloud servers, so that if your media server should become corrupted or need a reinstall for any reason, you can spare yourself the trouble of re-analyzing your content — it can be pulled from the online backup instead.
Skip Credits is only being made available to Plex Pass subscribers for media stored in and managed by an instance of the Plex Media Server. However, if you want to get a taste of how it works, Plex has also added it to its full free streaming on-demand catalog.
