Today’s question comes from Teresa, who asks, “When I fast-forward my program on Tablo, sometimes I get the little pictures that help you see where you’re at and sometimes I don’t. Why is that?”
Fast-forward preview thumbnails are a feature in most 4th Generation Tablo apps. When fast-forwarding or rewinding during playback, these small images provide a window into where you’re navigating in the program making it easy to skip past a commercial or to a specific segment.
How Fast-Forward Preview Thumbnails Work
4th Generation Tablo devices create fast forward preview thumbnails by re-processing completed recordings via a background software process. During the re-processing, your Tablo extracts thumbnails from the completed video at 10 second intervals and save them as a file the Tablo app can reference during playback.
This process is why fast-forward previews aren’t available on live TV or in-progress recordings when viewed on ‘tape delay’.
Other Reasons You Might Not See Preview Thumbnails
If you’re watching a completed recording, but still aren’t seeing fast-forward previews, there are other reasons why that might be:
The program just finished recording
For an hour-long program, re-processing and generating fast-forward previews should take approximately 4 minutes after the recording has finished. Longer recordings will require additional time for processing.
- Your Tablo is busy with other tasks
Unlike legacy Tablo devices, 4th Generation Tablo devices don’t require an available tuner to handle the generation of fast-forward previews. However, recordings get processed one at a time. This means that if you have four recordings ending simultaneously, it will take approximately 16 minutes for all those recordings to show fast-forward previews. Other processes including archiving recordings saved to onboard storage can also delay thumbnail generation.
- There is an error in the recording
Issues with antenna TV signal strength or quality can create errors in a recording which can subsequently cause fast-forward preview generation to fail. You can force Tablo to retry this process by quickly pressing and releasing the reset button on the bottom of the unit. During the boot-up process, your Tablo identifies recordings without fast-forward previews and makes a second attempt to generate the thumbnails. However, if there is indeed an error in the recording, it’s unlikely the attempt will be successful.
- You’re watching on an iOS device
The 4th Generation Tablo app for iPhone and iPad does not currently support the fast-forward preview feature. Even if the recording was processed and fast-forward preview thumbnails are available on your Apple TV or other Tablo apps, you won’t be able to see them on your iOS mobile device.
Have a question about watching TV that you’d like answered? Send us a note and you may see your question on the Tablo blog and in an upcoming issue of our newsletter, Stay Tuned!
