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How to Add Pre-rolls to Emby (2026 Guide)

5 min read · Updated Nov 6, 2026

Quick answer: Emby plays pre-rolls through its Cinema Intros feature, which needs an active Emby Premiere subscription. In the server dashboard, open Cinema Intros, enable it, enter your intro folder in the custom intro field, save, and run a library scan. Then check that Cinema Intros is switched on under App Settings > Playback in the app you watch on.

Emby calls pre-rolls “custom intros,” and they sit inside the same Cinema Intros feature that handles trailers. It’s off by default. Once you switch it on, it’s the most hands-off of the three servers, because Emby’s TV apps enable it by default.

What you need

  • Emby Server with admin access.
  • Emby Premiere. Cinema Intros is listed as a Premiere feature, and Emby staff have confirmed on the forums that it’s required. At the time of writing Premiere costs $4.99 a month, $54 a year, or $119 for lifetime.
  • A folder of intro videos the server can read. Our Emby collection has plenty.
  • An Emby app. Emby’s own apps support Cinema Intros. Third-party clients and skins vary.

Step-by-step setup

1. Put your intro files on the server

Make a folder for your intros, for example /media/emby-intros or D:\EmbyIntros, and copy your videos into it. Keep it outside your library folders. If the clips sit inside a movie library, Emby will try to add them as movies.

If Emby runs in Docker, mount the folder into the container and use the container’s path in the next step.

2. Check the Cinema Intros plugin is installed

Cinema Intros ships with Emby Server as a system plugin, so you should see a Cinema Intros entry in the server dashboard menu already. If it’s missing (usually because someone uninstalled it at some point), go to Plugins, open the Catalog, find Cinema Intros, click Install, and restart the server.

3. Configure Cinema Intros

  1. Open the Emby web app and go to the server Dashboard.
  2. Click Cinema Intros in the menu.
  3. Turn the feature on and choose what triggers intros. Movies and episodes are both supported.
  4. Enter your intro folder in the custom intro field.
  5. Save.
  6. Run a library scan. Emby’s docs say to do this every time you add new intro files.

The same page has trailer options. Internet trailers need the separate Trailers plugin as well as Premiere. If you only want your pre-roll, you can leave trailers off or set the number of trailers to zero. The default is 2.

4. Check the setting in each app

In an Emby app, click the user icon in the top right, then go to App Settings > Playback and scroll to Cinema Intros. TV apps turn it on by default, but it’s a per-client setting, so if one device skips intros, look here first. Users can also switch it off for themselves.

Multiple intros and random rotation

Put several videos in the custom intro folder and Emby picks one at random before each movie. No list to maintain and no separators to get wrong. Drop new files in, run a library scan, done.

You can also match intros to content with tags. Give an intro file a tag (Emby’s example is “HomeMovies”), tag the matching movies in Emby’s metadata editor, and that intro will play before those movies. Tags need to be in the intro files before Emby scans them, so set them with a tag editor first.

Emby also supports codec intros: a separate codec intro folder where the file name matches a codec, like h264.mp4 or ac3.mkv. Emby plays the matching one based on the movie’s video and audio format. It’s how people do the Dolby and DTS logos before a film.

For date-based schedules (Halloween intros in October, say), NeXroll is a free third-party manager that supports Emby.

MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio at 1080p plays directly on every Emby app we know of, so there’s no transcoding pause before the feature. Keep clips short. Most of ours are 4 to 40 seconds.

If you want two or three intros to play back to back, consider joining them into one file. On the Emby Apple TV app, users have reported the player HUD and background flashing between separate intro clips, and Emby staff suggested a single file as the workaround.

Troubleshooting

Intros don’t play at all

Check the obvious first. Is Premiere active? Is Cinema Intros enabled in the dashboard? Did you run a library scan after adding files? Then check App Settings > Playback > Cinema Intros on the device you’re testing with. If all of that looks right, the server log usually says why.

Intros play before movies but not TV episodes

That’s a common report. Episodes started from “up next” or autoplay tend to skip intros, and episode intros have been inconsistent for some users even when started from the menu. Movies are the reliable case.

The Cinema Intros menu is missing

The plugin was probably uninstalled. Reinstall it from the plugin catalog and restart Emby Server.

My intro folder is on a NAS and nothing plays

Emby doesn’t prompt for a username or password on a network path entered in the custom intro field. Mount the share on the server first so Emby sees it as a normal folder, then use that path. A local folder is the safest option.

One app plays intros, another doesn’t

That’s the per-client setting. Some third-party skins and clients also handle Cinema Intros differently, so try an official Emby app to confirm.

Find an intro

Pick something from our Emby pre-rolls, or browse the full library. Everything is a free MP4 download.

Sources we checked

Free Emby prerolls to try

All Emby prerolls