How to build a Home Cinema opening sequence

I built the sequence at my place by trial and error over about a year of weekends. I changed the number of clips, moved the ident around and kept learning the same thing: a room full of people has far less patience than I do when I am sitting alone testing playback.

Anything over about forty seconds of pre-feature material and your guests start talking over it. I have watched it happen. Somebody refills a glass, somebody asks what we are watching again, and by the time the film starts half the room has stopped looking at the screen.

So my home cinema opening sequence is short. One studio-style ident, one optional trailer or demo clip, then the film. The whole block stays under forty seconds, it plays in the same order every time and the files are tested on the box people will actually use.

The order that works in my room

1. A short room cue or title card, only if the evening needs one.
2. One studio ident.
3. One trailer or sound demo, only when it adds something.
4. The feature.

The ident is where the cinema feeling comes from, and every second after it is time the film has to win back.

A second trailer is the first thing I would cut. A YouTube intro has to stop people clicking away. Guests in a home cinema are already in their seats, so the risk is different: conversation, drinks and someone checking their phone while the screen is still doing its thing. A second trailer gives them more time to do all three.

The third slot is the one I argue with myself about. A proper Atmos demo can earn its place on a night when the room and the speakers are part of the point. Trinnov gives away two of them, Prism and Altitude CI, and the Bass Hunters analysis on AV Nirvana rated the LFE in them five stars. A random trailer that happens to be sitting in the folder is a different matter. It almost never earns the slot.

Picking the ident

For a film night I usually reach for the Universal 100th anniversary opening. It says "a film is about to start" without asking anyone to read a message or get a joke. The 2012 version was animated by Weta Digital, partly from satellite imagery of the Earth, with a new Brian Tyler arrangement of the Jerry Goldsmith theme Universal had used since 1997. It debuted in front of The Lorax, according to Variety's report at the time. I suspect the music does more of the work than the globe does. Tyler's arrangement builds fast, and in a dark room that build is what makes people stop talking.

A custom Universal 100th anniversary intro with the family's name on the globe is what I would put in a sequence like this. If the tone of the evening points somewhere else, the wider range of Priyansh Animations custom intros covers most of the other studio looks.

Keep the text short. A name works. A name, a date and a tagline is a paragraph, and nobody reads a paragraph while the camera is moving and the brass is coming in.

Stacking three or four studio openings sounds great while you are building the playlist. In the room it feels like the film has been delayed.

Setting it up, step by step

1. Write the playback order down. Ident first, optional clip second, feature last. If the server lets you list several pre-roll files, keep the list in exactly that order. When the files have similar names, do not trust your memory.
2. Leave the ident at its natural length. Do not trim the music to save four seconds. If the film you are showing already opens with its own title card, skip the room cue so you do not end up with two cards back to back.
3. Put the files somewhere the server can always reach. Copy the full path for each file as the server sees it, which is often different from the path on your laptop. Check the spelling and the extension. A path that is almost right is wrong. And keep that drive connected on the night, because a missing drive means the sequence silently fails.
4. Plex: set the pre-roll in Extras. Open Settings, then Server, then Extras. The Movie pre-roll video field is hidden until you click Show Advanced, which is the bit that catches people out. Enter the full path.
   The separator decides what happens with more than one file. Put a comma between paths and Plex plays every file in sequence. Separate them with a semicolon instead and Plex picks one at random. No spaces either side of the separator. That one character is the difference between a fixed sequence and a lucky dip, and I would bet a fair number of "my pre-roll plays the wrong thing" complaints come down to it.
   Plex plays the pre-roll after any trailers and before the feature. The library needs Enable Cinema Trailers switched on in its advanced settings, and the client app needs Cinema Trailers enabled too. Not every Plex app supports it. Plex Pass is only needed for the theatrical and Blu-ray trailers, not for a local pre-roll file. It is all in the Plex Extras documentation. I have written separately about making Plex feel like a cinema at home if you want the rest of the room side of it.
5. Jellyfin: install Cinema Mode. Go to Dashboard, then Plugins, then Repositories, and add this address:
   https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CherryFloors/jellyfin-plugin-cinemamode/main/manifest.json
   Open the catalogue, find Cinema Mode under General, install it and restart the server. The Cinema Mode repository has the full settings list.
   What I like about this plugin is that it has two separate pre-roll slots. Trailer Pre-Roll plays before the trailer block and Feature Pre-Roll plays right before the movie. That maps exactly onto the sequence above: a room cue in the first slot if you use one, the ident in the second so it lands immediately before the film. Plex gives you one field and a separator, while Jellyfin gives you an actual structure.
   It defaults to two trailers. Set Number of Trailers to one, or to zero if you want the ident to lead straight into the feature. Seasonal pre-rolls stay hidden out of season by default, which is handy if your Christmas clips live on the same server. Anyone can skip a clip with the player's next button, so show whoever is holding the remote where it is.
6. Emby: switch on Cinema Intros. It is off by default. In the server dashboard open Cinema Intros, enable it and set the path to your custom intros folder, then run a library scan so Emby actually finds the files. The default is two trailers, so drop it to one or zero.
   Emby also has a codec intros folder, where a clip named to match a video codec, audio codec or audio profile plays only before files that match. An Atmos-only opener before Atmos films is the obvious use. For one living room it is probably overkill. The Emby Cinema Intros page explains the naming. Internet trailers need Emby Premiere and the Trailer plugin.
7. Test on the real client, start to finish. Start a film from the same app and the same device your guests will see. Watch the whole chain without skipping. The ident should appear once, the clip in the right place and the feature should follow without a menu or loading screen in between.
   If Plex skips the ident, check the path first, then that you are looking at the advanced field, then the library setting, then the client setting. If Jellyfin shows nothing, check that the plugin is installed, the server was restarted and the file sits in the slot you think it does. If Emby goes straight to the film, check the Cinema Intros switch and scan again.

Where I stop

When the room understands that the film is about to begin, I stop adding things. In practice that is one ident and sometimes one clip, well under forty seconds. Whether a sound demo stays in depends on the night. If people came over partly for the speakers, Prism is worth its slot. On a family film night I would take it straight out and let the globe lead into the film on its own.