Best Way to Clear old Poster Data beyond clicking each movie?

[don.alcombright]

So I decided to let Plex manage all my artwork, in doing so I deleted all my local files and did a Refresh all Meta Data run last night. I am a bit OCD with my movie posters so I like to make sure that they are clean (just title if possible). In doing this scan I noticed that a ton of movies, when I click to edit changed the poster image when I clicked them, which means what I am seeing isn’t the current image. How do I solve this beyond clicking each movie (5800+, not going to happen)? I made it to letter M and decided I was wasting my time as so many movie posters change if I click the film.

I tried clearing my browser cache, but its definitely on the plex end as if I click a movie the old poster loads, then it refreshes it.

[anon5074910]

I’m a bit OCD myself when it comes to clean posters, background etc… and spent more time than I’d like to admit organising and curating my plex content (3000+ movies and 500+ shows).

After many years of using plex what I’ve found as an admin who cares about clean posters etc… is to use local assets (poster.jpg, fanart.jpg etc…) contained within the same folder as the movie. This is the only way to fully control the artwork. Its a lot of up front work but worth it in the end.

I’ll add by saying that for the most part letting plex manage your artwork for movies it will default to whatever TMDB has as its default for your language. Using Aliens as an example (Aliens (1986) — The Movie Database (TMDB)) you will get in plex after matching what you see there for poster and background.

Now, if you want to alter this you can up or down vote posters and backdrops on TMDB directly. If the default changes on TMDB then within 24/48 hours doing a refresh in plex will automatically change it.

Otherwise you can edit the entry in plex itself like you have said.

May not be what you want to hear but said I’d post my experience.

Also – forgot to ask, are you using the legacy movie agent or the new agent?

[don.alcombright]

so I just deleted all my local assets because I was getting frustrated maintaining it with downloaders/emm etc), and as long as plex lets me set artwork I am fine doing it. My problem is, all my movies didn’t refresh properly. So I have no idea what state they are in with artwork, and I have no idea if there is an easy way to fix that. I would rather not re-make the library as that messes with Tautulli, as I have done that in the past. for example,

when viewing I see this:

but I actually have this after clicking each movie:

[anon5074910]

Okay, have you attempted to Clean Bundles and then afterwards Optimise Database with a plex restart afterwards?

You have done a large plex metadata update so this maintenance might help.

[don.alcombright]

i did do that today, maybe i will re-do the meta data again. Good way to see if those locked posters stay put haha, since I got all the way to M. ugh

[anon5074910]

Good luck. You could also try nuking the server side cache before doing the metadata refresh …

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/Caches/*
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/Data/*
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/Metadata\ Combination/*

I typically nuke these weekly via a cron job. Just make sure plex is not running before deleting

[anon18523487]

If you had set the poster manually before, this locked the field. There isn’t a simple way to unlock the field. If you want to start over, the easiest would be to recreate your library. This will everything back to the default.

The other solution would be to modify the Plex database to remove the lock.

[anon5074910]

@anon18523487

If you had set the poster manually before, this locked the field. There isn’t a simple way to unlock the field. If you want to start over, the easiest would be to recreate your library.

That was my next suggestion but was hoping they where not manually selected in the past

[OttoKerner]

You can unlock all the posters in a library at once.
Then they are free to be set to the default poster by the metadata agent, upon next Metadata refresh.

see Remove poster lock in database - #2 by OttoKerner

[anon5074910]

Crikey, that deserves its own topic in the tips and tricks section. Wish I’d known how to do it that about a year ago

[don.alcombright]

@anon5074910

in the tips and tricks sect

thanks, I have dealt with that in the past before, changing it via the DB hahaha I actually a long time ago used that so Plex would stop changing it on occasion; so i did the reverse, whoever upvotes tmdb stuff has 0 artistic style

I think it really came down to Plex needed to do the meta data after a bundle and optimize. I have been doing meta refreshes letter by letter and its clearing up (I just wish I did it before I got to M!!!).

thanks everyone!

[OttoKerner]

Thanks for the idea!

Reset all manual poster selections in a library at once or unlock other metadata fields

The following could be most useful for very old libraries, which had their metadata agent already changed several times. For instance if the server admin has manually selected different posters on many items, but now wants to make a clean break and leave all poster selections to the agent. While one could do that by deleting the library and re-creating it, it might however be a bit drastic a measure. What it does: reset the locked attribute of all poster selections in a given library. Upon t…

[anon5074910]

@OttoKerner had some time this morning to test out the procedure and it works flawlessly, thanks very much

I changed a Movie, Show, Season and Episode poster which locked the field. Forced a refresh and confirmed it did not change from what I changed it to. Then ran your procedure for each type and forced a refresh afterwards. They returned to the default ones wiping out the ones I’d locked.

One comment: After issuing the curl command you need to be patient and wait for it to finish. Depending on the size of your library and what its updating it can take some time to complete.

For example, I have 27,000+ episodes in my TV library and after running this type plex remained unresponsive for approx 10 minutes while it done its update. I could hear the CPU fan running so knew it was busy and once finished all was well.

Some folks might not be as patient which could cause problems if they attempted a plex server stop/start so might be worth adding a note saying to wait.

[OttoKerner]

Good point about the waiting time! I will include this in the HowTo article.