Change default poster image

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
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1

This isn’t server specific. This happens on every media server version I tried. I was also not able to find anyone else reporting this issue, so I assume it might be something with a setting that I am missing.

When I add movies to my Movies library, the default poster is always a landscape (16x9 style) image. But any Plex app or the web player only shows a portrait chunk out of the center of the poster. Clearly Plex expects you to use landscape artwork for posters, which is fine, but why is the Plex server always choosing a landscape poster? I always have to go in and manually select a portrait poster option so it looks right.

Is there some way to get the server to always choose a landscape poster option if one is available?

2
  1. which agent is selected for this library in its properties, on the Advanced tab?
  2. is “Use local assets” on the same tab ticked or clear?
  3. are there picture files beside your video? (poster.jpg, thumb.png etc.)
  4. are your files in mp4 format? and if so, do they contain embedded posters?
  5. are you sure that your server has unfettered access to the internet? “internet filters” (which could be provided either by your ISP, or by your router, or be a separate appliance) are sometimes configured to block some of plex’s domains
3

#2 was the key. It was checked. This is the default when you set up a new library. I tried unchecking it and that seems to do the trick.. When I forced a metadata rescan it picked the portrait poster images instead. I always took “use” to mean “make available as an option” and “prefer” (as appears in the TV advanced options) to mean “use the embedded data as the default selection”.

Thanks for the help.

4

But this means that either you have a landscape picture stored beside the video file, or it is embedded as a poster in the video file itself.
You might want to investigate that and fix it.

5

I don’t keep images with my movie files. I don’t mind that there is an embedded image, I just didn’t want the landscape image to be the default.

Thanks again.