Server Version#: 1.19.3.2852
Player Version#: Web 4.30.2 or Mac 1.11.0
Plex Shows Agent Order:
TheTVDB
FanArt.tv
Local Media Database
The Movie Database
Hi all, I am finding that when adding shows, I am able to get it matched and it downloads metadata alright, but one annoyance is that the poster art for the seasons is frequently a mismatched mess. For example, if I load The Shield, each of the 7 seasons I have has a different poster art theme. The OCD part of me inspires me to go season by season and look for matching poster art so it looks nice across the seasons. This feels like a tedious task and I found myself wondering why Plex doesn’t do this already? In most cases there is a common theme that matches across the seasons, so why doesn’t Plex attempt to match this up a little better?
Does this feature exist and if so, how do you use it? If this feature does not exist, is it viable as a new feature request?
TheTVDb.com’s metadata does not categorize the posters by a schema or provides other means to associate which posters “belong to each other”.
I’m aware this can be pain… especially if a poster theme you liked for seasons 1-6 is not available as of season 7. Nevertheless… as of today Plex cannot identify which posters belong to each other – maybe there’s some improvements in the future (either from TheTVDb.com side or by some smart algorithm analyzing all the pictures)… but that seems quite far away.
TL;DR: you need to manually select the posters for each season to ensure they’ll match.
That’s fair. I was wondering for a new feature if it would be possible to analyze the poster art for which ones are similar. Many photo duplicate programs do this already, generally with a fuzz % to say - show me pics that are say 80% the same. If Plex could do that, it could find “matched sets” based on similarity of the pictures and then present you with any theme(s) that exist across all seasons. This isn’t a huge deal but it sure feels like something rife for improvement.
it’s going to be a little bit more complicated… usually, the posters within a season will have much more in common than those across seasons. Often the only “similarity” is where the logo / tag lines are placed while the rest of the picture is the same (within the season).
You’re not only looking for similarities/closeness… that’s actually requiring some level of machine learning.
I go through each new Season I add and try to get a similar poster - sometimes it works - most times it doesn’t. I create a poster in a pinch, if it matters that much to me.
Even if Plex was smart enough to do it - it wouldn’t be able to most of the time.
