I want to dictate to PLEX what art to use

General Discussions
1

Hi folks

Quick summary before the detail. I am looking to set Plex to look for MY artist and album art as a default, instead of searching for online images.

Been looking for an answer to this but not to much success. Lets start with my setup. My system is as follows:
Desktop PC running Windows 10 (ethernet connection to router)
Case Carbide Series 330R Quiet Mid-Tower Case
CPU Intel i7 SkyLake 6700
CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Motherboard ASRock Z170 Extreme4+
RAM Corsair Vengance 32Gb (2 x 16Gb) 2666mhz
Graphics Card EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified ACX 2.0+
Sound Card Creative Labs Sound Blaster Z
PSU Corsair 750W Rmi 80 Plus Gold
SSD Samsung 850 Evo 1tb
HDD 2Tb Seagate Barracuda
DVD Drive Samsung SH-224FB/BEBE 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter
Operating System Windows 10 (Upgraded from Windows 7 Home Premium)
Monitor 2 x 21.5" Asus VE228HR Monitor, TN Panel, 1920x1080
Keyboard Microsoft Wireless Desktop 3000 (Keyboard Mouse Kit)

Netgear D6400 router
WD 4TB My Cloud (ethernet connection to router)
Nvidia Shield (WiFi connection to router)
XBox One (WiFi connection to router)

I am using my PC as the Plex Server.

I have recently started to rip all my CDs onto the MyCloud. I am using EAC to rip the music into FLAC. The folder architecture I am using is as follows:
MyCloud > Music > Artist > Album
The only tags on the FLAC files are the ones I add myself, I don’t allow EAC to assign tags.

Once the CDs are ripped, I am using MP3Tag to add additional metadata, not previously set in the rip (ie. “Album Artist” and “Cover Iamge”). I never allow EAC to search and apply cover art, instead I either scan and photoshop the cover manually or find a high quality example online (either from the artists website or google images). I save the album art into the “Album” folder, alongside the FLAC files and CUE sheets. I name the album art (always a JPEG) the same as the album. As well as this, I have JPEG files for each artist saved in the “Artist” folder. This is either the artist’s logo or an image I have created to represent the artist (I call this the artist logo). So, when I open an “Artist” folder, I will see all of their albums and a single JPEG which is the “Logo” image.

I mapped the “Music” folder and this is now “Z:” drive.

When I run Plex, I have set it up to look only to “Z:” for my music library. In Plex, when I have it display music by “Album”, it shows all of my albums and displays the art I have assigned using MP3Tag. I believe it also displays the same image if i list by song.
If I ask Plex to display by “Artist”, the image displayed for each artist is one that Plex finds online (i believe from LastFM) and not the “Logo” I have saved in the “Artist” folder. I can understand that there is no metadata held in the FLAC file to allocate an image to the artist. I am able to change the picture manually by dragging and dropping a file in the “Poster” part of the edit tab but this is time consuming and means I have to do this everytime I add a new artist to my library.
So I am wondering if there is a way to make Plex use the “Logo” for every artist by looking into the “Artist” folder and stop Plex from searching LastFM for this.
I believe it is down to how I setup the Artist and Album Agents. I am not sure I understand the difference between Local and Personal (or are these intertwined?).
If anyone colud please advise on this, it would be a great help.

Next, I will try and fix the issue I have with the Dashboard (“There was an unexpected error loading the dashboard”), otherwise I cant do anything…

Thanks very much in advance for your help.

2

Take a look at this post regarding naming and placement of image files:

You may also need to configure Plex to prefer local media over online:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/227541/howto-configure-plex-to-use-embedded-metadata-music

3

@beckfield said:
Take a look at this post regarding naming and placement of image files:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1319703/#Comment_1319703

You may also need to configure Plex to prefer local media over online:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/227541/howto-configure-plex-to-use-embedded-metadata-music

beckfield

Thanks very much for the response. I will give these posts a look and see if either of them help. I have considered that the naming of the JPEGs may contribute to my issue as I have not used a generic form (been naming Artist Logos as “Metallica Logo.jpg” and album art as “Death Magnetic.jpg” for example).
I think I have the metadata source setup correctly for achieving my needs (placing Local Media to the top and unchecking all items in the LastFM setup) but I still have to manually add the artist images at the moment. I will try creating a copy of the JPEGs and using the generic naming convention.

Cheers

4

Actually I found another post that has more information about the filenaming options that Plex will recognize.

Whups, just realized you can’t see that post, as it is in the Plex Pass area. Here’s the info from it regarding art files:

ext = jpg, jpeg, png, tbn

ARTIST POSTERS:
recommended structure: /artist-album/media.mp3:
    artist.<ext>, artist-poster.<ext>, artist-default.<ext>, artist-cover.<ext>, artist-folder.<ext>
also supported structure: /artist/album/media.mp3:
    same as above + 
    poster.<ext>, default.<ext>, cover.<ext>, folder.<ext>


ARTIST BACKGROUND:
recommended structure: /artist-album/media.mp3:
    artist-fanart.<ext>, artist-art.<ext>, artist-background.<ext>, artist-backdrop.<ext>
also supported structure: /artist/album/media.mp3:
    same as above + 
    fanart.<ext>, art.<ext>, background.<ext>, backdrop.<ext>


ALBUM POSTERS:
[album, poster, default, cover, folder].<ext>

ALBUM BACKGROUND:
[fanart, art, background, backdrop].<ext>
5

beckfield

Thanks for adding that post. I am signed up for Plex Pass (or at least I have paid for it…) but thanks for taking the time to pass the info on.
My structure is /artist/album/media.flac
Stupid question alert - if i elected to use, say, album.ext and artist.ext, am I to replace “artist” with the artist name as it appears on the folder, ie. Death Magnetic.jpg and Metallica.jpg or do I name the file exatly album.jpg and artist.jpg?

Regards

6

@derek_j_spence@hotmail.com said:

Stupid question alert - if i elected to use, say, album.ext and artist.ext, am I to replace “artist” with the artist name as it appears on the folder, ie. Death Magnetic.jpg and Metallica.jpg or do I name the file exatly album.jpg and artist.jpg?
Not a stupid question. In fact, it was asked in the thread in the Plex Pass forum, as you’ll see when your pass gets sorted.

Do not substitute the artist or album name into the image filename. They must be exactly “album.jpg” and “artist.jpg”.

7

It is crucial to move the ‘Local Media Assets’ agent to the top of the list
both under
Settings > Server > Agents > Albums
as well as
Settings > Server > Agents > Artists

if you want to use your ‘sidecar’ cover and artist art.

8

Thanks guys. I’ll go through my folders and update the JPEGs and see how I get on. Will post back on here my results.

9

You may want to inspect your media folders for hidden thumbnail.jpg files. So you don’t run into this issue:

(while the thread is dealing with posters for tv shows, this applies equally to album art)