So I’m finally taking the time to scrub my libraries and update a lot of the art work. As I’m doing this, I want to make sure I’m getting the height width ratios correct. From what I’ve been able to find, these are the published ratios, but I couldn’t find the ratio for Music Backgrounds. Can anyone confirm the proper ratios and supply the missing one?
Also, does anyone know what the current maximum display sizes of any of these are? I’d like to make sure that I use the best artwork I can.
Thanks.
Movies:
Poster - 1:1.5
Background - 16:9
Television:
Series Poster - 1:1.5
Season Poster - 1:1.5
Background - 16:9
Episode 16:9 (Plex does not support 4:3 images for episodes)
Banner - 5.4:1 (I still haven’t used a client that uses the Banner. Does anyone know of one, I’d like to see what it looks like.)
Music:
Artist - 1:1
Album - 1:1
Background - ??? I’m assuming that this is also 16:9, but can’t find it confirmed anywhere.
1 Like
Your numbers are correct. All of them.
Banners are nowadays AFAIK only used by OpenPHT in some Skins/display modes.
I recommend you to put files in the highest resolution you can find. Plex will downscale automatically for the different clients if necessary.
Movie posters are often 2000x3000px, though 1000x1500 might give you enough for most clients.
I also use at least 1000px for album covers, so it looks crisp even in fullscreens PMP.
You might want more only if you eventually wanna go 4K.
@OttoKerner Thank you for confirming this. I was working on the Music section from the web server interface, and not a client. The background was being treated more as a banner-type object rather than an actual background, and the image was being cropped from 16:9 to something I couldn’t define. Then I hopped on a client, and the whole image was being used as the actual background, so I was definitely confused.
To upgrade to some of your recommended poster sizes, I guess I’ll be doing a lot of scanning in the near future.
Thanks again.
@floatinjoe said:
I was working on the Music section from the web server interface, and not a client.
That is called the ‘Web client’ 
To upgrade to some of your recommended poster sizes, I guess I’ll be doing a lot of scanning in the near future.
Movie posters in 1000x1500px get automatically downloaded by Plex if it can identify your movie
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200381023-Naming-Movie-files
The same applies for tv series
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200220687-Naming-Series-Season-Based-TV-Shows
and album art as well in a Premium Music library.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/sections/200058637-Naming-and-Organizing-Music-Media
(although there not for all albums, so you’ll have to supply your own cover art when Plex doesn’t find cover art that is high quality enough)
to prevent embedded coverart in your files overriding those from Plex, do the following
Go to Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheTVDB
In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents.
Repeat the same under
Settings - Server - Agents - Shows - TheMovieDatabase
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - TheMovieDatabase
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - last.fm
+
Settings - Server - Agents - Albums - Premium Music
@OttoKerner
Thanks again… and I was drawing a blank on the “web client” and I don’t know why… as soon as I saw your post, I remembered it.
Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who likes to have everything local or embedded. I have occasionally had to wipe my server and start over, and it’s a whole lot easier if all of the data is already there. With that in mind, I have the “Local Media Assets” at the top of the agent lists. Also, I’m not a big fan of some of the imagery that Plex finds, so use pictures I like better (this is mainly for the backgrounds). Also, I try to find original release posters rather than the DVD/Blu-Ray posters.
I am more particular for some media over others, so I will chase down backgrounds, but for others, I just let Plex do it.
What I found on the Music artist backgrounds is that the Web Client treats them differently. It maintains their width, and crops the bottom of the image so that the overall height of the image allows the artist poster, name, and description to appear on the screen. Because I had my browser window too wide, the picture was being cut off at the bottom. As soon as I narrowed the window, more of the background image came back. This is what was causing my confusion because I couldn’t establish a consistent ratio… that’s because it was changing every time I changed my window size.
Mike
@OttoKerner
In doing some more playing with TV episode images, Plex seems to crop all of my 4:3 images to 16:9. Is there any way to have them displayed as 4:3? I have a good number of older TV shows that are pre 16:9, and their picture is naturally in that ratio. These are also the sizes of many of the images supplied by TheTVDB.
Mike
No, there is a fixed layout for TV shows. And it only considers 16:9 as “TV format”.
Thank you. I’ll fix my original post to reflect the TV format is only 16:9.
I tried “door-framing” the picture in a .png with transparent sides, and that didn’t work either. Oh well.
You could try a photo editor like Corel PaintShop Pro or GIMP (open source) and create a new file with the canvas set 16:9 (1920x1080), set a background “layer” and make it transparent or opaque (gray or black, your preference) and create an image layer and place your 4:3 image in the center and save as/export to JPEG.
