Server Version#:Version 1.42.2.10156
Player Version#:Version 4.156.0
Hello,
I use unraid and recently ran into issue with my cache drive and as such had to do a recovery for all the apps I use. I do not backup my plex artwork as it seemed rather wasteful but this unfortunately seemed to have caused an issue for allot of my media post restore not having a main poster assigned. All the other information seems to be correct, media description, season posters, crew, etc but the main poster is missing for allot of media, not all but majority it seems like.
I have tried the DB options in Troubleshooting, I have tried refreshing the matadata for the librarys but neither options have made any difference at all. I have noticed that if I unmatch the show and rematch to the same metatadat source this does resolve the issue for one specific show/movie but this is a time consuming process for one show and as such is not relistic to complete for my libraries.
Can anyone help me resolve my issue or provide me a more efficent fix for some sort of force update metadata that actual,y works.
Let me know if I can provide more details to help in finding a resolution.
perform a full Refresh Metadata action on all items
This will resolve all the empty black rectangles and revert to the default poster of the item. Which will be the default poster, is depending on a few factors:
if there is a local poster.jpg or cover.jpg etc beside the media file
whether “Use local assets” has been activated in the properties of the library in Plex
the selection of the “Album Art” drop-down selector (in the same place as the previous checkbox) (only applies to music libraries)
whether the item is actually “match-able” by one of Plex’s metadata agents (meaning whether it can be connected to one of the items listed on IMDb, TMDB, TVDB, or Musicbrainz)
My recommendations for the future would be:
If you decide that the default poster in Plex is not to your liking, fetch your preferred version as a jpg file and store it (suitably named) beside its associated media file.
Restrict the use of the “upload poster” method in Plex Web/Plex Desktop to cases where it cannot be avoided (e.g. when customizing collections)
That way your poster selections are backed up together with your media files.
FIrstly, thank you so much for taking time to help me. Unfortunatly thou, is has not worked. I have ran it for a few of my librarys some big, some small and it had no effect on the main poster for any of the ones in issue. It did however have an effect on some of the season posters, which I do not care about but netither did I have an issue previously anyhows.
As per the above screen shot, the main poster next to the show title was not affected but the season poasters per the botton were indeed affected. Thou they did have artwork beforehand anyways.
Also, I have not ever manually set a poaster, I have previously had no isses with the plex agent, just would like it to work for these empty posters also.
Because I removed the files previously, could it be that Plex somehow still has a reference to it somewhere and becuase of this reference might decide that the art work does not qualify for updating and as such, I end up with no artwork? Is there anyway to just remove all artwork for a library and start fresh? I also want to add, that a few days ago before my cache issue all my media did have art work, so there must be a resonable soluton here.
Also, new art work has no issue. It is just a majority of my library which existed before my restore.
What exactly did you do?
Did you actually unlock the posters?
Have you confirmed that the unlocking was successful? You can do so by inspecting the Plex media info xml of the item.
Yes I done exactly as you described. I ran the 4 curl commands for some of my libraries to remove the thumb.locked setting and then refreshed the metadata (Via the library settings context menu) and still none of the posters were updated.
I have also checked the xml tag for the locked values :
I honestly find it very strange that this is such a major issue.
Can you help me debug please. I do not see any movement when running the the refresh meta data in the plex log. Any chance you can point me to where I can see what is going on with the metadata refresh a bit better via logs? Im quite sure it runs but something like you say with the thumb lock is stopping it. working completely.
I have also choosen a poster and that also worked fine. But this manual process for each show/film is not scalable. I have chedcked a couple of items across my libraries and they also all have posters to choose from. Is there anyway to automate this picking of any poster?
Also in my origional post I stated if I unmatch a show and then just match it to the same item it previously was set to, everything works. Metadata refreshes, poasters are fixed. But this is simply not sacable.
If I skip the unmatch piece and just match, nothing changes. Posters still broke.
Is there a way to mass unmatch & match what plex wants?
I am running into something very similar. Recently did a clean install on Win11. Several of the movies are missing posters that were definitely displaying in the previous install. But now only the metadata is displayed, actors, directors, description, trailers, reviews - everything but the poster. When I go to “Fix match” the poster is not there either. The movies missing the posters are not obscure titles, they are well known, highly rated or awarded movies.
In my 3 screen shots
You will see the poster missing but all other metadata exists
Likely a different issue.
Seek out the same title on watch.plex.tv
If it’s missing a poster there as well, this is due to a DMCA takedown request. Posters which were painted by a certain famous artist are most often affected.
The only solution is to add your own poster.jpg.
Thank you. The poster is not at that location either. So I assume this is something happening recently, the copyright concerns on the posters. I understand how and why, but that sure throws a kink into keeping this simple. Thanks again.
