Hi,
The vast majority of the cast thumbnails that I see in the web client (Chrome, Safari) just show the actor’s initials. I guess unpopular actors don’t have them, but even more popular ones like George Clooney don’t show up here. My plex server is able to download all the other graphical metadata for movies so there doesn’t seem like there is a connectivity problem.
Is there any way to fix this? Is there any way (or reason to) update the cache of these graphics?
Thanks!
I was having a similar issue, check my answer in the thread below to see if it helps:
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that panel. It was already set to “The Movie Database” and not IMDB though. I did change it to IMDB, rescan the Movies section, and then change it back and rescan, but it made no difference. George Clooney is still “GC”.
The only cast photos that do appear (sometimes) are for TV Shows.
There’s a chance this might be a different issue than what I experienced. Just for good measure can you pull up a film missing the thumbs, click on the more/ellipses menu in the upper-right, then refresh metadata (see below)? That should force a refresh of the film’s metadata, including actor thumbs.
If that works, you can try applying that to your entire film collection by clicking the more/ellipses button to the right of the library on the main page (see below). This can take a long time though depending on library size, internet speed, and CPU on the server.
Thanks - I did use Refresh All Metadata on the current Wonder Woman film, but no joy. All the actors are still thumbnail-less 
You could abandon Plexweb (wisely) and start using a real Media Player like the powerful Plex Media Player:
Top of the forum/Downloads/Get an app
PMP is not limited by strange shortcomings associated with viewing your material in a browser, like Plexweb does.
If that doesn’t help…
Could be time for some log files:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200250417-Plex-Media-Server-Log-Files
Drag zip file to message window and drop it.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Plex Web vs PMP.
If the initials appear, a picture link is not present for the actor.
Only if the circle remains blank, there is an issue with fetching the picture itself.
Now we have to determine why that is.
Are you using by any chance mp4 files?
Those can have actor information embedded as meta data, but of course without picture links.
So the first measure to take is this:
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
With that out of the way, we must ensure that the movie is ‘matched’ and which metadata agent was used for matching it.
Please copy the Plex XML info of an affected movie into here for further analysis.
Brilliant news Otto - I was indeed using MP4 and changing the ordering of the “Local Media Assets” has fixed the problem. Yay, I now see cast thumbnails 
I’ve been using Subler to set the MP4 metadata and artwork for all my ripped DVDs and BluRays and I think I changed Plex’s settings to try and force it to use what I’d set in Subler. I’ll need to revisit this…
I, for one, would only take the effort to tag my files directly
if Plex would fail to do so.
And that usually doesn’t happen with cinema movies.
It is more likely with content for which there are no Plex agents, like sports, courses, concert videos, documentations, foreign ‘tv movies’ etc.
Hi, I’m having the same issue but with MKV and the local Local Media Assets was already last.
Any idea why this happens?
Please post the Plex mediainfo XML of one affected movie.
force refreshing the metadata worked, without chaining anything else.
thanks
Thank you OttoKerner! This issue has been bothering me for a while now and your suggestions have fixed it for me. 
it happens again.
here are some examples: Cast.zip (6.9 KB)
Force refreshing the metadata did not solve this issue.
Settings - Server - Agents - Movies - Plex Movie
The line ‘Plex Movie’ must be at the top position.
Click on the ‘cog wheel’ icon at the right end of the line ‘Plex Movie’
‘Cast List Source’ must be set to ‘TheMovieDatabase’
Are both of these conditions fulfilled?
It was second, bellow SubZero
It was set to IMDB.
Thank you kind sir, it now works.
A double thank you from me also!
