Is there anyway for plex to use local artist covers? if so, how?
Continuing this here, rather than in the How-To thread.
Audiobooks may be a problem here. I have several as well, and since the recent changes that improved metadata scanning for popular music, it has gotten worse for classical music and audiobooks.
How can i get plex to use my local artist artwork?
i have tried using the following naming structure, but it does not work.
artist.jpg
artist-folder.jpg
artist-poster.jpg
artist-cover.jpg
folder.jpg
poster.jpg
cover.jpg
J. K. Rowling.jpg
My folder structure is
Audiobooks
----J. K. Rowling
--------Harry Potter
--------Artist-poster.jpg
This works for me in a music library, and I imagine it would work for audiobooks too:
Edit the library, and in the advanced section, make sure you have “Prefer local metadata” enabled. Scroll down a bit, and there is an option for Cover Art. Select “Local Files” or “Both Plex Music and Local Files” Audiobooks should probably have “Store track progress” enabled as well. Save the changes for the library.
The folder and file structure should be something like this:
Audiobooks
---- J. K. Rowling
---- artist-poster.jpg
---- ---- Harry Potter
---- ---- folder.jpg or cover.jpg
---- ---- folders and files for the audiobook
artist-poster.jpg must be named exactly that way, and reside in the artist or author folder, not in the book folder. Plex won’t use files names like artist.jpg, folder.jpg, J.K.Rowling.jpg for local artwork.
Hopefully, a “Refresh metadata” will fix it all up, but the Plex Dance might be required.
The artist-poster is in the author/artist folder, I copied the jk rowling folder as a test. I have completely removed all my audiobooks from plex, emptied the trash, optimized the database, cleaned the bundles multiple times to be sure. But it still isnt working.
My settings are this
It appears you are correct. Plex simply refuses to recognize a local image for the Artist/Author
I tried with a new library, with the agents and scanner the same as you have used and it didn’t use any of the local files.
Created another new library, and changed the agent and scanner to Plex music and it accepted the image for the album/book, but nothing for the Author/Artist
I’m sure this worked when the new Music system came out, so I added the book to my music library. Same results. Local image for the artist is not used.
They’ve changed something. You can try reporting it as a bug, but my experience with suggesting something is not working with the new system hasn’t had much success, and usually blamed on user error.
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Searching the forums, I found the solution that worked for me, and the artist-poster.jpg file is used.
from this post:
In my test audio book library, I originally used “Carnegie, Dale” as the artist name for the folder, but had used “Dale Carnegie” as the album artist and track Artist name in the embedded metadata. Changing the folder name to “Dale Carnegie” made Plex use the image file. So, I guess this can be classified as user error. 
I know the new system is especially finicky about the “Album Artist” tag. Some things don’t work as expected if you don’t have that tag. This appears to be another, where folder name and tag have to identical. I don’t know if the Album Artist tag is a requirement in this circumstance, I always include both tags.
I get the same results you see, with settings for a library that are identical to yours. In particular, the Scanner and Agent settings. When they are set to Plex Music Scanner and Personal Media Artists none of the local files or metada seems to be used.
That might be a bug, but I think the plans are for that scanner to eventually be removed as an option, so there probably won’t be much work done on fixing any problems
You can play around with the Fix Match options for the Artist/Author or the Album/Book, and if you select the Plex Music agent, instead of the default (which is the Plex Music scanner because of your settings) the local artwork and metadata will be used and applied. (if there’s an available match)
If you create an audiobook library with the Scanner and Agent both set to Plex Music, the local files are used. You will likely have to change the folder/file structure to comply with the rules for the new system - it’s very fussy and will combine all of the books into one or any number of other weird results.
This folder/file structure worked for me for J.K. Rowling:
AudioBooks
---- J.K. Rowling (folder)
---- ---- artist-poster.jpg (author photo)
---- ---- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (folder for the book)
---- ---- ---- 01 - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.m4b (audiobook file)
---- ---- Quidditch Through the Ages (folder for the book)
---- ---- ---- 01 - Quidditch Through the Ages.m4b (audiobook file)
On the first run, Plex came up with this for me
The photo used is the artist-poster.jpg I placed in the folder, and the albums (books) are using the embedded artwork in the file. If there’s no embedded artwork, it will show a folder.jpg file if you have one included there.
Just remember, the new Plex music insists that tracks are placed inside a sub-folder, and that they must have a track number. If you stray away too much from that, you will not get the expected results. I would make sure that the file has a track number in the embedded metadata, too.
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