Hi there,
Been trying to get the agent options “just right” in order to pull in the best artwork. This began because when I went to some items to manually choose a better image from those brought in by an agent, the artwork on the item was replaced with a blank tile. I figured this may have been because the image I selected belonged to an agent I no longer had as a preferred agent. But then I found when I changed agent settings and refreshed metadata for a particular item, the options given for artwork didn’t change.
I confirmed that my new agent options were not taking effect as I selected The Movie Database as the preferred agent, and then went to their site to see the artwork they had for a particular item. It included artwork I wanted. Yet after refreshing metadata for that item, the artwork options were NOT from The Movie Database.
Anyone else seen this or have suggestions on how to fix?
Thanks.
Server Version#: 1.19.3.2764
Player Version#: 1.10.0.1208-daa6b641
Changing the default agent for a library only affects newly added media. Any existing media retains the agent with which it was originally matched; so, refreshing metadata continues to use that agent.
To change the agent used for an existing item, you have a couple of options. If you have relatively few items to which you need to do this, you can use the Fix Match option:
In the search options, choose the new agent which you’d like to use.
If have many items for which you’d like to change the agent, set the library’s default agent to whichever you’d like, and then perform the Plex Dance on them. This will cause the items to be removed from your library completely and re-scanned and matched by the new agent.
Hi philipsw,
Thanks very much for your response, and thanks for pointing out that the agent won’t retroactively take effect.
I followed your lead and looked up the Plex Dance and…well…now I’m really confused.
I tested with a film using the Plex Movie agent first, and then using The Movie Database agent. Each time I did the Plex Dance with that item, removing it entirely before adding it back in. Regardless of which agent I used or how the agent was setup, the artwork I got was exactly the same every time I added it. Not only that, but my settings are set to prefer library language, my library is set to United States, yet only the first 4 covers are english, followed by about 15 or more (I kid you not) covers of all kinds of different languages, definitely NOT english.
I’ve even tried moving fanart.tv up to the top of the preferred list, but even then (and after confirming fanart.tv had plenty of art for the selected film), the artwork delivered was STILL the same.
This is weird, right?
It may not actually be weird, if it’s related to this:
There’s a workaround discussed in that post which involves enabling additional metadata sources. To be honest though, I’m not certain if this is related to your issue. Others may have something to say there.
Aha! I saw the title of that post (about TMDB) logging in just now but came straight to your reply, which then references the post. I think it is because of that. It makes a lot of sense as to begin with, ages ago the artwork pulled through was good, it’s only now I’ve started cleaning up my collection that when I choose a piece of artwork, the frame goes blank…clearly I’m choosing a bit of artwork that had been pulled through correctly a few months ago (when I moved my server) but is now suffering the issues mentioned when I’m selecting it at which point I’m guessing it’s trying to pull through the original version (I’m assuming it’s just thumbnails in the selection grid to save space).
Then, for fanart.tv, I simply didn’t realise you needed to supply an API key. I created one, put it in, refreshed the meta (didn’t even need to do the Plex Dance), and hey presto!
I’m happy. I can get artwork from fanart.tv for now while TMDB sort their issues out.
Thanks philipsw for your help and pointing me in all the right directions.
