Hi, so I upgrade my movie library to use the new agent and refreshed metadata. Almost every movie in my collection got a new poster. The refresh is fast and most posters are clean and sufficiently high-res. However I do have a couple of questions:
In settings for the new agent-- well, there is none. I couldn’t find out exactly where the new agent is sourcing movie posters. It’s not CineMaterials, Fanart.tv or tpdb. I understand there could be multiple. If that’s the case, what’s the primary source of posters for the new agent?
How does the new agent decide whether to replace a poster or not? Posters I uploaded are untouched. However, there are many movies that I have selected posters for, from existing options, that I didn’t upload myself. Does the new agent replace these?
I’m a bit paranoid because for instance, when I inspect the poster for a given movie, very often the poster isn’t the top-left one. Some times it’s the last one. Some times it’s a seemingly random one in the middle. And I have no way to tell exactly where any of the posters come from or their resolution.
Maybe a better UX for poster is the solution. It’s a huge part of cultivating a movie library.
Server Version#: Version 1.20.1.3252
Player Version#: 1.17.0.1376-439f8b7f
Settings for the new agent live only in the Advanced settings for the specific library now. We currently source posters and art from TMDB, IMDB, the TVDB and fanart.tv but we may expand this in future. The primary source is TMDB.
During and upgrade it maintains all your old posters, even ones that were just the default from the previous agent. It shouldn’t replace any of them.
During the upgrade we move the previously selected poster/art to the uploads folder in order to maintain them, this is why you’ll see the selected one is not the first one in the list as the uploads are scanned in last.
I completely agree, it’s something we’d like to work on.
Huge thumbs up for your fast and detailed answers! Nothing beats when you wake up in the morning and your forum post from last night gets answered.
I have just one follow-up: so during upgrade, does the new agent keep all previous posters for a given movie or just the one in-use?
I had previously switched to Fanart, and IIRC Plex switched the default poster scrubber to Cinematerial earlier this year (at least briefly). So basically, I see a lot of posters, especially for popular movies-- many of them duplicates I suspect.
The posters (and collection hero image) I uploaded did not get replaced. So that’s great, working as intended.
However, for movies I had selected a different poster than the default one, they do have their posters changed. I don’t think the one I had chosen got deleted, though. But I’m not sure, since I can’t tell the sources of any poster or their resolution. I think this is because-- correct me if I’m wrong-- I can’t “lock in” the poster unless I upload an image. So it gets replaced during metadata refresh.
Overall I’m grateful for the new agent! It’s fast and the new posters are better versions, more often than not. And thank you for agreeing with my suggestion. I only recently discovered TPDb and was shocked that some people take their movie posters very seriously, even more so than I do.
