I create all my own posters (or tiles) for all my media. I appreciate that PLEX can go to the internet to find relevant art, but since nearly all of my media content is personal to me, or at least not commercially released movies, the poster-hunting thing is of no use to me. Thus, I use PowerPoint to create my own posters/tiles.
Until a few days ago, the posters that I connected to individual media files were stable–meaning, once I had entered the poster into the metadata through Mp#tag, or assigned the poster to the media file when I am in the PLEX Media Server app they were stable.
But now, all of a sudden, when I enter the poster through Mp3tag it does not show up in PLEX Media Server app. Moreover, now whenever I click on a media file to play it in the PLEX Media Server app, the poster that I had assigned earlier now rotates to an image taken from the media file, and the poster disappears. So, every time I touch a file’s poster to trigger it to start, I am now forced to “re-assign” the poster to that file. It is a bit of a hassle.
I suspect that I have something that relates to “agents” or some other setting that needs to be reset to the proper value to enable stability.
What do you suggest? I have explore all settings, can cannot seem to find the culptit.
Thank you for the suggestion. All this has been working well until recently. Now, nearly every time I touch a poster when in the PLEX Media Server app, it disappears. This requires me to redo the poster selection process (a major hassle). I do not know what changed, but perhaps I did make some change somewhere.
So, if I use your suggestion of putting the poster.png file next to the media file then every media file would need to be in its own folder. Am I right? But you suggest that this would enable the stability in selected poster, so that might be worth the effort.
Basically you’d to just need to put poster.jpg in your movie folder and enable the detection of local assets in your library settings. With that you wouldn’t have to do any manual change and if you need to start over your library, Plex would automatically set your personalized poster.
Here you can learn about other resources you can add:
Thank you for this counsel. Several questions . . .
Regarding “poster.jpg”, is a png file OK, or must it be jpg? And is the filename actually “poster”, or should it be the name of the media file? I ask what may seem silly questions only because I have created the “poster.png” files and placed them in individually named folders, but this connection does not seem to work as you say it should.
How do I set my library to use only (or at least to prioritize) “local assets”? I cannot seem to get to these settings in an existing library.
It’s okay to use png files. There are a few names that can be used, I use “poster.ext” for movies, and “cover.ext” for music libraries. TV Libraries have other options. You can get more info for movie libraries here, and info for TV libraries here. I can’t find the support article for local assets for music, but I’m pretty sure it’s available someplace (or used to be)
If your library is using the newer agents, you edit the library, and in the advanced section, enable the prefer local metadata and Use local Assets option. If it’s the older agents, you go to Settings → Agents and move “Local Media Assets” to the top. In both cases, that will prioritize all embedded metadata as well, which may or may not be what you want to happen.
If posters are your only concern, and you have the image files inside the folder, just enable “Use Local Assets” for the new agents, and make sure “Local Media Assets” are enabled, but not necessarily at the top.
You will probably have to refresh the library or items to see the changes.
