For the last couple months I’ve regularly seen some of my movie posters/covers get refreshed with absolutely horrible movie posters, some of which don’t appear to be original posters at all. I’ve used Plex for years, and this has never been a problem before. Did Plex buy a substandard database of posters/covers? What’s going on? Can someone look into this?
The default poster is based on the popularity of the poster from the source TheMovieDB/TheTVDB. Plex is not providing these. Do you have an example?
I can point out a couple recently. The movie Memory (Memory (2022) — The Movie Database (TMDB)) changed from the good poster (this one https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/w220_and_h330_face/QaNLpq3Wuu2yp5ESsXYcQCOpUk.jpg) to a bad one (this one
Captain America: The First Avenger (Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) — The Movie Database (TMDB)) changed to a good one (this one https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/w220_and_h330_face/vSNxAJTlD0r02V9sPYpOjqDZXUK.jpg) to a really ■■■■■■ one (this one https://www.themoviedb.org/t/p/w220_and_h330_face/83gSIGEbj3OKVoWU9Qkps7PLoJV.jpg).
A. Neither of those 2 posters that changed were to better ones. No one in the right mind would pick the second ones and certainly not enough to for a properly programmed algorithm to change from the originals
and B. at no time should Plex be changing posters after the fact. Once a match is made and a poster has been applied then that should be it. Period.
A - “Better” is subjective. I can confirm that the 2 movies you pointed out do have the “bad” poster as the preferred ones.
B - The poster should not change unless you are refreshing the metadata for that movie. If you have not manually selected a poster and just allow Plex to use the default, then the poster can change to reflect the current preferred poster. You can manually select a poster, even if it’s the default one, and when you hit save, it will lock that poster in and won’t change in the future.
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You are misunderstanding the problem. The posters from the source should not change. Once someone adds content, pulls metadata, and then the poster is set then that should be it. Going through and manually setting potentially thousands of posters to prevent some anonymous smooth brain from changing it at random isn’t a solution.
I want metadata to be refreshed periodically because good info can be added to things like cast after release. I don’t want my poster art to look like someone with an IQ that matches their age picked it out.
Posters will change over time to reflect the most recent most popular poster (or if the current poster is removed from the source), unless you manually set one. This behaviour will not change.
If you prefer a more static library then using your preferred local poster as an image file alongside the media is the easiest route.
I want metadata to be refreshed periodically because good info can be added to things like cast after release
So can posters. What if the changes to the poster were the other way around. You may think “awesome, It’s using a better poster and I didn’t have to do anything”. There have also been times when a user has uploaded an inappropriate poster as a prank or one that is totally wrong.
Fantastic. Now I get to go one by one in my collection of 1400 movies and manually set a poster because some neanderthal with poor eye site won’t stop messing with posters on themoviedb.
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I just noticed that happening to some of the classic movie posters in my database.
They screwed with Mary Poppins cover for Pete’s sake!
I just scrolled through my entire collection and fixed everything they messed with.
Bastards! LOL
It sucks. I ended up having to go through every single movie, select a cover, and then save. Now I just get in the habit of doing that with all new additions. If they are going to allow the covers to change then they should at least sync from somewhere that doesn’t allow embarrassingly bad covers to exist.
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Any automated system that works on averages is going to leave a certain percentage of people unhappy
I got somewhat tired of this because it seems as though even “locked” posters you’ve changed manually find a way of unlocking somehow
Using TinyMediaManager you can pull posters and it will automatically name them and place them in the same folder with your movie
At the same time, I renamed the movie to include the imdb id number which I would also recommend
Now even if I rebuild my server everything goes back exactly the way I want it. Same posters, no duplicates or fix matching anything
Movie format
Folder format: ${title} (${year})
File format ${title} (${year}) {imdb-${imdb}}
TV show format
Show Name: ${showTitle} (${showYear}) {tvdb-${showTvdb}}
Season: Season ${seasonNr2}
Episode Name: ${showTitle} (${showYear}) s${seasonNr2}e${episodeNr2} ${episode.title}
We are not going to get into a debate about what posters are “lousy” or good. Folks like different things for all sorts of reasons. I am closing this.
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