Is there a way to get Plex to always deliver my embedded art work?
I have a large library. I’ve used the same app to embed all the artwork. All music tracks and books have checked and verified embedded artwork.
Plex will deliver about 60% off the embedded artwork, for the remainder: it’s random photos that are unrelated or pictures of the artist, or blank.
I’ve read near every forum request for help on album artwork on Plex. I’ve made all the suggested changes in settings. Then rescanned and cleared metadata then rescanned. Looks like this problem has been going on for years without any fix from Plex for years and years.
Is there a solution? Is there ever going to be a fix from Plex? Can Plex comment and explain why they can’t get this to work? Can Plex offer some directions to actually fix this for users?
If indeed your album artwork is embedded in your files ensure within the advanced settings of your music library that album art is set to local files only. That way plex will ignore all its own stuff from their cloud and only use your local files.
I’ve done this and it works perfectly within my music library.
As you mention artist, the above setting does not work for artist artwork, they will pulled from the plex cloud. However, you can use your own local artwork if you name it artist-poster.ext and artist-background.ext placing the files at the artist level (not within albums). You will also need to ensure Prefer local metadata is used if you want them picked up as per → Local artist artwork not used when prefer local metadata is disabled.
Any chance you could upload a screenshot of exactly what you mean when you say to name the files for the poster and store it at the artist level?
I have run into this issue also and want to use my own album art. So do I name the files Artist Name - Album Name and store them in a specific folder after I select Album Art Local Files only?
/data/Personal/Music Collection is the root of my plex music folder and Adele within that is the artist level folder with each album underneath. The artist poster is called artist-poster.jpg and the background artist-background.jpg and is stored in the root of the artist folder, Adele in this example.
You need to ensure Prefer local metadata is enabled on the music library or they won’t be picked up, as per the thread I linked above.
Ok, that totally makes sense! Thanks for taking the time to do that. So the only other question I have is how do I do the same thing for the album art? Do I add it to each album folder and name it accordingly?
Okay, so for albums I probably go overboard as other software outside of plex also access my music media. Regardless this is what I do …
I embed a cover.jpg into each track on each album, using MusicBrainz Picard. Typically I get the art from either fanart.tv or MusicBrainz or last resort a good old fashioned google search
I then also include the cover.jpg which I used above in the root of the album folder, example below:
All the albums shown are incorrect artwork except the second one. All have the same method of adding artwork. All have their own artwork when you look at the file directly. All have embedded artwork. None of the tracks or albums use the artwork shown in the 9 pictures that are the same - This is just Plex imagining what it should put there - and of course it’s wrong.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I have already set Plex to use local files only. You can tell I have because Plex does it sometimes! lol
The problem is that Plex doesn’t allow this setting to work always.
Surely it can’t be that hard?
Is there any way to have Plex use local art (and actually have it work?!)
I believe setting plex to use Local Files Only then relies on a cover.jpg to exist at the album level, as they are LOCAL. If you have embedded your artwork into the files themselves then that will have no impact.
If they are embedded artwork (tagged into your music files) then you should have Prefer local metadata enabled. If not then I would enable that and force refresh which should fix it. Plex dance might be needed but unlikely in this situation.
Your screenshot could also mean they are unmatched so if after you checked the above an example and/or screenshot of how the files are named on disk would be helpful to debug.
I would try “Refresh Metadata” at the artist level. Plex likes to hold onto old metadata. Refreshing the metadata at an album level never works for me, but at the artist level it does.
I don’t have cover art embedded into the individual files, I go with just “cover.jpg” in the album folder. That way I can have one large, high resolution image for the album, and reduces the size of the individual tracks.
I went through my entire music Library and grabbed the album art from sites like Album Art Exchange, Fan Art, Bandcamp etc. And saved them to the folders as Poster.jpg and what a difference!! Not only does everything look amazing, but it seems to load faster on Plexamp as well. Maybe it’s because it isn’t using the service to grab it from last.fm or whatever or maybe it’s my imagination, but it loads in a fraction of a second. Lots of work, but so happy with the results!
