Posters Go Missing (Recreatable)

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

I currently have an issue with posters disappearing.

Setup:
I currently have 2 Plex libraries called: “Movies” and “4K Movies”. Both of those libraries pointed to two separate and distinct folder/directories on my computer (e.g C:\Some\Movie\Library\A and C:\Some\4K Library)

Steps:

  1. Have a regular movie in the Plex “Movie” library (make sure the movie has a poster/metadata)
  2. Add the same movie in the Plex “4K Movies” library
  3. Wait for Plex to add metadata to the new movie
  4. Wait until the newly added movie has a poster (from the plex meta scanner)
  5. The movie in the other library will now have its poster missing.

In my example the libraries are called “Movies” and “4K Movies”, I know Plex doesn’t treat them differently and I assume this would happen with any 2 libraries that contain the same movie.
Please note by the same movie I mean 2 distinct video files (e.g TheMatrix.mkv and TheMatrix_4K.mkv) pointing to the same movie of “The Matrix”.

I can confirm that this is an issue with the Plex Media Server and not the Plex Clients. 2 Different browsers(Plex Web), Plex for Shield, Plex for Android are missing the posters.

Info:
Plex Server Windows Version: 1.12.2.4929
Windows Version: 8.1

P.S
As an aside I notice when I watch a movie in the “4k Movie” library Plex will save my current watch position for both movies(i.e the version in “4k Movies” and in “Movies”) so Plex is clearly doing some sort of “linking” process for videos that even though are in separate libraries and files but are the same movie.

I’ve attached the server logs. To make searching easier here are some movies where the issue occured:

  • The Hateful Eight
  • Atomic Blonde
  • The Martian
  • Bright
  • mother!
  • The Dark Tower
1 Like
2

This is a very annoying issue. It happens 100% of the time, it seems that Plex “forgets” the poster selection. See image below:

It’s supposed to have a yellow box around the poster indicating that it’s selected:

3

Very frustrating! I’ll spend hours updating my posters (often having to download from an third-party URL) only to have Plex “forget” most of them and replace them with useless thumbnails. I have to go through this every few weeks!

4

Any suggestions? Is there a way to save settings so they can be reloaded whenever Plex “forgets” everything?

5

From what I’ve seen it’s a bug when you have two libraries set with the same titles even though they are pointing to 2 different movie files in two completely different directories. The only fix so far is to not duplicate the same movie across multiple libraries.

6

I have only ONE Movie library and this keeps happening to me. I even went through the library and edited EVERY movie and chose the first poster. Still it is happening to posters randomly. I have no way to tell which ones it will happen to. Sure enough every day there is one or two that will be sitting there with a “video thumbnail” for a poster. Of course this will always be from a scene that is blank or has some blurry figure that tells you nothing about what movie it is. Why is there no “Lock meta data” option. I mean after all I don’t need to “update” meta data for “The Sound Of Music” its never going to change. I have one library in one physical location on a network share.

Web client - Version 3.69.1
Server Version 1.13.9.5456

1 Like
7

This is still a problem!

I have one movie folder with 4K material only for local playback
And another for 1080P that can be played when on the move

4K folder is always missing poster on duplicate movies?
Any work around for this error?

8

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