I’m gonna try to be detailed… I’m not slamming a wall of text here as a rant or anything just trying to provide as much info\context as I can in a situation where I don’t know what really will help or be the “ah ha” piece of data.
I only have a couple locally stored posters - like 2… they are personal videos I made personal artwork for and keep in the movies library (unmatched). One aspect of Plex I appreciated was not having to manage local artwork so I leveraged that a lot. Which is why the suggestions I’ve received in other threads from reps that I should manage my own local artwork is more than a little disappointing and frustrating (not that you’re doing that here - other reps in other threads).
I have several posters that I uploaded manually through the GUI - those have never changed.
Almost all my posters should be “locked” for the most part for three reasons:
- Plex switched from unwatched to watched flags and it covered titles on my posters. I was not a fan of the watched flags (no need to rehash). So I switched a lot of posters to put the title at the bottom - specifically ones that came to mind were Usual Suspects and Sneakers because I very specifically remember doing that with those. Then when the option to turn off watch\unwatch flags entirely came along (a suggestion I put out there at the time and was glad to get) I flipped them back to having titles on top because I preferred posters to look like the cover boxes I was used to from my video store days…. this is why I remember so many posters and notice when they change… they are cover boxes I’m used to seeing for years (just without the actor names or credits or taglines).
- Plex switched to gracenote and a few of my posters - but not many really - switched to ones I considered pretty bad posters at that time. In the hubbub from all the folks impacted by that it was confirmed switching artwork manually locks it so any that changed must not have been locked. I even mentioned how I barely had any changed because of doing that process myself for so many years as proof it should work. The ones that had changed at the time were only a couple and I might not have manually selected those.
- Unless you wanted the TMDB most voted poster to dynamically change your poster you needed to manually select a poster. I’ve been doing that for years to keep that from happening as well. It’s just part of my process when adding new titles to manually flip artwork (and I usually don’t prefer the default background art).
The time I reported it initially here I had more posters change to those licensed ones than they did when Plex originally switched to the licensed artwork provider. This time it changed ones I knew for a fact should have been locked. It was more than 20. And then others changed a few weeks later; about a dozen this time.
The first time they blanked out on me before going with the licensed artwork instead of my manually selected artwork when I ran a metadata refresh. The second time they didn’t blank out first so I didn’t run a refresh. Though I might’ve just caught it between refreshes the first time.
Zootopia, my example above, shows locked (thumb). So does Sneakers and Usual Suspects. I checked a bunch and they all show thumb listings.
One that changed the second time was Leon the Professional … I know it was manually selected and shoulda been locked because I have an international cut and I manually picked an international poster and flipped it more than once over the years because I decided to go against my “familiar cover box” and used the “Leon” title instead of the “Professional” title at one point. It shows locked now as well (thumb listings).
So either manually selecting posters isn’t actually locking them or the lock status is being ignored or missed when Plex does something with refreshing media from the licensed artwork provider. The first time coulda been a local bug but it happened again so I don’t think it is. I don’t know if there’s a way for me to check if Plex ignored the lock status or if there was a different bug that kept the lock status from being set now that I’ve “fixed” all the ones that got changed since then. In looking at a bunch of them I’ve mentioned, they all show thumb listings for posters.
The posters that were impacted in the second round of bulk changes were not the same ones as impacted in the first round. They all were spread across the alphabet in each case.
As far as what I was doing with updating new rips I was adding 1080p and 4k versions to existing titles that only had lower res versions and removing lower res versions I didn’t really need to keep anymore. Then when I went back into my library view I saw a bunch of blank posters and a refresh of the metadata pulled the licensed art instead of the originally set art. So it was possible that something got thrown off in the DB for it to pull licensed art instead of the referenced artwork I had locked. In the past I’ve had that happen… plex lose posters from some hangup or another, but a metadata refresh always brought it back to my usual posters and I hadn’t had that happen in a long time. That’s why the refresh not working this time threw me off - and was so frustrating.
I ran DBrepair since - partially because I made a lot of changes and those posters flaked out the first time and again as ChuckPa has updated the scripts and I tried them out. No problems.
My movie library is built with letter folders, not individual title folders - so bulk titles in a single folder like A-C or L-N. That means when I update a title it can trigger a scan for the titles in that folder which is likely why I might trigger a mass poster change in this process while others might not if it was a scan that triggered it and why I thought maybe it was a hiccup on my side somewhere while I was doing a lot of bulk changes.
But the second time it happened I wasn’t doing anything much at all. I don’t think I even added or changed files in the movie library for days when I noticed the batch of new “wrong” posters.
I’m not adding new titles to my library every week but pretty regularly and artwork hadn’t been randomly changing in bulk over the years until these two recent events - at least not since Plex switched to gracenote and did a “push” at that time but that push only changed a few posters for me. This was a lot more this time.
It feels like Plex updated\refreshed their licensed artwork on their side and something didn’t work right. You can tell it’s from the licensed artwork provider because of its style and its position in the art picker gui. So yeah, it feels like Plex did a push. I was hoping by naming some titles someone could see if those titles were specifically included in some regular artwork update from the license provider.
I also know Plex is working on changing the art picker right now in beta so I wouldn’t be surprised if something with that beta release testing and fiddling with the art provider setup might’ve done something.
Which library settings would you like to know specifically? It’s mostly standard recommended settings for the library itself really and for server settings I’ve enabled scan automatically, run partial scan when changes detected, Scan my Library periodically (Daily), and empty trash. Again I will mention I’ve had no artwork issues for years while adding\removing titles, versions and editions pretty regularly.
I’ve fixed the errant posters for now - fixing background art is more onerous and less of a priority so I’ll fix via PlexDash as I come across them. Let me know if there’s additional information you would like me to provide or clarify.
done? Was the original media deleted then the new rips were added? Each file existed in the same folder for a time then you removed the original file?
