I’m not really sure what you are asking but you can get your own posters from where ever like directly from TMDB if you want and put them in the directory with your movie files.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220677-local-media-assets-movies/
Doesn’t https://www.tinymediamanager.org do it ?
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Note: If you have Jellyfin set up to access the same library files there is a setting in the Library settings to keep the images used in the metadata locally on disk. So if you had this on it would go through and collect all the posters and backgrounds for you. Plus the default source for metadata is TMDB, so there is no worry about pulling crap from Gracenote.
Once it’s gone over your entire library, the posters are there in your folders for Plex to see and use.
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yeah I know but what I want’t is some sort of UI where I can select the media from certain sources and it will download them automatically and will put it in the same folder where my movie lives. this way I dont have to manually download the media and rename it accordingly.
It seems like the employee replies here think the problem is a slight miscalibration of when posters get refreshed, but I get the sense for the people complaining, the problem is less that posters occasionally get refreshed – which has happened for a long time and never really been a huge issue – and more that there appears to be some nightmare hellscape AI poster data source being used. Am I the only one reading that as the primary issue?
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I read that as the issue too. Seems odd for Plex to not only pick Gracenote’s posters for download, but to DEFAULT to them even if you had previously loaded TMDB. Heck, by the sound of it, Plex might still be downloading TMDB posters too, but simply defaulting to this alternate source instead, which is… disappointing.
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Afaik that is not supposed to happen if you manually picked one. I’m not saying it is not happening to folks, but we have not be able to reproduce so we need steps to reproduce if you can just make it happen when you do those steps.
It took me days! Super disappointing.
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I can’t be 100% sure of my posters changing even if I manually set them, but it is SUPER frustrating that the default poster for movies (which was sufficient for ~95% of my library before today so I never needed to change them) changes seemingly daily.
When this first happened, I had to go through my library and swap off of the AI-generated-level posters from about 10% of my library back to what it was for years. It does seem that every now and then I find another. It’s possible I missed them, as decent chunk of my library are in collections and I normally hide them from the library view…
Just a thought for future builds- is there any way to lock posters for already curated libraries and only change to the worse posters upon new movie ingest? For example: even refreshing metadata will ignore the pulling of these new posters, or presenting this function as an option?
I have the “pleasure” of now going through 900 films to change posters back to where they were.
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My experience has matched up with what BigWheel said to just manually change the poster by selecting one via the Edit->Poster screen, even if it’s the TMDB\Default one - it’ll stick unless that poster gets removed from the source.
When Gracenote change went through, and after subsequent refreshes, none of the posters I had manually selected changed. Of course, none of the posters I added myself changed either but I think you’re asking more about the provided posters.
I had to change a couple dozen of posters after the change to Gracenote - out of about 1000-ish movies. Those where ones I never manually picked when I added them. In the past I picked up a habit of manually picking one just to make sure they didn’t change if TMDB voting changed the default - but I didn’t always care. Since changing those ones that swapped to Gracenote posters I didn’t like, none of them have changed since either.
My experience has been pretty solid with as I add a movie I go into the poster option and pick the poster I want. If the poster I want was the default one, I’d pick something else and then swap back to it (saving between doesn’t seem to be a necessary step).
Edit: I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but using PlexDash on my phone seems quicker for doing a lot of poster updates so you might try that if you have a bunch of them to do. This is particularly true for fixing background art as you can switch your view from poster art to the background art and scroll through them easily (can’t do that via web interface).
Worst part is all the posters are stored in * Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media
So why on earth are they even being replaced automatically? It’s insane. I spend a ton of time as well curating my posters.
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What I started doing this year is place all artwork inside the movie or tv shows folder as “poster” and “fanart”. That covers the main poster and background image. You can also name TV season posters “Season 1, 2, 3 etc” and save them inside individual season folders as well.
That way if posters ever do change, u can just refresh metadata and it will revert to your custom artwork.
Plex usually will not alter custom artwork once you’ve uploaded them, but sometimes (recently) they will change a few posters after a library update. Saving posters and artwork in the folders with your media is the best way to assure you never lose your custom artwork in my opinion.
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This is the way👍
I also always add a ‘theme.mp3’
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Yes, we can add a poster or background image to our movie/tv folders and it won’t change, but we shouldn’t have to. If you give people the option to select them, they shouldn’t change. I’ve been using plex for 6-7 years and until just recently once I selected a poster and background it NEVER changed. Now every time I go through my movie library I see multiple movies that have their posters changed. It looks like I’m going to have to go through my 1400+ movie directory and download artwork because plex keeps changing them.
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If Plex,inc could ever muster an easy win, it would be to have an option of “never, ever change my posters I have curated over the past decade.”
I truly fear what you people will do to my TV show posters when you force those to be updated without my permission as well.
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This would all be resolved with just the option to either:
A: Lock posters / backgrounds much like the other fields.
or
B: Allow “Periodically Refresh Metadata” to have options for the user to have it skip.
If it is an either/or situation, then I’d rather have A, but both would be nice to have.
Also on how the software behaves, I have gone through every single TV Show or Movie that I have, changed the poster to one thing, then I change it to something else. So it is always set to something manually.
Then I’ll notice on some items (not all) that the poster would have randomly refreshed to something different. I cannot pinpoint when this happens or why. I cannot just grab some log file because I have no indication on when a poster was updated unless I just happen to go over it and can tell that it is different from the one I chose. Even that wouldn’t tell me when it happened as it could have been yesterday, last week, or even last month.
But why is it that this can’t just have Option A implemented? This is a genuine question and not meant to be rhetorical.
It just seems strange that everything else that can be edited can be locked, but the images can’t, though apparently you can edit the underlying XML file (at least from what I read) and “lock” things that way. This only adds to my confusion as to why there is no user-friendly method to allow such things to be locked.
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The same thing happens to me. I frequently have to go back in and change posters back. And it’s not all of them and not the same ones every time. But it is annoying.
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I have asked multiple times for server logs after this happens. and steps to reproduce if folks can jsut make it happen after manually selecting one. If you are willing to provide those it would be appreciated.
poster do lock like every other field automatically when changed they just don’t have a lock icon.
Except they don’t “lock”, or at least not at a perfect rate.
Without a lock symbol, can’t even tell that it happened.
Additionally as I stated above, log files are nearly impossible to pinpoint on which ones would be useful due to the random nature of this occurring.
I know for 100% certainty that ones that I have seen it randomly change were ones that I manually changed, even if the only change that I did was putting it from something then back to Slot #1’s choice.
(Edit → Pick other poster → Save → Edit again → Pick Slot 1 → Save)
However, I have not updated to the build that made Gracenotes a priority.
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