I can actually do this. It would just be annoying.
I can take a filesystem snapshot, run refresh metadata over a library, and then just watch it run and start noting every title I see the posters change on. Once I have a list of posters I think changed that were custom-set, I can reverse the filesystem changes and go back and check those items information to confirm they were set as custom posters. Then I can run the refresh metadata again and get logs.
(Not sure when I would do this as I’m a bit busy and it would need to be done late at night when no one else is trying to use the server)
I guess because my remembrance of this was it never worked this way before so I was originally trained to not see updates to my artwork. Also, managing artwork outside of Plex is a major PITA, I did it for 5+ years (it is also a waste of space when you have massive libraries, yes I know its just a jpg, but why have multiple copies of it for no reason)… The issue doesn’t bother me as much as most, I just don’t understand the thought process on it grabbing it willy nilly. And if that is expected behavior, how about give users a setting to enable/disable that (a setting such as “grab poster art once” essentially. That way, if I am happy with what it grabbed, great. If I am not, I can switch it. Or, if I like an ever changing library of images I can let Plex do its thing.
Also, I don’t “care” about posters, but what I do care about is trash selections, which seems to happen a solid 20% of the time. I know that’s not Plex’s fault, its based on equations and using a third party source, but either way, its ugly haha.
For my use case: Workflow change. The past decade (and XBMC/Boxee before plex), I haven’t needed to. Why would I go through the effort of finding when I can click the pencil → find the poster that looks best → hit OK. We never had posters magically update without user permission in the past.
Since Gracenote’s less than steller product was introduced to users, we now have a workflow change where every film we add, we must now manually find and upload poser art. And then hope that our edit stays locked.
Edit(s): I’m fine with changing my workflow from gracenote timeframe going forward. That’s a fair ask: plex,inc needs to build out social networking for the next milestone payment and gracenote is a small part of that. I’m not fine with having to babysit my films pre-gracenote for poster changes. If there was a variable that locked posters pre-gracenote forever until a user gives permission, I think that would be a good compromise.
if I can find it - I had a powershell script I wrote a year or so ago (when i moved to the new agent) - which would list what movie posters/backgrounds were locked/unlocked, let me export them (straight into the folder based on folder mapping) and let me whole sale lock them.
I do know you can do this also via tautulli export function - but i wanted an automated way to create the local media assets and put them all in the same place at once. (ie lazy)
These days I use local assets for movies and have just been cronjob locking of tvshow/season posters. (I kinded of wanted the flexibility to move if I had to). That alone has stops my posters shifting mostly.
I know PMM exists - but haven’t looked into it enough to see how it would fit.
If I am editing massive amounts of movie posted (to lock the field) is there a way to click through each one to limit clicks? for example, the process I know is:
Click edit icon (bottom left)
let screen load, click poster from left hand menu
select poster
Click save
then repeat process. Is there a UI process where I can scroll from movie to movie and edit the poster? That would be so much smoother, especially if I need to click 9500 movies one at a time.
I take this back. I do care about my posters. Now that I have re-done #'s and A, and saw how many posters where changed on me, I 100% do care (it is easy for me to figure out what was changed because I hate having tag lines or actors on my poster). I hope opening each one and selecting a poster does in fact 100% lock it because I really don’t want to go through this many movies a 3rd time if this process fails.
Can we please add the ability to not update posters when meta data is refreshed? That would solve this for so many people I feel.
FWIW, here is the issue I usually experience. I’ll attempt a step-by-step description if that helps:
Every Monday I download the latest episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” from YouTube and also download the thumbnail (which I use for the poster).
After properly naming the episode, it is moved into its folder: (C:\Media\TV Shows\Jay Leno’s Garage\Season 2024). A typical episode is named “Jay Leno’s Garage - s2024e16 - Electric Fire Engine 2023 Vector”
After the episode is in its folder, I open Plex and do a refresh of the “TV Shows” library so Plex pulls in the new episode.
After the episode is pulled in, I navigate to “Season 24” which shows me all the episodes with their posters for that season.
I edit the episode I just added and manually add the poster art I downloaded (the YouTube thumbnail). All good.
Now the frustrating part: I’ll notice that almost EVERY time, the poster art for the last 1 or 2 episodes has been removed. Not just changed, but totally removed. When I try to change the poster art it’s not even visible in the options anymore. It’s as if it has been totally deleted.
So now I have to go back and manually re-add the missing poster art for the last 1 or 2 episodes. Which I do.
After fixing everything, at this point all episodes show the correct poster art.
However, the following Monday when I download another episode, the poster art I just added last week (and often the week before that as well) is GONE.
This happens almost every week.
What’s interesting is that it’s only the last 1 or 2 previous episodes which have their poster art removed. Episodes older than that seem to keep their poster art.
On a side note, I prefer NOT to keep poster art in the same folder as the video. I keep the poster art elsewhere on a different hard drive and upload it directly when editing the episode.
As well, my settings are set so that virtually NOTHING is done automatically. No auto refresh metatdata, etc. Things are only updated when I manually refresh.
I’d be willing to provide server logs if a mod is interested.
What you’re describing isn’t quite the same as what is happening with most of the folks on this thread related to the artwork provider for Plex movie libraries changing to Gracenote because TV Shows weren’t impacted by the artwork provider change, yet.
And you’re adding your own art which definitely should be locking it in place.
What you’re experiencing is definitely weird so it might be beneficial to start a new thread with exactly those details you’ve provided here because that’s definitely weird behavior and a new thread can be easier to troubleshoot specific issues.
If you do always add your own artwork though you maybe could turn off the auto-refresh metadata tasks in the meantime and that might help keep them from changing if that mechanism really is replacing or removing artwork.
My experience with the Gracenote change was - and has been - that anything I went in and manually selected (not added or uploaded myself) did stick. The only posters that changed on me were the ones I left at the “default” selection when the movie was added - whatever was autopicked for me. Since I’ve gone and fixed those, they haven’t changed since.
Even before this though, if you let it auto-pick a poster, sometimes that poster could change if the primary poster at TMDB changed (user can vote). TV Shows will still do that too. If you manually pick a poster that should also lock that as well.
I rarely go download and manually add my own art unless I just can’t find one I like in the options.
I know I’m speaking for myself about what does or doesn’t lock posters but it lines up with what Plex reps and other users say so if that’s not your experience then definitely start a new thread and see if you can track down if it’s a bug.
And I still would like to have an option to lock artwork like I can with text fields just to be sure.
Interesting issue. Sometimes I upload a YT video from a series I maintain the metadata for on TVDB. I know the episode won’t show up for several days, but I upload it to my Plex server and leave it. Several days later, without any input from my end, the metadata for the episode fills in. I am not doing any manual metadata refreshes.
What I heard is that Plex recognizes that episode metadata might not be created until the day of airing, or for a few days after. As a result, Plex will do an auto-refresh of the episode a week or so afterwards, to make sure to pick up any metadata additions added after the episode was added.
It’s this time-frame that might be messing with your uploaded posters. It’s possible that Plex will dump ALL current metadata for an episode when it does this, probably to get rid of auto-generated posters from an unmatched episode. If this is what is happening, it’s bad that it is also deleting any user-uploaded posters, or thumbnails found within the videos, since those should be considered “good” metadata, not to trash.
PURE SPECULATION on my end, but you seeing the last few episodes being reverted sounds like this might be related.
That sounds entirely possible and thanks for the feedback. It definitely appears that Plex uses cached data when searching for metadata. I’ve uploaded new episodes which are in the TVDB database, but when adding it to Plex, it doesn’t pull in the info, so I have to fill it in manually.
Maybe the “fix” would be for Plex to stop caching metadata.
When I tried looking for the Plex web console under settings I don’t have the ability to run any commands so I assume this is my browser console not Plex web console?
