TV Shows Using Wrong folder.jpg

[smann]

Server Version#: 1.29.2.6364

Ran into an issue where my TV Shows library kept telling me the library couldn’t be saved repeatedly. Ended up deleting the library and recreating it.

All works well, but it looks like all the TV shows are grabbing the folder.jpg from the Season 00 folder (if that exists) or Season 01 folder and using that as the main poster for the entire series, despite there being a folder.jpg in the main folder of each series.

I have “Use Local Assets” selected, but it looks like it’s grabbing the folder.jpg in the first deepest folder it finds. All of the seasons are displaying their respective image, it’s just the main poster. Toggling the “Prefer Local Metadata” options and refreshing the metadata doesn’t do anything either.

I’d like to keep them all as folder.jpg and not poster.jpg for reasons on Windows.

[OttoKerner]

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220717-local-media-assets-tv-shows/

[smann]

Ok, I’ve done all of that, despite that not being what I wanted really. Most of the shows worked, but still end up with shows like these…

James May’s Cars of the People doesn’t even have that image anywhere in the folders, so not sure why Plex isn’t using the folder.jpg in the main folder. And Miracle Workers is showing the Season 03 image. Both of these and others with issues have everything set up exactly like that link says.

The main folders all have a folder.jpg image for the main poster and each season has it’s own season##.jpg image.

[leelynds]

For reasons unknown, seasonXX.jpg doesn’t always work for me. But,season-XX,jpg (a dash added between season and XX) always works. “Refreshing metadata” at the show level, not at season or episode level, seems tp correct the posters to the ones I have added if Plex insists on using some other poster.

[smann]

Except all of the seasons are showing correctly for me from what I can see. It’s just the main poster for about half my shows that are showing either a season’s poster or just some random poster that isn’t in any of my folders. Each series now only has a single folder.jpg for the main poster that should work, but it isn’t for all of them.

I also don’t understand Plex’s naming conventions.
Use folder-1, folder-2, etc for posters.
Use background-1, background-2, etc for backgrounds.
But use season01a, season01b, etc for seasons.

It’s about as bad as their AVC vs HEVC naming. H264 for AVC, but HEVC for HEVC instead of H265. It’s all over the place and really needs refinement.

[smann]

Been trying all afternoon. No matter what I do, it only works for about half of the shows. The other half just chooses random images or the image from the first season. It also looks like backgrounds are hit and miss too.

It seems like it’s completely skipping the local files and choosing the TMDB image, despite Local Media Assets being the first choice under Shows on each entry (although I think these are only for older agents anyway).

For reference, here are the settings chosen…

And here is the result with the files showing that the main poster is just the first poster from TMDB (which is showing the third season with an outline currently), and the background is just the first backdrop from TMDB. It’s not using the folder.jpg or background.jpg images at all that I have in the main folder for the series. The season posters are correct with season##.jpg, but it looks like they are wrong on a couple of other shows as well.

Refreshing metadata at the show level does nothing, refreshing metadata for the entire TV Shows library does nothing, and the full Plex Dance returns with the same images.

Is there any way in a .plexmatch file to designate a poster or background? It doesn’t look like it, but that would be super useful!

[helmut_h]

Tried to name the file “show.jpg”?
Worked for me in most cases.

[smann]

Folder/poster/show and background/backdrop/fanart/art, doesn’t matter. Tried saving as a png as well. Still the same outcome in all cases unfortunately.

[anon5074910]

Your season folder names are not what plex would expect looking at your screenshot.

Remove the year and season names from the folder names and try the plex dance again afterwards.

In addition, have you EVER manually selected artwork? If so they could be now be considered locked fields by plex. If so check this doc Reset all manual poster selections in a library at once or unlock other metadata fields

I personally use show, seasonxx and fanart (all jpg format) and they work perfectly.

[smann]

I deleted and remade the library entirely earlier, which removes all those locked parameters. This is how it came back. Looking at the console when doing the Plex Dance, I see…

[0x7f51a4b5eb38] Debug — [HCl#be8f] HTTP requesting GET https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/2rTZrFxEXAb6y2Fwj5oHP2jOwhx.jpg

Which is the first poster on TMDB for this show. I don’t see anything in the console saying folder.jpg or any other indication that it’s even reading any local assets.

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Just did a thorough retest while playing around with naming, and it turns out that it’s entirely due to me having each episode in a folder within the season folder.

Example: Season 01 (2019)/S01E01 - 2 Weeks/Miracle Workers (2019) - S01E01 - 2 Weeks.mkv.

Moving a single episode in any season out of it’s subfolder and into it’s respective season folder makes it so Plex can find all of the artwork in every folder for that show.

In fact, with some testing, it looks like it doesn’t matter the naming scheme of the main folder, the season folder, nor the episode’s filename itself. It’s simply because the episodes are in a subfolder within their respective season folder.

The test was…

• Created a test structure: Miracle Workers (2019-Present)/Season 01 (2019)/S01E01 - 2 Weeks/Miracle-Workers-s01e01-2-Weeks.mkv
• Refreshed metadata returned the first poster from TMDB for the main poster
• Moved episode up 1 level without changing anything else: Miracle Workers (2019-Present)/Season 01 (2019)/Miracle-Workers-s01e01-2-Weeks.mkv
• Refreshed metadata returned all correct images, even one’s in a different season’s folder

Then I moved everything back the way it was and moved the folder.jpg into the Season 01 (2019) folder and that returned all correct images as well. So, it seems Plex seeks out the actual episode location as a base point and then uses 1 folder up from there to look for the main poster/background/etc. So it found the season##.jpg files where it was looking for the main folder.jpg, and it couldn’t find the season##.jpg within the current folder, so it skipped all of them. Which is weird as to how it was able to find all the other images for the other seasons and background with only 1 episode in the correct subfolder, as they were still in the old folder structure.

I understand what I have in the example isn’t exactly Plex’s naming standard, but it does appear to be a bug to me. The first folder within the library folder should house the main content for each movie/show, so I figured it would seek out the information from there on down, but it appears to work it’s way back from identifying an episode’s location. It would be great if Plex could implement a user-defined structure, or look for the images in all folders up until the library folder. Being able to store everything pertaining to a single episode in its own folder is super useful.

[smann]

Yes, I have. My naming works perfectly for what I need, and Plex can find all of my episodes just fine. As I said, the naming of the actual files and folders had no effect on the outcome here. It was the extra folder in the filepath that caused the issue for the images. It has no effect on Plex actually finding the playable media files themselves.

Edit: The post I was responding to above was apparently deleted.

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But this is why I think this is technically a minor bug (or at least a limitation) as Plex can only find the main poster and background images if they are 1 level above the episode’s media files. Otherwise it can’t find those image files at all, despite being in their respective show’s folder structure. It appears the season##.jpg images are working properly no matter which folder level they are at (probably because they are named season##, which is specific).