I was wondering what the best size that gives the least zoom would be?
For example I chose this 1920x1080 and it zoomed in a lot:
Also. I don’t know if you notice but the logo is incorrect. The movie is just called Neighbors. But there’s a lot of incorrect logos.
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Basically. In the Plex Movie Page. It looks really good.
Yeah logos are abizmal check this:
Dimensions won’t change anything and backgrounds / backdrops will always remain at a 16-9 aspect ratio, no matter if Plex tries to reinvent the wheel for absolutely no good reason. 16-9 is the standard used absolutely everywhere, period.
The new app is just poorly designed and crops the backdrops just because… they thought it looked cool, I guess, but it simply doesn’t work and makes sourcing and / or designing new visual material with centred content an unnecessary and unwelcome hassle. No to say that it is pure nonsense.
In your example, it’s not at all about dimensions or a different aspect ratio, it’s still heavily cropped 16-9, they are just using a totally different backdrop image with the guys more close to each other at the center.
There is absolutely no need to crop the images to fade them in the background at the bottom by the way.
I’m talking about it here, with many mockup examples.
I mean we shouldn’t really have to talk about this, as you say 16:9 is standard it seems strange to mess it up just because.
Thanks for the info, great write up by the way.
Yeah so it seems like Plex uses images that are square. 1400x1400, 2000x2000 or 3000x3000 if you’re editing your artwork through Plex Dash.
I’ve selected a bunch of different sizes/aspect ratios and I’ve been able to match the search result movie page and my server images exactly.
So regarding the images I attached, I chose a different image just to show the zoom. So now knowing that the images are square in Plex Dash I selected the square image (3000x3000) for neighbors and it matches perfect.
Plex doesn’t use square images and Plex Dash doesn’t provide any material by itself, it’s only a tool. It aggregates material from different databases (Plex itself, TMDB, TVDB, …), so if you found some square material anywhere in there, it’s likely because someone uploaded it where he shouldn’t have (to my knowledge, there isn’t any newly available category to upload square material), thinking it was OK, just to accommodate that new mobile layout. And it’s likely that it will be removed. I don’t believe this is what happened though, as I think you just got confused.
And all this for a simple reason: square material will not work on TV / desktop clients / anything that is not a mobile device as it’s still 16-9 that it is displayed (cropped too because they like to crop things for no reason but keeping the 16-9 aspect ratio this time).
Plus, I at least, can’t find any square material for any content I own on Plex Dash. It’s still all 16-9 for backdrops and 2-3 for posters.
Can you provide a screenshot of that backdrop selection screen in Plex Dash, showing that square backdrop? The “original” one supposedly coming from Plex, not the one you are apparently using locally now.
Edit
So, I went to find that background image by myself directly on the movie page on Plex.tv and examined the source and like I said, no surprise, it is not a square. See by yourself:
Here is the link.
It’s still 16-9.
So I strongly advice you to no start replacing all your backdrops with square images. This is a terrible idea. If anything, join the calls for Plex to redesign the nonsensical layout of its app.
Although I agree with you and I have every movie in my library with hand picked backgrounds of 1920x1080 so it looked good on TV.
For some reason, and I’m not sure where they get pulled from but square images are starting to appear (which I never seen before). When selecting the square image, it matches exact to the iOS app layout that Plex is using, but looks like trash on the TV. I’m not changing anything until they figure it out.
Plex Dash:
Thanks for the answer and, well, that is weird…
After digging a little bit longer, I do confirm that I indeed also find some square backdrops now…
What a mess they are doing…
Wondering if they realise themselves…
I doubt it, probably not, as this is all pure nonsense and unnecessary.
I suspect some kind of automatic new file generation with converted aspect ratio / cropping now when people change a backdrop from Plex Dash (you can also find those square pictures from within the desktop app after that but I doubt anything happens here in the first place, I don’t see why it would), maybe, as there are sometimes multiple occurrences of the exact same square backdrop and…
Yeah, I don’t know…
Or maybe they are populating that themselves, maybe even with the help of some AI…
But that’s a mess, that’s for sure, both technically and in the (lack of) communication.
There’s definitely not a single thing ready and well thought in this new experience.
Had a look at this myself after seeing your posts and I now see square versions among the options for every show I checked. Wonder if they are auto generated as you said or storing them when someone crops one in Plex dash. One thing for sure - they all look pretty terrible and will not work at all on anything other than mobile devices. No idea if they will be using the square ones as defaults. I hope not.
Either way I generally have curated backdrops applied automatically to most shows with a combination of Kometa and MediUX yaml and it’s just another infuriating design choice if they’re going to make people’s curated art look trash just to fit their non-standard mobile implementation. There was another forum post here a few days ago where someone did some great mockups showing the issue and also how they could easily make it to just properly display the 16:9 images correctly on mobile.
Agree with everything you just said. And same, I only use curated, often custom made or cleaned (I’ve been working in picture editing for twenty years now) local assets, posters and backdrops, and I even store logos now even if they are not used yet. And I share my work on TMDB. And I will not go through editing everything again to accommodate this nonsense.
And yup, that was me. 
This is the most noticable failed execution. Every movie I go into the poster background is just… Awful to look at.
This still isn’t fixed.
You don’t have to accomodate anything. You are doing it right. I know because my approach regarding artwork is the same.
Plex UI/UX designers just have to realize that cropping a background - and thus, desecrating carefully curated artwork - is not how it’s done. At least not in a professional way.
