When adding a new TV show, the actors' pictures are changed to pictures from that show - everywhere, including their other shows and movies

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.13.5.5332
Player Version#: 3.65.1

Hi,

I hope someone can shed some light on what is happening here - I’m not entirely sure when this problem occurs and when it doesn’t. I’ll try to explain it as best I can.

Usually, actor pictures for my movies are from The Movie Database (I’m using Plex Movie as the Agent, and have set it to get the cast list from TMDB).
For TV shows, I don’t think there is any way to influence this, but actor pictures seem to either be the same as in their movies, or come from TVDB. I’m using TVDB as agent, but have enabled the others (including TMDB) as well.

Now, TVDB features actor pictures specifically from the show for many TV shows (in costume as their character, or stills from the show).
Recently I have noticed that when I add a new TV show, Plex will
a) populate the actor pictures with the ones from that show
b) change their pictures everywhere else to that picture as well.

For example, I added the show Band of Brothers this morning. The actors in that show, that used to have ‘normal’ pictures everywhere, are now featured with their Band of Brothers picture. That includes in other TV shows (for example, David Schwimmer in Friends), as well as Movies (James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender in X-Men: First Class). As you can see, the other actors’ pictures are normal.

I assume this is not intended behaviour, especially since it can be rather confusing particularly with more elaborate costumes and silly photos (this is Hugh Laurie in Blackadder… and now everywhere else, too). I’m also pretty sure this didn’t use to happen; at least actors that where in several shows/movies generally have/had their generic Movie Database picture.

I’m not 100% sure about when it happens and when it doesn’t. I am pretty confident though that at least for the last eight days, when adding a completely new show, the actors that TVDB has pictures from that show for are changed everywhere.

  • I added The Tudors about two weeks ago, and this didn’t change anything. While Henry Cavill appears in costume in the listing for the Tudors, his picture in all his movies is normal.
  • I’ve had the show The Hollow Crown forever, and everybody’s picture used to be fine. I did (I believe after the Tudors) move the files though (it still shows as having been added some time ago, so it wasn’t entirely re-added). After that, the actors photos changed. For example, Tom Hiddleston is now King Henry V everywhere, from The Night Manager to Thor Ragnarok; Die Hard with a Vengance has Jeremy Irons with his picture as as Henry IV. Patrick Stewart however has not been changed - the TVDB listing of The Hollow Crown doesn’t have a picture for him.
  • I added a few shows in the last couple of days (Easy was added eight days ago, Blackadder, Band of Brothers today), which have led to their actors’ pictures changing - only the ones where TVDB has show-specific pictures, of course.
  • I added several new Seasons to American Horror Story this morning - not completely new, but a change similar to the Hollow Crown? While the show has pictures from that show for most actors, their pictures in their movies are still normal (like with the Tudors).

Is this happening to other people as well?
Or if not, any idea why it’s happening to me - and how to change it back?

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There is only one record per Actor name in the database. Actor names and their pictures are not stored individually per tv show/movie.
So how an actor’s portrait looks like in Plex, depends on which tv show had its metadata fetched/refreshed last.

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But my point is that Plex is now behaving differently than it used to, and I don’t think this is the way it is intended. This is what I tried to explain with the examples above:

Firstly, with other shows where TVDB has show-specific pictures of the actors (Game of Thrones for example), Plex does and always has used normal pictures of the actors (see https://imgur.com/tIbbLlU), and not pictures from the show.
Secondly, there are several other shows (as I mentioned above) where Plex uses a show-specific picture in the overview of the show, but uses a normal picture for the actors movies. For example, this is the picture it pulls for Henry Cavill in The Tudors, whereas this is his normal picture that is used for movies.

Either version would be fine (using the generic picture everywhere, or using show-specific pictures only for that specific show).
I don’t know whether TVDB always provided different actor pictures for each show, and plex is only now starting to use them; or whether this was added to TVDB recently and that’s why Plex is not working consistently with it.
But either way, using show-specific pictures for all the actor’s movies just because that’s the last show that was added, did not use to happen until two weeks ago (for me), and is imo obviously not the intended behavior (since it looks plain stupid and is confusing for the user).

You probably also have at least one TV show where the actor pictures for that specific show would be easily identifiable, right? Something with recognizable/historic costumes, like Game of Thrones, Rome, Xena, The Tudors, The Borgias, Outlander, Peaky Blinders; or Sci-Fi like Firefly… anything like that? If so, could you check for me - does Plex use these show-specific pictures for you, or does it use normal ones? And if the former, does it use them for any of the actors’ movies as well?

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It has always been that way. Maybe you didn’t notice it until now.

No, you misremember that. Maybe you haven’t used TheTVDB at all and previously had your tv shows matched with the agent for TheMoviedatabase instead?

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No, actor information is completely separate between movies and tv shows.
This is btw. one of the reasons why you cannot filter on an actor and see both movies and tv show where he appears in.

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Plex does and always has used normal pictures of the actors

No, you misremember that. Maybe you haven’t used TheTVDB at all and previously had your tv shows matched with the agent for TheMoviedatabase instead?

I’m pretty sure I’ve never changed the agent, and that it has always been TVDB… With shows I added a longer while ago, Plex is not using show-specific pictures (like Game of Thrones for example). I’m not remembering this, I’m looking at Game of Thrones in my Plex and it still has normal pictures, and not the ones you can see on TVDB.
But who knows, maybe I did do something that changed this - lets put this aside, since that’s not really the problem:

And if the former, does it use them for any of the actors’ movies as well?

No, actor information is completely separate between movies and tv shows.
This is btw. one of the reasons why you cannot filter on an actor and see both movies and tv show where he appears in.

Well exactly this is the problem then! Because for me, it uses the pictures from these TV shows for the movies, which is why this is bothering me in the first place!

For example:
Die Hard With a Vengeance - Jeremy Irons’ picture is from The Hollow Crown, where he is Henry IV.
Empire of the Sun - Miranda Richardson’s photo is from the British show Blackadder, where she is Queen Elizabeth I.
And many more; specifically, everybody who was in one of the shows I added in the last two weeks (or the Hollow Crown, which I re-added).

This did definitely not happen with shows added before then, because as I noted above, while The Tudors shows pictures from the show, the actors pictures in their movies where not changed then.
I take it this change in the movies section is not happening for you, then? So it has to be some kind of problem with my Plex or my settings, no?

1 Like
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Please show me the Plex XML info of one of the episodes.

Please show me the Plex XML info of this movie as well.

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diehard.txt (9.0 KB)
got.txt (3.3 KB)

I didn’t even know about these files! That’s rather useful to have.
I’m not sure how it works with the TV episode, but for Die Hard, Jeremy Irons’ thumb does indeed point to the TVDB picture from The Hollow Crown.

Also, I’ve tried unmatching & rematching one of the movies (Empire of the Sun) in order to get it to reload all the metadata - and this worked. It also changed her picture everywhere though - in all her movies, as well as in the TV show (so she doesn’t appear as Elizabeth I in Blackadder anymore, either).
Unfortunately, it’s not really feasible to do that with every actor whenever I add a new show…
I’ve also done the same with one of the TV shows (The Night Manager, which has Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie, both of which’s pictures where changed to those from other shows). This did work in that it pulled pictures from The Night Manager for everyone (btw I had tried to just refresh the metadata, and that didn’t do the trick). However, it also changed their pictures to the ones from that show everywhere else (both TV and movies).

I’ve left GoT and Jeremy Irons alone of course, so those are still the same as in the XML files.

Thank you for all your help by the way! I really appreciate it.

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I was told that TheTVDB has changed their rules and they are slowly exchanging the role-specific portraits to generic ones.

Try this: empty out the agent cache of your server
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202967376-clearing-plugin-channel-agent-http-caches/
Do this while Plex server is shut down.

Afterwards, try refreshing metadata on an affected tv show.

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