Plex Blog

May 17, 2012

Making your TV shows look great in Plex

One recurring request we’ve gotten is to make it easier to add posters and background art to TV library sections, especially on Windows and Linux. In some cases, TheTVDB might not have a show, or maybe you want to create a completely custom section to organize your home videos into seasons and episodes. We just pushed a new Local Media Agent (which you’ll automatically get in the next few hours), that makes it really easy!

So what can you add to TV show sections?

  • Show posters: show.jpg
  • Show banners: banner.jpg
  • Show background art: art.jpg or background.jpg
  • Show theme music: theme.mp3
  • Season posters: seasonX.jpg
  • Season banners: seasonX-banner.jpg
  • Episode thumbs: match the filename of the episode file

You can also use PNG files, if you’re a “losslessite” (I’m sure you listen to FLACs too). One really cool feature is that you can actually have multiple elements; just name them suffixed like show-1.jpg, theme-2.mp3. For multiple season elements, use the suffix a, b, c, etc.

We’re also not incredibly strict about where you put these files, so here’s an example of what your structure could look like (in reality, I’m a total neat freak, I promise!):

TV sidecar media

Do that, and you’ll end up with something that looks like the image below. Pretty cool, right? We also fixed a few other bugs in the agent while we were at it:

  • NEW: Pick up genre in MP3 files.
  • FIX: Issue where different movie posters were picked up during each scan.
  • FIX: A stray folder.jpg file could apply to every movie in a folder.

Plex Media Manager 3

The Best of Plex

Plex Pass gives you exclusive access to awesome new features and apps.

Learn More

The Best of Plex

Making your TV shows look great in Plex is a premium feature and requires a Plex Pass subscription.

Learn More