Cinema online artwork
The cinema_provider_artwork job fills in the posters and backdrops your library has no file for, using artwork from online providers such as fanart.tv. It reaches them through Cardinal Cloud's Catalog, so it only runs once online artwork is turned on in the Admin Dashboard.
What it fills
| Item | Kinds |
|---|---|
| Movie | Poster, backdrop |
| Show | Poster, backdrop |
| Season | Poster |
Episodes are not filled: the providers have no episode stills.
Files on disk come first
The job runs after the cinema artwork thumbnails job and only fills a kind that job found nothing for. If you later add a poster.jpg beside a movie, the next run of the artwork thumbnails job replaces the online poster with yours. The backdrop stays online until you add one of those too.
Which items it can look up
The Catalog finds artwork by id, not by name, so an item needs an id it recognizes:
| Item | Id |
|---|---|
| Movie | A TMDB or IMDb id |
| Show and its seasons | A TVDB id |
Ids come from a movie's .nfo file, from tags in folder or file names such as {tmdb-603} or {tvdb-121361}, from tags embedded in the video file, and from match corrections. An item without one is skipped.
Which image it picks
For a poster, the job prefers English, then an image without text, then anything else. For a backdrop it prefers an image without text first, since text fights with whatever Cinema draws over it. Among equals, the image the provider's community likes most wins. To choose a different one, pick it from the item's page in Cardinal Cinema; a picked image is kept through re-indexing and never replaced by either job.
When it runs
The job starts on its own after any indexing run that indexed movies or TV, right behind the artwork thumbnails job, as long as online artwork is turned on. An item it has already asked about is not asked about again for a week, even when the Catalog had nothing for it, so repeat runs are cheap.
Downloaded images are kept on your server, in the cinema_artwork_originals folder of the app data directory, and rendered into the same sizes as artwork from files. Nothing is written next to your video files.
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