Emby Low Quality Posters / Video Thumbnail Generation Failure

[JsinFate 33]

Hi guys,
For the past several weeks I've been having issues with Emby fetching movie / TV posters and not generating video thumbnail chapter images for newly added tv shows. 

I am having this issue on both of my Emby installations. 

1. When I add a new movie, Emby is downloading the worst possible quality poster. Most of the time it's 200 x 300. A lot of times it skips downloading the backgrounds. 

2. For TV shows, it is no longer generating images for each Episode OR Chapters in the episode. It uses the "Thumb" for these. 

To make things even more confusing, the Movies seem to generate the chapter thumbnails properly. Only TV Shows seem to be using the "Thumb" . 
I thought there used to be a setting in the Fetcher Settings to download highest rated images first, but I can't find it or it seems to be missing. 

I'm attaching screen shots of newly added movies that Emby chose the lowest quality posters, a screen shot of a TV show to show you the thumb being used for chapters and episode images. 

Attaching 2 logs, embylog and image log. 

Oh, I have also completely refreshed my TV Show library replacing all metadata and images TWICE. I have triple checked my library settings, fetcher settings and compared them to my Movies library settings. I have also ran the scheduled task 3 times to generate video thumbnails for chapters. 

embyserver.txt extract-multi-image-644781F6C4DD_1.txt

Edited Monday at 06:31 PM by JsinFate
Removed PGP Key

[JsinFate 33]

UPDATE: I just added 2 episodes of American Dad! and neither of them used the episode or chapter images. The rest of the season did when  I added them weeks ago.

[Luke 42612]

Quote

1. When I add a new movie, Emby is downloading the worst possible quality poster. Most of the time it's 200 x 300. A lot of times it skips downloading the backgrounds. 

Hi there, what metadata and image fetchers are enabled on the library, and in what order?

[Luke 42612]

Quote

2. For TV shows, it is no longer generating images for each Episode OR Chapters in the episode. It uses the "Thumb" for these. 

Did you enable the spoiler feature in your user settings?

[JsinFate 33]

It was enabled. I don't remember turning it on but that was it. 

Why would turning on the spoiler setting cause the chapter images not to generate and the episode thumbnails to not work?

I still have the issue of Movies always downloading the worst Posters.

[Luke 42612]

Hi, did you read the help text underneath the option?

[JsinFate 33]

I did, but it only says it hides the "image" and "overview" for unwatched episodes. I can see that "overview" is the episode summary but I didn't realize that it prevented both episode thumbnail and chapter images. 

Once I get home I will post screen shots of my Movies library settings and fetcher settings. 

[Luke 42612]

The text will be updated to also indicate chapter images. Thanks.

[JsinFate 33]

Here are screen shots of my Movies Library settings and image fetcher settings.

I added the movie Madman this morning and I just checked the poster and it is tiny, 200 x 300. The other images seem fine though. 

 

[Luke 42612]

Did you compare to what images your highest priority image fetcher has?

[Lessaj 516]

I think OMDB images are generally small. Try putting TMDB at the top and refresh metadata+images.

[JsinFate 33]

@Luke& @Lessaj I think you both solved it. I looked at my Movie library settings and for some reason OMDB was first in both metadata and image settings. I always have them at the bottom. I have no idea how it got to be top priority. I'm refreshing metadata for several shows and movies. 

I have a feeling you both are right. Sadly, that means I will need to refresh all metadata for all of my movies and shows to make sure the issue is fixed.

I'll let you know  how it goes.

Thank you both!

[JsinFate 33]

@Luke& @Lessaj I think you both solved it. I looked at my Movie library settings and for some reason OMDB was first in both metadata and image settings. I always have them at the bottom. I have no idea how it got to be top priority. I'm refreshing metadata for several shows and movies. 

I have a feeling you both are right. Sadly, that means I will need to refresh all metadata for all of my movies and shows to make sure the issue is fixed.

I'll let you know  how it goes.

Thank you both!

[JsinFate 33]

Okay! You both were correct! I still have some Movie and TV images to manually fix but those were the solutions. Thank you so much guys!

This is why I LOVE Emby. Great software and great community.

[JsinFate 33]

On 6/22/2026 at 11:42 AM, JsinFate said:

Hi guys,
For the past several weeks I've been having issues with Emby fetching movie / TV posters and not generating video thumbnail chapter images for newly added tv shows. 

I am having this issue on both of my Emby installations. 

1. When I add a new movie, Emby is downloading the worst possible quality poster. Most of the time it's 200 x 300. A lot of times it skips downloading the backgrounds. 

2. For TV shows, it is no longer generating images for each Episode OR Chapters in the episode. It uses the "Thumb" for these. 

To make things even more confusing, the Movies seem to generate the chapter thumbnails properly. Only TV Shows seem to be using the "Thumb" . 
I thought there used to be a setting in the Fetcher Settings to download highest rated images first, but I can't find it or it seems to be missing. 

I'm attaching screen shots of newly added movies that Emby chose the lowest quality posters, a screen shot of a TV show to show you the thumb being used for chapters and episode images. 

Attaching 2 logs, embylog and image log. 

Oh, I have also completely refreshed my TV Show library replacing all metadata and images TWICE. I have triple checked my library settings, fetcher settings and compared them to my Movies library settings. I have also ran the scheduled task 3 times to generate video thumbnails for chapters. 

embyserver.txt 1.6 MB · 2 downloads extract-multi-image-644781F6C4DD_1.txt 19.86 kB · 2 downloads

I can't find a way to edit my original post to add a summary.

 

FIX:

For bad quality movie posters, somehow OMDB was selected FIRST in the image downloader settings for some reason. I disabled it and moved TMDB to top position.

For TV show images showing only the image thumbs instead of the video chapter images and season images, somehow the option under Settings > Display > Hide spoiler information for unwatched shows was enabled. Disabled this and all TV shows are working properly.  Thank you to @Lukefor suggesting this. 

[GrimReaper 5023]

7 minutes ago, JsinFate said:

I can't find a way to edit my original post to add a summary.

You can't, there's a 3 hrs time-limit on edit for your Member group. 

 

[JsinFate 33]

1 minute ago, GrimReaper said:

You can't, there's a 3 hrs time-limit on edit for your Member group. 

 

Thank makes sense. Thank you for letting me know, I appreciate it!