Managing Your Artwork - jbinkley60/MezzmoKodiPlugin GitHub Wiki
Last updated February 19, 2025
Mezzmo and the Mezzmo Kodi addon have a rich set of tools to help you manage your Mezzmo artwork. Like your media, metadata and similar Mezzmo manages artwork centrally and serves it to Kodi via the Mezzmo Kodi addon. This combination means that you can easily manage your artwork in one location with a powerful set of tools and avoid some of the labor intensive and complexities of managing artwork natively within Kodi.
Basic Setup
The Managing Your Library Wiki page introduces how to add content to your Mezzmo library, which is the first step. Mezzmo has its own builtin scrapers to grab the initial artwork for video and music media. Mezzmo has settings for managing the source of the scraping (i.e. from the scraper sites, from local artwork, scraping from files and similar. These settings can be found in the Metadata Retrieval Settings in Mezzmo. I would recommend you start with the default settings until you get comfortable with the other options and your specific use cases. The next thing to consider is the size of your artwork images. These too are managed centrally in Mezzmo with the Streaming Options settings. I leave the default setting for backdrops and set the poster size to 360x360 but you can set it larger. You can manage the artwork size for Kodi within its advanced settings tools and the texture cache is cleared every 30 minutes by the Mezzmo Kodi addon to ensure you get current updated artwork.
Artwork locations
Mezzmo stores and serves all artwork centrally. This means no more fiddling with artwork on each Kodi device or worrying about an Internet site changing its artwork. You retain full control and no longer need to worry about changing or missing artwork from the scraper artwork sites. Also with local artwork hosting performance is blazing fast without Internet download delays.
The Mezzmo Kodi addon will fetch the artwork from the Mezzmo server and insert it into Kodi as needed as part of its background sync process. Mezzmo stores artwork in 3 central folders on the server based upon the Mezzmo database location under the Mezzmo General Setings .
| Artwork Folder | Artwork types and description |
|---|---|
| \Artwork\Poster | Poster and folder artwork managed by Mezzmo's scrapers and database |
| \Artwork\Backdrop | Backdrop artwork managed by Mezzmo's scrapers and database |
| Artwork\UserPoster | User and third party tool managed artwork. See UserPoster and Kodi Additional Artwork |
UserPoster
Have you ever had actor / actress images which have been scraped from the Internet database sites where you just don't like the image which was retrieved ? Or have you struggled to determine which actors / actresses in your library have images and which ones don't ? If so, Mezzmo has a feature called UserPoster. Essentially it provides the ability to override actor / actress images which have been scraped by Mezzmo. In the Mezzmo database Artwork folder structure there are two folders called Poster and UserPoster. Poster is managed by Mezzmo and UserPoster is where you can place images which will override Poster images. So, for instance, if an actor image is found in UserPoster and an image for the same actor is found in Poster, Mezzmo will serve the UserPoster image to the clients. In this way you will always be certain which image the clients see even if it changes on the Internet or similar.
I've written a separate tool which will compare what is in Poster and UserPoster against the Mezzmo database so you can more easily manage your artwork. It also allows you to continually download new actor / actress artwork without rescraping the media in your library. It is far superior, easier to use and faster than any other Kodi scraper / artwork tool available.
Here's a sample screenshot of the Mezzmo Artwork Checker in action:
Kodi Additional Artwork
Beginning with Mezzmo Kodi Addon version 2.2.0.7 a new setting was added called Kodi Additional Artwork. This feature leverages the UserPoster feature to add support for additional artwork types which Kodi supports. The Kodi additional artwork feature currently just supports additional movie artwork. If there is interest for other media types they can be added upon request.
| Artwork Type | UserPoster Artwork Naming Standard |
|---|---|
| banner | movie-title-banner.jpg (or .png) |
| clearart | movie-title-clearart.png |
| clearlogo | movie-title-clearlogo.png |
| discart | movie-title-discart.png |
| keyart | movie-title-keyart.jpg |
| landscape | movie-title-landscape.jpg |
When you update artwork in the UserPoster folder it immediately becomes available to all Kodi instances. No other scraping or changes are needed. If the Kodi textures cache is causing the changes not to be seen immediately you can either wait for the 30 minute Kodi cache clear function of the Mezzmo Kodi Addon or you can clear it immediately via the Mezzmo Context Menu.
Here is an example of the additional artwork for the movie "The Avengers"
and here is how it looks within Kodi itself from the CSV Export of artwork:
The URL column indicates the various artwork filenames that Kodi and the Mezzmo server will be looking for in the UserPoster folder. The artwork filename will be after the imagesearch= portion of the URL with the actual filename in the UserPoster folder having a dash (-) instead of a plus sign (+). Otherwise they are identical. The Mezzmo Kodi Addon handles inserting the additional artwork entries in the Kodi database automatically. You don't need to do anything.
Here's how it looks in Kodi:
Kodi Additional Artwork notes:
- Most users are unlikely to use this feature so the default addon setting is disabled
- If you change the addon setting from disabled to enabled a full sync is required for the new URLs to sync to Kodi
- Mezzmo Kodi addon version 2.2.0.7 and Mezzmo version 6.0.7.25 and higher are required to leverage this feature
- If you are unclear on the exact name for a specific piece of artwork you can do a CSV Export of the Art table and see the naming in Kodi.
- Multiple fanart and backdrop images currently are not supported. They can be added is there is enough demand.
- If you are running multiple Kodi clients off of Mezzmo with the Mezzmo Kodi Addon they don't need to be the same version of Kodi and you can mix / match the Kodi Additional Artwork setting. This setting doesn't need to be the same on all clients.
Finding Missing Artwork
In addition to the Mezzmo Artwork Checker tool to help you automatically manage and find new / missing actor / actress artwork, beginning with version 2.2.0.7 of the Mezzmo Kodi addon there is a new feature which will log missing media artwork during the sync process. If artwork managed by Mezzmo that is in the poster and backdrop folders is missing and is supposed to sync to Kodi, the Mezzmo Kodi addon will log the missing artwork in the sync logs.
Finding Missing Artwork Notes
Finding Missing Artwork is limited to Movies, Music Videos and Episodes.
You can match the Movie, Music Video and Episode numbers by exporting the corresponding table with the CSV Export Tool
Local Artwork Files
Mezzmo supports local artwork files which can be added into the same folders as your media. Unlike Kodi you don't put them in separate subfolders. Mezzmo will see them and use them as part of its metadata scraping process as long as you have the scraper enabled for use them under Metadata Retrieval Settings. You need to enable the Get artwork From External Files option.
I typically use this for TV Series but rarely for movies. When you add a poster file, fanart or folder to a folder for Mezzmo to scrape Mezzmo copies it into the artwork locations folders described above (based upon the image resolution settings described above) and the original artwork is no longer used unless you rescrape your library with a maintenance function or similar. For TV series I will place a poster, folder and fanart file in the series folder and each season folder. That way I am ensured that each episode will have the same artwork. Note that when you browse your Mezzmo library from Kodi you will not see the artwork files listed, only your media files.
For example here is a TV series season with the local artwork files:
But when browsing the season from Kodi the artwork files are not listed
Get Metadata and Artwork
Suppose you want to get new metadata and artwork for a movie. This is easily done via the properties tab within Mezzmo when positioned on the specific movie you want to update.
When you click on properties and scroll to the bottom you will see a Get Online Video Metadata button
This instructs Mezzmo to go to the scraper site and fetch current information. You will be asked to confirm whether you want to search for a TV Show or a movie and the title. Mezzmo search based upon the title and type.
Mezzmo will present the search results. The Search results 1/x will tell you how many title matches were found and you can use the navigation arrows to scroll through each title until you find the correct one. Hitting OK will then update the library item in Mezzmo. The image checkbox must be checked if you want to update the artwork. Hitting cancel maintain the current artwork and metadata for the library item.
Artwork Locking
Have you ever gotten your library to a point where you want it and then a change is made on one of the Internet sites like TMDB, IMDB etc. and the next thing you know your metadata isn't how you wanted it ? If so, Mezzmo offers a couple of solutions. First, you can use NFO files or other external metadata but that may not always help with artwork changes and requires a lot more maintenance. Another way to do this in Mezzmo is to lock the metadata so that Mezzmo will not scrape it again once you have it how you want. This can be accomplished by simply clicking the lock icon on your content. This can be performed on an item by item basis or you can select a group of items or an entire playlist using the Multi-selecting / Bulk Changes feature described here.
The lock icon is at the top right when viewing a media item's properties. It will appear closed when it is locked and open when it is not. Locking will prevent Mezzmo maintenance and scraping from updating your metadata and artwork. However, even when an item is locked you can still perform a manual Get Metadata and Artwork described above without unlocking the media item.