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[anrobr]

Just started using MC17 this past week.  Slowly been figuring out how to get it set up and love the flexibility it has.  Things like getting DTS HD working, using the scripting engine to create a "home theater experience" script, importing my home theater room's convolution file, etc etc....this software can do everything with a little work....except

store video cover art and background files in a location of your choosing?  I won't get into the irrelevant back story of why I want to choose where they are stored.

I read the cover art wiki page, and read most of the forum posts linked at the bottom, and while I think I have determined the answer to the next question (no), I will ask anyhow in case I am missing something....

With a simple yes or no, is it possible to store the video cover art and backgrounds somewhere other than the location of the video file itself?  (like the audio files cover art are stored)
If that answer is yes, can someone please point me in the right direction? 

If this has been answered already with a simple yes or no, I apologize.  I love this software so far and am trying to make it work for my situation, but mucking up my video folders with other stuff would be a deal breaker.

Thanks in advance for help

[MrC]

I believe the answer is generally No.

Video cover art is always stored next to the file using the same filename as the video, except for read-only media where it is not possible to write the cover art file on the media.

[anrobr]

Thank you for your quick reply. 
My videos are stored on a network share where I have the shares as read only so this would be similar however I still cannot get MC to store the art elsewhere. 
Bummer really as I either have to live with no cover art or try different software on account of this.  Funny really, this software can leap boulders for most things, yet is tripped up by pebble.

Again thanks.

[anrobr]

I was able to partially solve the problem of storing cover art JPGs and sidecar XML files somewhere other than with your video files.  

Limitations:
1) Have to be local files...cannot be network shares  (more on that at bottom)
2) Has to be done on same hard disk as video files.

That said, here is what you are going to be doing.....
1) You will create a directory on the hard drive called "CoverArt" or whatever... ex  c:\CoverArt
2) In that directory you will make what are called Hard Links to the real video files.  This can be done with the cmd line tool MKLINK or others found online.
    Let's do an example:  Say your original file is c:\movies\Joe Dirt.mkv.  At the command line (or other tools you may find online) you create the link by
    typing MKLINK /h "c:\movies\Joe Dirt.mkv" "c:\CoverArt\Joe Dirt.mkv"  (a person could use a batch tool to do this for all files in a location etc)

    This will make Joe Dirt.mkv show up in your CoverArt directory even though it isn't there...it is really still in Movies...
    CAUTION:  Make sure you understand hard links before performing file actions as you don't want to delete your original files on accident

3) When you have done this with all the files you want in your Library, then remove the c:\Movies directory from your MC17 library (if you already have them imported), and import the CoverArt directory instead.
    When MC saves the cover art and sidecar files it will be in this directory, however the original Movies directory will not have the cover art and sidecar files saved in it.....

A person should read about Links a bit before trying this....but it does work and preserves your original directory's integrity.  
To use this on network shares, you must perform the above on the computer hosting the network share.  Then you share the CoverArt directory over the network to MC instead.  

Finally, I did this to my own library...it works on my library.  I posted what I did.  I will not be responsible for anyone else messing up their library trying this.  
If there is more interest in this, I will write a better, more detailed how-to.

I normally wouldn't go to the effort to make a messy workaround for something of this nature, however the rest of this software is just so head and shoulders above the alternatives that I decided it was worth it.  Hopefully future versions will allow the same flexibility in choosing our video cover art locations that is offered by just about everything else in this software.