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[dreandre]

Hello team!

Time again to step up my learning!

My basic question is, how do you manage cover art and thumbnails for multi-season shows?

What I think i understand so far, is that MC will add a thumbnail to each episode, a season cover photo for each season, and a cover photo for the entire show....

On many of my shows this works behind the scenes and I don't have to worry about it.  One show in particular is unique and that is American Horror Story.  If you are not familiar with the show, each season is a stand-alone story arc, with it's own season name (i.e.  American Horror Story Season 1 is called Murder House, and Season 3 is called Coven, etc...)  When I display my shows, I would like to have each season display separately, which I have accomplished, but I can't get the right cover art to display, if any at all....


I've attached a screen shot of my MC view, and you can see and example of how I'm organizing, and what I would like to have happen with the cover art.

Thanks as always for taking the time to teach and explain!


Andre Banks!!

[RoderickGI]

First, MC doesn't handle Season names at all. Just Series and Episode names, and Season and Episode numbers.

Next, it is always best to follow whatever is done on TheTVDB, as that is where the data comes from for TV series. Mostly anyway.

So if you look at the American Horror Story record on TheTVDB, https://www.thetvdb.com/series/american-horror-story, and specifically say at the Season 1 details, https://www.thetvdb.com/series/american-horror-story/seasons/1, you will see there are various poster images available for the Season, and many have the Season name on them.

So, in Standard View, select the American Horror Story series thumbnail, right-click > Cover Art > Get from internet, then you will have the opportunity to select from the available Season Cover Art images for each Season. Pick one that includes the Season Name, such as "American Horror Story Murder House".

That is what I would do anyway. That way, in Theatre View, all of "American Horror Story" stays together as the one Series, under one thumbnail image, and under that each Season is displayed with its Season name in the Season thumbnail image.


Note: If you really wanted to see the Season name as text under the thumbnail, you would have to create a custom field, perhaps named [Season Name], and then edit the thumbnail text to display that field. But you would have to populate that custom field manually for all Episodes in a Season, and then use the text from an Episode for display. You can't save a [Season Name] just to a Season, because MC doesn't actually store any information by Season or Series. Everything is stored by file, which means Episode.

PS: Do you really use MC Standard View for playing TV Shows? Theatre View is so much better for displaying the Series/Season/Episode relationship. Standard View just shows a thumbnail for each Series, and the list of Episodes sorted, usually, by Season and then Episode number. Nowhere near as nice, but good for maintenance.

[ErikN]

Pull all the metadata from TVDB first using standard series, season, episode naming and then bulk change the Series, Season name to the organization you prefer. When you promote the Season into a unique Series you can just move/rename the thumbnail within MC's cover-art directory, i.e. from the Season directory into the properly named Series.

That being said, I would probably keep all AHS under the same Series. The standard Season field (and Episode for that matter) does not have to be a number. I frequently mix-and-match and have stuff like:
   1, 2, 3, ..., Specials, Interviews, Goofs, etc.

You could consider assigning Season:
   1-Murder House
   2-Asylum
    ...