I’ve noticed a weird issue with the handling of the cover artwork with a specific set of functions on how it is being handled, specifically when iCloud sync is turned on.
At the end I have the details on how all of my files are configured, they are pretty much uniform for the most part.
The weird issue I’m having is how it handles the cover art when I have ‘use embedded metadata’ turned on along with iCloud sync.
I primarily use Infuse on my Apple TV, which for the most part is fine, the cover art pulls from the embedded cover.jpg that is embedded in the MKV file itself and uses that instead of the default one on TMDb (I can tell the difference because in my embedded files, I usually embed the ‘clean’ covers without actor names and other signage).
On the Apple TV when I have it grab the metadata, it grabs metadata fine from TMDb. When it configures the artwork, it will continue to use the embedded cover.jpg in the MKV file instead of the one from TMDb.
The problem happens when I open up the app on the iPhone or iPad. Although those devices have the same settings, sometimes on the iPhone it does not respect the ‘use embedded metadata’ rule and pulls the cover from TMDb anyway. Then when it does that, once it hits the iCloud sync, it then reconfigures the Apple TV artwork to use the TMDb image instead, so then the Apple TV artwork now displays the image I didn’t intend or want.
The only way I have found to correct it is to go on the Apple TV, edit metadata, then select ‘none - use embedded metadata’. That will reset the image to the embedded image. Then I can edit again and pick the metadata from TMDb to pull all of the other stuff, which it will then update while retaining the original embedded image. However this gets lost again later when opening it up on the iPhone again later.
Not sure what in the iCloud sync causes it to be wonky with the embedded artwork. I wonder if there is a way to see what causes it to do this. I would also wonder if maybe there could be a second option with the handling of embedded metadata, separating ‘artwork’ metadata and other metadata (such as the XML metadata). I would like to turn on to force to always use embedded artwork when available as cover.jpg and use TMDb for all other metadata, and only use TMDb for artwork if cover.jpg does not exist.
My current setup is the following:
Synced from Google Drive
App (pro subscription version) is installed on tvOS, iPhone, and iPad devices.
All devices have the following options configured: Metadata fetching OFF (was on but tested both off and on and same result), Embedded Metadata ON, iCloud sync ON
All files are MKV files.
All MKV files have cover.jpg and cover_land.jpg files embedded when muxed.
Some recent MKV files were optimized after muxed with mkclean prior to uploading (I’ve only recently started doing this to see if it helps with anything else, but issue happened before this too).
All MKV files were uploaded to Google Drive using the ‘Backup and Sync’ utility from Google.
All (or most) MKV files have chapters headers.
Some but not all MKV files have subtitles in SRT format only if embedded, most are not set by default and not forced unless required for simple translations.
Some MKV are x264, others are x265/HEVC.
Most MKVs do not have custom tags/XMLs embedded, most will get metadata details from TMDb (however all do have cover.jpg and cover_land.jpg as mentioned above).
Most file names are in a format like: Movie Title [2019, 1080p, x265].mkv
Files stream and play with Infuse through Google Drive with no issues at any point. Issue is only regarding cover art handling noted above. Everything else seems fine.