FileBot

Hi, I was using filebot a while ago and recently created a media archive again so came back to test and see if filebot covers my needs. When I pull fanart for a movie I now only get one fanart image, when I used filebot previously I was able to get a separate folder containing all the fanart images for the film. This was very useful as the default fanart is almost always terrible (usually a big splashscreen with the movie name in huge writing as if you couldn't work out what film you were looking at from the poster image, or even worse when the main fanart image it pulls is just a few actors stood in cheesy poses that has nothing to do with the actual film at all - not even a scene from the film!), was great that I could get what I wanted quickly and easily without having to manually visit TMDB to download a replacement - kind of makes the filebot automation pointless if there's still lots of manual downloading from TMDB website required 95% of the time... Sometimes I swap the fanart as well so having them all in one folder is a real time saver.

I asked around various friends who also loved that feature and seems it's been broken for quite a while?, did the command change and none of us have managed to find the right value or is it really still broken? Given the number of people I know who really want this to work there's certainly demand for fixing this, there must be many more disappointed users out there that I don't know personally as well if there's no currently working option for this. Previously you could use --def extras=y for it.

I also noticed when downloading images and NFOs for TV show episodes I can't find any option to download the episode images, there must be an option somewhere as it can download everything else but I simply can't find it, could you please let me know what command should be used to pull those? Would be incredibly time consuming to have to manually download those even though everything else gets pulled (imagine manually downloading these for a long running show with many hundreds of episodes like The Simpsons or Family Guy!), for example see image from Family Guy S01E01:
https://artworks.thetvdb.com/banners/ep ... 181115.jpg

If I can find a fix for those two then I think I've managed to find commands that do everything I'd need to which would be great, I did have a look around but couldn't find the commands for these myself, hopefully someone better informed can let me know the correct current commands to use.

Thanks

What command are you currently using?

After a bit of searching, there seems to have been a --def extras parameter in the artwork.* scripts that was removed some 5 years ago. Looking at the code it seems to have been primarily about just dumping the entire artwork collection. Presumably hundreds of files per movie / series. That doesn't quite sound like what you are trying to do? If batch downloading all artwork without limitation is indeed what you're looking for then the code for that would be just a few lines as user-defined script. Nobody has asked for that in recent years so there's no copy & paste code at this point in time.

TMDB does support artwork ratings and FileBot will tend to choose the highest rated one. Few people rate artwork so if you choose to add your rating then there's a good chance that FileBot will pick that in the future. Maybe try positively rating the backdrops you like? That'll make things work better for everyone.




Maybe you can provide a specific sample file path as text where you're not getting good artwork for whichever command you're currently running?

e.g. processing Alias.1x01.mkv with --apply artwork nfo thumbnail (see --apply post-processing features) adds fine artwork as far as I can tell:

I typed out a little custom post-processing script to get a conversation started:
But looking at the result, I don't find it very useful as you probably won't ever need the vast majority of artwork files if you decide to download all artwork, and in this case it's just the posters section:





There might be a better way to get the artwork you want. Maybe the Top 3 rated posters will be good enough? Maybe you prefer posters without any text?

Hi,
Sorry for late reply, these are what I've been using.

New TV show first time run (pulls some overall series images and tvshow.nfo): New TV show episode (renames media as I specified): New TV show episode (run immediately after tv_shows.groovy to pull TV show episode NFO) New Movie (pull images and NFO, as mentioned --def extras=y now doesn't look to do anything):
These all work fine but running tv_shows.groovy and nfo.groovy between them will only rename and get NFO for the individual tv episode, artwork.tvdb just works at a high level to get the basic overall posters etc but doesn't do anything for individual TV episodes. I'm looking for the missing piece which is to also pull the individual TV episode images, as an example see below Family Guy link then click into one of the episodes, like 'Death Has a Shadow' for S01E01, at the top of the screen next to the TV episode title and plot is the TV episode image in the top left corner, this is what I need to pull. With previously used options these would be downloaded and saved with an extension of ".videoimage.jpg" (example "Family Guy S01E01.videoimage.jpg"), I was expecting filebot could easily grab these like all the others but this seems to be the only image filebot can't get unless I missed something obvious?

https://www.thetvdb.com/series/family-g ... official/1
Actual image I'd want to save as Family Guy S01E01.videoimage.jpg: https://artworks.thetvdb.com/banners/ep ... 181115.jpg

That post-processing script looks promising if I could swap poster for fanart and have it just pull all the fanart images to a folder? Was only really the fanart images I was after although I can see occasions where the poster pulls could be useful (where it pulls a poster with actors names or reviews in the image, I prefer a clean look).

How would I go about utilising this post processing script in the above command I'd use for pulling movie images and NFO, do I need to paste that somewhere into a local copy of artwork.tmdb or do I need to save it as a groovy file and run it directly after artwork.tmdb (probably better option?)


I guess that must be why --def extras=y on artwork.tmdb stopped working if you removed code but I'm not sure who said it was rarely used and certainly something we'd love back again, was something I was definitely using before and many friends I know were as well but they're not the type to join forums or create any noise (I probably set it up for them which would explain why they all said same sort of time it stopped when I asked around), it was definitely working for a lot longer than that though, all rather odd... I do rate the artwork I like on TMDB but it seems more people prefer what I consider really bad artwork, just fighting a losing battle there!


Thanks for the help with this, feels like I'm really close...

You seem to be using a couple of custom *.groovy scripts. Presumably, you needed something more than filebot -rename for some reason. If you could share those *.groovy scripts then I might have a better idea as to what that something might be.


As far as I can tell, nowadays a simple filebot -rename command with --apply artwork nfo thumbnail will do everything you need:

rednoah wrote: ↑13 Jul 2025, 18:51 e.g. processing Alias.1x01.mkv with --apply artwork nfo thumbnail (see --apply post-processing features) adds fine artwork as far as I can tell:

Console Output: Select all

$ filebot -rename *.mkv --db TheMovieDB::TV --output . --format "{plex.id}" --apply artwork nfo thumbnail
Rename episodes using [TheMovieDB] with [Airdate Order]
Lookup via [Alias] [Alias]
Fetching episode data for [Alias]
* Alias [2046] | 105 episodes | 1x01-22 .. 2x01-22 .. 3x01-22 .. 4x01-22 .. 5x01-17
[MOVE] from [Alias.1x01.mkv] to [TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/Season 01/Alias - S01E01 - Truth Be Told.mkv]
[ARTWORK] https://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/tv/75930/seasonthumb/Alias.jpg (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/Season 01/landscape.png)
[ARTWORK] https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/MasKO3CnMXL5rMGnBrV583y2mB.jpg (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/poster.jpg)
[ARTWORK] https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/4eufRkflTkrmmONcswo02A4S6en.jpg (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/backdrop.jpg)
[ARTWORK] https://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/tv/75930/hdclearart/alias-51bcfd1b24e30.png (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/clearart.png)
[ARTWORK] https://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/tv/75930/hdtvlogo/alias-503c0da536819.png (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/logo.png)
[ARTWORK] https://assets.fanart.tv/fanart/tv/75930/tvthumb/alias-4ead42d3e7c64.jpg (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/landscape.png)
[NFO] TheMovieDB::TV::2046 (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/tvshow.nfo)
[THUMBNAIL] https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/6SnHJxvJ4R0rfaHZ36lK655Gzd4.jpg (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/Season 01/Alias - S01E01 - Truth Be Told.mkv)
[THUMBNAIL] 1280x720 (TV Shows/Alias {tmdb-2046}/Season 01/Alias - S01E01 - Truth Be Told.jpg)
Processed 1 file

The console output can be read as follows:
* -rename renames / organizes files according to --db TheMovieDB::TV and --format "{plex.id}" as usual
* --apply artwork generates the poster.jpg / backdrop.jpg from --db TheMovieDB::TV and clearart.png / logo.png / landscape.png artwork from fanart.tv
* --apply nfo generates the series-level tvshow.nfo file
* --apply thumbnail generates the episode-level Alias - S01E01 - Truth Be Told.jpg file (NOTE: this is the missing piece you are looking for)


Please read the console log above line by line and let me know if this is what you're trying to do, and if not, how so?




Looking at the 5 year old code, all that the --def extras=y option did was dumping hundreds of images per movie, only posters and backdrops, notably no "fanart" from fanart.tv as far as I can tell, definitely no .videoimage.jpg files either since official episode-level thumbnail support wasn't introduced until 2024.

I have a feeling that we could find a really good solution for your specific needs if you could explain your needs in detail. I have a feeling that dumping hundreds of images per movie is not actually what you need. Maybe having 10 extra posters / backdrops locally to choose from is more like it? Maybe you prefer no-text backdrops? Maybe you prefer images of a specific size? Maybe you prefer artwork from fanart.tv instead? (NOTE: if you could answer each of these questions, that would get a conversation going)