TV Show Art / Thumbnails Missing On IOS 8

Thanks for persevering, markr... I'm glad they're getting enough complaints to do something about it.

I have ripped many of my DVDs into iTunes. I experienced the generic/missing artwork once updating to iOS 8. I have found that for movies, the artwork size must be 667px x 1000px, rbg, and saved as a jpg. Once applied to the movie in iTunes, then re-synced to your iOS device, you will see the artwork in the thumbnail view. Why Apple hasn't addressed this yet is puzzling, as the generic icons really muck up the beauty of iOS.

Hey Ron

Your solution is the only one that works for producing thumbnails for movies on my IPad. Although the proportions of the thumbnail are a bit off (being stretched vertically) at least there's no longer that awful grey rectangle. Thanks a lot! The strange thing is that my TV shows and home videos all show artwork in the correct horizontal format without having to resize, although individual TV episodes are still grey. We will have to wait until Apple properly sorts this out.

Do you have any advice for music video's? I tried your exact advice RonFlaviano and still have no thumbnails... thanks.

Summary: (from others and my experiments)

(1) Movie covers seem to require a rotated Aspect Ratio (rAR=y/x, aka portrait) between 1.33 to 1.78? Actual pixel counts don't seem to be the issue...

(2) Series seem to require square covers, again actual pixel counts not critical. Portrait artwork is ignored in iOS 8. If no cover artwork, a snapshot from the content is used... Episodic snapshots still not generated!

(3) Music videos - only had a single problem. Resolved by re-compressing with dimensions divisible by 16... Don't know if it was the re-compression or the dimensions that resolved the problem...

(4) Keep a pre-12.0 version of iTunes around - it seems you'll need it!

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Requesting Apple to Fix: (in priority)

(1) TV series cover artwork should be allowed to be portrait!

This is crucial - I use series for Documentaries, they always have portrait (DVD cover) artwork;

Others have expressed the desire to use their better DVD artwork!

(2) Individual Series episodes should still get a snapshot in the entry

(or at least it should be published how to re-enable episode artwork);

(3) Rules for movie cover rAR should be loosened again...

(4) I do not plan to update iPad to iOS 8 until this is further resolved

(and probably MacBook Pro to Yosemite) Please FIX IT.

Anything missing?

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Details:

Early in 1st gen iPhone I got stung with an update that corrupted my Microsoft Office Outlook DB. Took many hours to fix! Learned to wait a while... Last weekend finally upgraded one device (iPhone) to iOS 8.1.2. Although disappointed in certain features still missing, the only major problem so far is the video covers, and found your forum comments very helpful! Here's what I think is happening:

Movies:

I noticed that most failures were old B&W movies... The cover art was often of 'video tapes' - tall and narrow artwork. Led to study rotated Aspect Ratio (rAR) as the problem...

covers that fail: pixels(x,y), rAR (y/x), notes

201x364 1.81 AC {resized to 216x364, rAR=1.68 works}

259x475 1.83 DW {resized to 272x475, rAR=1.74 works}

500x500 1.00 FH {cropped and resized, works}

256x475 1.85 Fa {resized to 272x475, rAR=1.74 works}

some odd sized covers that continued to work in iOS 8:

334x475 1.42 Ch

90x159 1.76 JSO

356x500 1.41 Ju

350x500 1.43 RE46

So, no specific pixel sizes for the covers, but rather, Aspect Ratios...

Seems rAR between ~1.33 to 1.78 are safe (1.41-1.76 known to work).

Note: sometimes looses all covers in process - you need to completely reSync, sometimes several times! (This is why I use a weekend!)

iTunes 12.0 some day may be a better step forward, but not yet.

Keep a pre 12.0 version of iTunes around if you can!

It seems iTunes 12.0 doesn't allow reloading an adjusted cover artwork - it seems to always keep the old artwork - even when deleting the video from the library and reloading it. To fix it:

0) Delete the video from the iPhone.

1) Delete the video file from the 12.0 iTunes.

2) Used a iTunes 11.3 (on Windows for me) to load the video and delete the cover.

3) Add the new cover in iTunes 11.3.

4) Reload the video into the iTunes 12.0.

5) Change from Home Video to Movie.

6) Download to iPhone.

Eureka, the cover is fixed. did this for the problematic files, with adjusted AR cover art... All worked.

TV Series:

TV series are too transient - I leave them off iOS devices, because iOS devices are very difficult to load.

(hint, android much easier here - but no pretty covers...)

(Still, I choose both platforms to access external servers of media for daily consumption).

Instead, I place my favorite documentaries. Good documentaries often come as a collection of videos, so Series constructs work well - but choice of metadata is crucial)...

Clipped failing artwork of 332x500 px to 332x332 > re-attached > artwork shows-up in Series tab!

If no cover artwork is attached, a snapshot within the video is attached at the series level.

Episode snapshots still missing.

Tried a second, sample image in artwork of file (as episode image), no luck...

Have decided not to attempt to 'fix' series (documentaries) images -

this is definitely an Apple failure and it's far more important for them to fix it on their side!

Hope this helps you resolve movie covers.

I think Apple should be held responsible to fixing Series covers!

Just want to add that this is a major accessibility issue for my kids.

My daughters are 3 and 5 1/2 and use their iPads all the time to play apps and watch their TV shows and Movies. However for the last few months they can't see which shows are which as the artwork has gone.

I have to think this probably effects a huge number of kids and others that rely on visible cues instead of being able to read the text.

Hope it gets sorted soon.

We have 1 Ipad 4th gen that HAD iOS 7 that had NO PROBLEM. and iOS 8 dropped all our movie artwork. We just bought 2 new ipad mini 2's and they do not display artwork either. I scheduled a Genius appt at the Apple store and they had NO solutions. They suggested that it may likely be a result of the movies being ripped and not purchased from itunes. I suggested back that should have no impact if it displayed perfectly fine in iOS 7. Seems to me that they KNOW this is a problem but quickly dismiss it as my fault that anything else.

Was not happy whatsoever with this Genius visit. They didn't even get a 2nd tech involved.

Probably not the answer your looking for but this might help. I found this great website that gets the actual cover art from Apple iTunes - TV Shows, Movies, Apps, Books etc. And you can choose your country - great for sometimes obscure shows. There were a few different sites offering how to do this, but this one is pretty simple.

Search for "bendodson iTunes artwork finder" - that should bring up the website.

You can drag and drop from his site into the Artwork section of your show / movie.

Please note this doesn't fix the problem with individual tv shows being gray boxes - but at least you get some nice cover art.

Looks like 10.10.2 and 8.1.3 doesn't make any difference?

Just tried the new iTunes 12.1 with its "improved sync with iOS devices".

Doesn't seem to make any difference.

That is correct. I updated to 8.1.3 and iTunes 12.1, and this issue has not been solved.

Still showing the dorky grey icons for my TV shows, like I'm using Windows 3.1.

Ugh!

i've had this issues for my movies since iTunes 12 arrived, that showed the artwork and now were missing most of the artwork. i finally found a solution that worked perfect using an applescript. i found it after manually trying to select get info, and add artwork, than hit ok, since all of the artwork was already there. but that was way too tedious.

here is the link http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=reembedartwork

I had the same prob as all of you: my thumbnail art showed up for movies I uploaded into iTunes, but the art wouldn't transfer from iTunes with the download to my iPad, which showed the movies featuring a blank gray frame. (My MBPr has latest iTunes 12.1; my iPad has latest iOS 8.1.3.) So I read your comments and played with thumbnail dimensions. Square proportions didn't work at any size. I tried a few variations of standard vertical DVD cover proportions and BINGO: 342 x 510 (w x h) was the magic number. All movies appeared in iTunes and on my iPad with their respective art. (Whew! Doing my taxes didn't take this long.)