TV Show Art / Thumbnails Missing On IOS 8

Me too post... Happening to me on iPad Air, iPad Mini and iPhone 5S. About half of my artwork is missing, and almost all of the movies were actually from iTunes. Re-downloading them doesn't seem to fix the problem. The odd thing is- the artwork shows up under Purchases in the iTunes Store app, and of-course it shows up in iTunes on the Mac, but not in the player. Just like others reported- I just get a bunch of ugly gray boxes. 8.0.2 didn't help.

Be sure to submit feedback as a bug report at: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

These forums are great for sharing fixes and work-arounds, but Apple apparently doesn't look at them.

I have the Yosemite beta, iTunes 12, and iOS 8.0.2 on both my iPhone 5s and my iPad 3 with retina display. The issue is still there on both the iPad and iPhone and it is only there on TV shows AND movies that I've ripped and added the artwork myself. Artwork on movies and TV shows purchased from the iTunes Store are fine. It is not because of portrait thumbnails either, as all of my artwork in questions is in portrait orientation.

I think the reason that it seems like portrait orientation was the issue was because the issue was fixed when you removed the files from iTunes and reimported them and re-added the artwork. That may fix the issue, but I'm unwilling to do that with the hundreds of TV shows and movies I have in my collection.

The artwork shows just fine on both of my macs and my Apple TV and it should show on my iPhone and iPad. Hopefully it will be fixed by an update (although it hasn't been by the first two.)

Mason

P.S. The issue also persists when using home sharing on the iPad and iPhone, so basically any way I try to view the artwork, whether synced to the device, or over the network, no artwork is displayed.

All my shows are downloaded and converted in iFlicks then added to iTunes. None are bought through iTunes Store

As many people as possible need to report this as feedback

I've been going to Apple Feedback about every 3 days to submit and re-submit the bug.

I have WAY to many TV Shows and movies to screw with trying to change the artwork. I already spent too much time picking the art I want as it is.

When I use some portrait image (152x227) then it worked. This is the size of itunes web thumbnails for films. On my iPad they seem not to be perfect in size and aspect. I am still trying to find the right size.

I found that 342x510 (W x H) i a good size (native on iPad2 it is 171x255), so there is enough resolution for retina display. I did it in JPG, that worked good for me.

Soory, I have to correct myself (edit won't work). The good size is 552x370 (W x H). So it will show good also in landscape.

so these goofballs can send us all an album from U2 but cant fix our artwork..or cant keep from screwing it up?

Don't kill the messenger. I don't think Apple is going to change this - it's not a bug. I've read that on iOS, artwork is supposed to be square for TV shows, and rectangular for movies. If you buy a TV show from iTunes, the artwork is square. If you buy a movie, it's rectangular.

I use EyeTV to record my shows, and it automatically makes a square thumbnail with the name of the show. This appears properly on my devices. When I use iVI to add artwork, it doesn't appear on my phone. When I change the metadata of the TV show to "Movie", the artwork shows up properly - however doing this ruins everything else.

My guess is that this is intentional - Apple has lowered the boom; only square artwork is allowed now. Who will this affect? People who acquired their shows from anywhere but iTunes. Can these people complain? No. Either they've downloaded the shows illegally, or they've ripped the shows from DVDs, which is technically illegal, even if they own the DVD. With the exception of using a program like EyeTV, is there another legal way to acquire TV shows that you can watch on your iOS device? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. And this just hit me; the artwork is owned by the companies that make the shows. Legally speaking, only content purchased on iTunes can have artwork.

You're not going to see your artwork any time soon. Users on sites that provide the artwork (like thetvdb.com) will have to re-do all of the artwork as squares. Then the apps used to add the artwork would have to be changed to make square artwork the default choice (probably not too tough). Then you would have to use the apps to re-encode all of your videos, which would be a PITA depending on your library size.

This can't be it, I have this problem, but all my TV artwork is already square, iFlicks 2 uses the proper iTunes square artwork when it converts/adds metadata

It wouldn't surprise me if the artwork has to be square or rectangular based on whether it was a TV show or a movie. I have no problem going through and redoing artworks for my hundreds and hundreds of shows if this is the case. I use MetaZ. However, I really don't think that Apple would make people unable to customise their own devices. For a company that has prided themselves on the visual and what things look like with their graphics, they would be doing themselves a major disservice to their own vision. To stop people from being able to customise their devices would put their place on the market in jepardy as customers leave to have devices they can use as they like (and look like they want it to). As for the acquisition of illegal copies, I'm not sure it's that black and white as when I converted my DVD library I did it with the knowledge that owning a DVD meant that I was legally able to also own a digital copy of the movie I had purchased. And this is also why DVDs now sell with the digital copy because the purchaser is able to own it with the purchase of the Disc.