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I have a homemade tv show that I want to add to the Apple TV app on my Mac. I've imported the show, added all the metadata I want to, and I want to add thumbnails for each individual episode, as well as a different image for the show as a whole, just like every other show in the app. When

I set the individual thumbnails, and it looks good, and then I add the show artwork, and it overrides the episode artwork. So I try it the other way around: add the show artwork, then the episode artwork. When I do that, the show artwork is replaced by episode 1's thumbnail. How do I have both custom show art and custom episode thumbnails?

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  • Where are you adding the artwork? In the TV app? When you say "add the show artwork", are you just adding the overall show artwork to 1 or more individual episodes? I think music can have more than one artwork, not sure about TV and Movies, but I don't think it can (at least as far as the TV app will recognize). You should use a tool like ffprobe (part of ffmpeg) or mp4art to check what image is stored in the file. If it's just one image like I think, that's all the the TV app and an Apple TV will show.
    – jimtut
    Commented Dec 13, 2020 at 3:25
  • I’m using the import feature of the apple tv app. it defaults to home movies, but there’s an option you can access by using Get Info on the shows in the app to have it recognize them as part of a tv show.
    – Benjamin Jex
    Commented Dec 13, 2020 at 5:58
  • I have thumbnails for each episode, but i don’t want the show artwork, the art you see when browsing between all the different tv shows, to override the episode-specific thumbnail
    – Benjamin Jex
    Commented Dec 13, 2020 at 6:01
  • Since you are only allowed to add one piece of artwork per episode and you said this is a homemade TV show, I don’t understand where the TV app is getting show artwork from. I think maybe you’re dancing around the fact that it is a TV show recognized by the TV app, and the app is automatically displaying the official TV show artwork. I don’t think there is any way around this, except maybe by starting over and giving a different show name in each episode, so that the TV app does not recognize it. Maybe some pictures of what you are seeing and how you were adding the artwork could help.
    – jimtut
    Commented Dec 13, 2020 at 14:26
  • @jimtut As far as I can tell, TV.app doesn't look up show artwork like that. I've ripped DVDs and added them to the app and it doesn't show any artwork other than generated episode thumbnails unless I set it myself.
    – Greg
    Commented Feb 4, 2021 at 17:08

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It looks like an episode can have multiple artwork attached. I'm not sure how TV.app determines what to show for the show's thumbnail, but I've been able to Get Info for an episode, go to the Artwork tab, and select Add Artwork to add more than one image to an episode.

I haven't tested this thoroughly, but I set all the episodes to have the series thumbnail, then added an individual thumbnail to the first episode and it works as desired so far (TV shows screen shows series thumbnail and episode list shows episode thumbnail).

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    That's so strange; I just tried that out by adding episode artwork to each episode, and the series thumbnail remained like it should have UNTIL I added the artwork for episode 1 (I worked back to front)
    – Benjamin Jex
    Commented Feb 5, 2021 at 19:41
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Best I can figure out is that the first episode artwork becomes the series artwork. If you set the first episode to the thumbnail you want for the series, you can then add individual thumbnails for all the other episodes.

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