So you have some movies and TV shows you’d like to watch on your Apple TV or sync with your iOS devices. You’ve already converted the video to an iTunes friendly format and placed it in your iTunes library. However it doesn’t have the artwork applied that is needed to make it look all pretty. Well, I’ve got a pretty nifty tip to get that artwork.
You can always go to google and try to find a cover for you media, however the picture usually has a watermark, or is cropped strange. I’m going to show you how to get the HQ artwork straight from the iTunes store itself. There are two different methods, one for TV shows, and one for movies. We’ll do the TV show artwork tutorial first. For this demonstration I’m going to use the TV show called Arrow.
Right Click -> Copy Link
First your going to want to go to the iTunes store and search from the TV show called “Arrow”. Once your at the page you’ll see the iTunes TV show’s artwork. Right click on that image, and select “Copy Link”. Now go to your browser of choice or by default Safari, and paste the link into the url bar. It this case it was: “https://itunes.apple.com/ca/tv-season/arrow-season-1/id562432080”
You should be at the web version of the iTunes store now. On that page right click the artwork picture and select, “Open Image in New Tab”. Your presented with a small thumbnail version of the image. Now comes the slightly tricky part:
- Go to the URL bar
- Look at the end of the URL …mzl.fzcbkumj.170×170-75.jpg
- This is what your interested in “170×170-75.jpg”
- Simply change the 170×170 to 600×600
Now your url should look something like this:
http://a3.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/074/Video/v4/23/f1/a6/23f1a63b-2890-c36b-e564-82812728bf0b/mzl.fzcbkumj.600x600-75.jpg
Press enter to go to that URL and you’ll be presented with the HQ version at a resolution of 600×600.
For the main part getting the movie artwork is the same except for the ending. So we’re going to rush through the begging. Go to iTunes store, search for movie, right click movie, select “copy link”, paste link into browser, right click on movie artwork thumbnail, select “Open Image in New Tab”.
Alright, now you looking at a url similar to this:
http://a2.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/063/Video/v4/60/42/f9/6042f9ce-172c-765d-d203-aa69bad35858/mza_2542112856398450127.227x227-75.jpg
The part of the link you need to change is right at the very end again. Look closely at the end of the link …mza_2542112856398450127.227×227-75.jpg
Simply delete the highlighted part. Take care you do it right or it won’t work. You need to get the period at the beginning and stop deleting when you get to the .jpg part. Only delete this part .227×227-75
Your URL will look something like this now:
http://a2.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/063/Video/v4/60/42/f9/6042f9ce-172c-765d-d203-aa69bad35858/mza_2542112856398450127.jpg
Press enter to go to the url and you’ll be presented with a very HQ image.
Drag & Drop into artwork tab
To actually add the cover art to your TV shows or movies, go to your iTunes Library, right click on your media you’d like to apply the artwork to, and select “Get info”. Then either copy & paste it into the artwork tab, or drag it straight from your browser into the window.
Thanks for the tip! But some movies just won’t work with that method (ex. Batman Begins). Do you know a workaround to this?
December 20, 2012 at 9:25 pmIf there isn’t any artwork available by that method check out http://getvideoartwork.com/
This method may not always give you the highest quality iTunes version however they do have some good artwork.
December 20, 2012 at 10:31 pmits a nice little way of getting video artwork directly from itunes, however this method does not work for music nor some films which has /music in the url address
but nice work on the guide.
December 21, 2012 at 12:09 pmI didn’t include the method for getting iTunes music artwork, because iTunes will automatically get the artwork for your music if your album has the correct artist and song title ect. If not set to get album artwork automatically, right click on music and select “Get Album Artwork”
And thanks :)
December 21, 2012 at 12:15 pmis there a similar method to the above which allows you to get the Album artwork for Music? im only asking because 80% of the time the “Get Album Artwork” does totally 100% nothing for best part of my music library and getting the album artwork the same way as the films would be great
December 23, 2012 at 6:08 amIn my experience, “get album album artwork” works most of the time. It only works though when the album is labelled corrected. For instance, if you’re getting album art for the Foo Fighters album “In your Honor”, but your album is called In-ur-Honor****** (*=random letters/numbers) then it won’t get the artwork. Go the the store page and make sure the artist and album meta data are the same as the iTunes Store version. Click get album artwork again.
Another method is using TuneUp. It costs money and in my experience can somewhat mess up your library but it should find your artwork.
If all else should fail use google image search, may not always have the high HQ but its better than no artwork. Hope this helped.
December 23, 2012 at 10:29 amActually if you just right click on the thumbnail and select view image then this method will work. thanks
May 3, 2013 at 10:40 amThank you! Been looking for a way to get the iTunes art to match with what I have in my library of movies & tv shows on my aTV.
June 14, 2013 at 1:44 pmVery nice blog post. I absolutely love this site.
Stick with it!
November 22, 2013 at 6:11 pmseems that this doesn’t work very well try the first godfather movie
April 27, 2014 at 1:46 amGood find!
You can actually go up to 1200×1200 as well
October 23, 2014 at 10:06 amThanks for sharing that Craig. Time to upgrade the resolution.
October 23, 2014 at 10:58 amI’ve been using this method for some time with most movies working just fine. However, there has been a recent change in the URL address, whereby it now lists the word “poster” before the dimensions 227×227. Has anyone figured out how to make this work?
October 28, 2014 at 9:47 amI just tried this method again for TV shows and was successful at finding the full resolution image.
You are right though the Movies section of it has changed, I’ll see if I can find a quick word around. In the main time I highly suggest you check out this method: http://bendodson.com/code/itunes-artwork-finder/
October 28, 2014 at 11:22 amFor the movie “Neighbors,” the end of the URL reads as follows:
poster227x227.jpeg
I’ve tried every combination I can think of but with no success.
October 28, 2014 at 11:48 amYeah, the link you provided seems to do the trick. Thanks!
October 28, 2014 at 11:51 amjust put in poster600x600.jpg – the dimensions work out ;)
January 8, 2015 at 2:26 pmThanks you Jess
January 8, 2015 at 2:28 pmJust stumbled across this. I have been using Google image search to force my way through this issue for the past several years. While that has on many occasions led to some nifty artwork discoveries, sometimes I just want to quickly find and use the boring corporate image and be done with it. :)
Thanks for a dead easy solution.
February 18, 2016 at 4:26 amI managed to get a 1400×2100 cover of The Usual Suspects by changing the dimensions to 1400×2100.
August 20, 2016 at 11:43 pm