A quick command line script to get full movie cover art from iTunes. Just run the script using: python get_artwork.py and then follow the prompts.

get_artwork.py

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import os, sys
import urllib, urllib2
import json

MOVIES = {
    'title_prompt': "Search for a movie title (or type 'tv' to switch to TV Shows): ",
    'search_url': "http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/wa/wsSearch?entity=movie&term=",
    'name_node': 'trackName',
}
TV = {
    'title_prompt': "Search for a TV Show season (or type 'movie' to switch to Movies): ",
    'search_url':  "http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStoreServices.woa/wa/wsSearch?entity=tvSeason&term=",
    'name_node': 'collectionName',
}

media = MOVIES

SAVE_TO = "%s/Desktop/" % os.environ["HOME"] # Directory must exist
TITLES = [] # Optionally populate this with a list of titles for batch processing

def get_art(title=None, keep_going=False):
    global not_found, media
    if not title:
        title = raw_input(media['title_prompt'])
        if title == "movie":
            media = MOVIES
            get_art(None, True)
        elif title == "tv":
            media = TV
            get_art(None, True)
        elif title == "exit":
            exit();
    
    print "\nSearching for \"%s\"..." % title
    
    search_term = urllib.quote_plus(title)

    try:
        response = urllib2.urlopen("%s%s" % (media['search_url'], search_term))
        results = json.load(response)
        resultCount = results['resultCount']
        if resultCount > 0:
            if resultCount == 1:
                which = 0
            else:
                for index, result in enumerate(results['results']):
                    print "%s. %s" % (index+1, result[media['name_node']])
                which = raw_input("\nEnter a number to download its artwork (or hit Enter to search again): ")
                try:
                    which = int(which) - 1
                except:
                    which = None
                    not_found.append(title)
            if which != None:
                url = results['results'][which]['artworkUrl100'].replace("100x100-75.", "")
                sys.stdout.write("Downloading artwork...") 
                urllib.urlretrieve(url, "%s%s.jpg" % (SAVE_TO, title.replace("/", "-").replace(":", " -")))
                sys.stdout.write(" done.\n\n")
            
        else:
            print "No results found for \"%s\"" % title
            not_found.append(title)
    except urllib2.HTTPError:
        not_found.append(title)
        pass
    
    if keep_going:
        get_art(None, True)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    not_found = []
    if TITLES:
        for title in TITLES:
            get_art(title)
    else:
        get_art(None, True)
    print "\n\nArtwork was not found for the following titles:"
    for title in not_found:
        print title

Outstanding. Now if only all of the movies I had were available from iTunes I could get all the art work. As it is about 50 ~ 55% of my titles were found. I wonder if Amazon has a similar API that would let you grab their artwork.

Updated with a bunch of improvements including:

• Unicode support
• Batch processing (just populate a list of titles into the TITLES variable)
• Downloads cover art to SAVE_TO variable instead of opening in a browser
• Automatically downloads artwork when only one result is returned
• Error handling for all sorts of things
• Shows a list of failed titles when processing is completed

Mine processed 284 of 403 movies, but did so in about 15 minutes instead of the several hours it took me the first time through. :)

This is nice. I was just trying to figure out where to download movie artwork for my library. All the Amazon covers are inside the DVD and Blu-ray cases.

@worksology Looks like this script doesn't grab full-sized posters anymore. 😦

This PHP project gets the higher resolution artwork: https://github.com/bendodson/itunes-artwork-finder