I have imported a few movies which don't have covers associated with them. However I got most of them from another source. Do I have to transfer them to the _covers directory to get them to display in XMM, or can they be stored in any other directory ???
XMM search the covers only in the _covers directory, so you must put it here.
Btw, you can also let XMM do it for you. Just select a movie and then drag-drop the image in the "quickedit" panel or in the Picture view panel, XMM will automatically save the image in the _covers diretory with the correct filename.