[Windows] NzbDrone - Automatic TV Downloader

[markus101]

Add series needs to hit TheTvDb for each series not yet added to NzbDrone, which can take some time. Series details shouldn't take very long, takes less than half a second, unless you're going off to TheTvDb, then its all on their side.

[browngeek]

Just seen this program. Like many others have been using Sickbeard for the longest time.

Tried this one out is looking good. Got a few questions, but will post them on the forum.

Well done.

[markus101]

@bugmenot2 - I gave this some thought and will be adding it in, please sign up for an account on our forums for an announcement on it (you'll have to use a different email address).

[AtariBaby]

^Lol at username above me, which explains much regarding a login problem.

[rascalli]

Any news on a linux based client ?
Does it also use others ites then thetvdb.com ?

[markus101]

We haven't tested it running under mono of linux, but with the recent OpenSourcing of some things from Microsoft, now would be a good time to try it (I'll add it to the to-do list).

Currently it just uses TheTvDb, but we're looking at TV Rage as an alternative, though it would be nice to be able to use both (a mapping between the two would be ideal).

[rascalli]

Indeed both would be nice (especially looking at recent events at thetvdb.com hosting)

Looking forward to linux version , hope I can run it on my QNAP 419P NAS

[markus101]

I think it will be a bit more than download and run like the Windows users get, since they can use the built-in IIS Express, but I think I have it so it will run without that dependency (minus updating, at least for now). The next issue is that we use SQL CE instead of SQLite, that should get it working, though there might be one more hurdle with how we display logs using EF (Entity Framework), which AFAIK is not supported in mono.

Hopefully adding a second database option goes smoothly, I'll advise once I have some more information.

[markus101]

Just like to point out that NzbDrone supports less commonly used indexers like nzbclub and nzbindex, which allows downloads to continue while everyone scrambles to get their Newznab sites online

Still no linux support, though I have made some steps towards it.

[RKM]

I just downloaded/tested NzbDrone. Not because I have any issues with Sickbeard, but simply because the UI looks amazing and I'm thinking about the power/potential of building something in .NET vs python.

So far it looks amazing. You guys have done a tremendous job. It goes far beyond the coding -- the UI, the extra polish you've added, everything is amazing. I also like the clean and relevant logging, very helpful.

My only problem is that for the life of me, I can't figure out how to do the most basic of things I would do in Sickbeard. I'm sure it's my fault because I've become accustomed to their paradigm. I realize that NzbDrone works differently, but after searching/playing with it for an hour, I'm still confused how to do things that are very straightforward in Sickbeard.

First, I should mention that I have no interest in downloading or archiving entire seasons. I use Sickbeard like a DVR, to get the latest episodes of the shows I watch, which I delete when finished.

Here are some of the issues I've run into:

1) Episode Monitoring/Fetching. Sickbeard has an extremely easy method of monitoring episodes. I can set the status of any individual episode to "WANTED" or "SKIPPED". It also has an amazing feature that allows me to choose to SKIP or GET all episodes of a new series I've added.

I couldn't find anything like this in ND. At first I thought it was part of the "monitor" feature. Or that combining the "Monitoring" with the "Ignore Missing Episodes" -- or some other tweak -- would allow me to use ND in this way.

To date, I've found no easy way to give ND a list of episodes I do/don't want to download. If I choose not to monitor certain episodes, then choose to download, all episodes (even those "un-monitored") will be downloaded.

Is there any simple way to use a "WANTED / SKIP" paradigm with ND? If not, could it be added in the future?

2) Is there any sort of "Bulk Edit" feature similar to Sickbeard? Two examples come to mind. One, changing the directory of all shows (eg - move from C: to D:). Two, changing the "Use Season Foler". I attempted to do this under SETTINGS > SORTING > USE SEASON FOLDER. I chose "No" from that UI. Despite the change in SETTINGS, all of the shows still have "Yes" under each *individual* show. The only way to change this appears to be going in to each show one-by-one. Or am I missing something important for bulk changes?

3) What is "Drone Factory" (below SETTINGS > DOWNLOAD CLIENT > GENERAL)?

4) A couple extra "wishlist" items from Sickbeard that would be awesome in ND:
* Display the starting year of the TV series when searching to "Add Series" (eg - "The Bridge (2013) vs The Bridge (2011)". ND does this occasionally but not consistently as SB does.
* Sorting by "title sort" (ignoring "The"). Not a big deal, just makes it a bit more consistent with XBMC, etc.

And thanks again for the great tool!

[markus101]

Hey RKM,

Thanks for the awesome feedback, hopefully my answers below help, if you have any more questions, please feel free to drop in on our forums or IRC (its just a bit easier than a growing single thread) and check out our Trello board for the list of pending features.

1) NzbDrone has a Monitored field at 3 different levels, series, season and episode, when you unmonitor the series it will not download any episode in any season (except if you search), season flips the episode monitored status (visibly and behind the scenes), so those episodes will not be downloaded (again automatically). The only thing NzbDrone is currently missing is a way to skip missing episodes when the series is added, but its something we want to add. EDIT: since you're watching and deleting you should turn on "automatically ignore deleted episodes" to stop NzbDrone from re-downloading episodes you have deleted.

2) The option in settings only controls the initial state of the series, bulk edit is on the TODO list as well.

3) Thats the folder where SAB/other downloaders download your TV shows to for sorting by NzbDrone, the reason for the name was because no matter what we named it (we tried a bunch of different names in v2) people were using it incorrectly, in ways that could cause data loss, the tooltip in the UI should help to explain it, but maybe it could use some work - let me know your thoughts.

4)
a) Right - this was in v1, but I had forgotten about it, should be pretty easy for us to manipulate the results and add the year if its missing, I'll add it to Trello.
b) This is already on Trello, we'll just need a way to implement it consistently (some things are UI sorted and others in the database)

Link to our Trello board: https://trello.com/b/MadvFKy4/nzbdrone-v2

Thanks again for the feedback!

[RKM]

Hi Markus,
Thanks for the great replies. Sorry for the delay, I've been trying to rectify issues on my own before posting back. I didn't want to waste your time with something that was user error.

I will join the forum, but as a quick follow-up, I have indeed used the "automatically ignore deleted episodes" since I started using NZBdrone. However, I believe this sort of usage is the core of my problem.

In other words, I believe that NZBdrone may not be well tested in the sort of application where shows are not monitored. Although everything else about the app shows great refinement, this is the one area where the app consistently is unpredictable in my two weeks of testing.

First, regarding the #1 item above (being able to quickly mark shows explicitly for download) - this is missing and a key functionality. If a season is intentionally marked to be unmonitored and an explicit search is done, that season should be ignored. And regardless of whether anything is monitored or un-monitored, it would be very helpful to have an explicit "get episode" rather than toggling monitoring.

But more importantly, the option to "automatically ignore deleted episodes" definitely does not seem to work overall. For example, tonight it downloaded a few very old episodes of Mad Men. The entire show is "monitored" (simply by default when added), but because there have been no new episodes, one would expect that no new shows are downloaded. However, there will be random episodes that are downloaded .. not an entire season or backlog -- just a few episodes here and there. Same thing happened for Person of Interest awhile back, and two other instances I cannot remember at the moment.

I'll head off to sign-up for Trello. Thanks again!

[markus101]

1) that comment is contradicting, you want search to sip ignored episodes but have a way to get them without monitoring them, that's how search works, if you kick off a search (manual or automatic) it will ignore the monitored status (it makes the assumption that you want the episode even though it may be unmonitored).

2) automatically ignore deleted episodes works if you delete the episode after NzbDrone saw it, for example, NzbDrone queues the download and once completed, sorts it, you watch the episode and delete it, then it would be automatically ignored once NzbDrone detected the episode as missing. Usually the few episodes here and there is because random episodes have been reposted to Usenet, NzbDrone sees them as missing and gets them. You need to unmonitor episodes to prevent that from occurring. Ideally this would be an unmonitor missing episodes when the series is added, but we have found ideal way to do that I have the NzbDrone design.

[RKM]

@Markus - I think the problem is that you're assuming that I'm misunderstanding something that I am understanding quite well and there is most certainly an issue with NZB Drone (and not simply my ignorance as to how to use the app). I have explicitly witnessed the error on many occasions despite doing exactly what you mention in your post. This is not my misunderstanding.

Once again tonight I just lost 20 GB of bandwidth because NZB Drone went on a downloading rampage. If your #2 statement was correct, not a single one of these episodes would have been downloaded because NZBdrone has already downloaded all of them once before. A perfect example, the entire current season of "How I Met Your Mother" was just downloaded again tonight, despite the entire season having already been downloaded by NZB Drone.

Regarding my comment in #1 being contradicting, I'm sure it's just a matter of me having explained it incorrectly as I was still coming from the context of Sickbeard and I think the way I explained this was not intuitive. None the less, the #2 item is far more important and when used with "automatically ignore deleted episodes" enabled, it does not always work properly and does indeed re-download episodes that have been downloaded/deleted in the past.

[RKM]

BTW - I should mention that if shows were toggled to "unmonitored" once they were downloaded, this would not only solve the issue, it would also provide a visual queue that would be beneficial.

However, as it sits, when an episode is downloaded by NZB Drone, in my configuration, the episode is not then toggled to "unmonitored".