I have something wrong mentally, that makes me want to hoard data. This post is specifically talking about things I can watch (movies, tv shows). I'm choosing to make this a little like Fight Club, or that one episode of Firefly (look at me reference!) and start at the very end.
Plex
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| Why yes, that is THE Mister Rogers. |
/movieTitle (Year)/movieTitle (Year).extensionfor movies, and
/tvShowTitleWithSpaces/S##/tvShowTitle - S##E## - episodeTitle.extensionfor tv shows (Source). Since Plex is really meant for user friendliness, it will scan whatever folder you tell it your media is in by default, find the metadata for you, build nfo files, and be ready to stream it wherever you like. I should write a separate post just about Plex, but for now..
CouchPotato
CouchPotato manages my movies. It plays nicely with μTorrent, and will automatically search, download, and rename every movie it touches.
So Fetch
CP has a bunch of built in sites including TorrentDay, TPB, PublicHD, PassThePopcorn, and Bitsoup (dereferrer links, dont want to get in trouble). I can't say I use any of this, but if you did, you'd want to check the box on the settings page under the searcher tab, and set up any seeding limits you'd like. If you like one site more than another (maybe its exclusive and always has really good quality stuff), you can check that advanced settings box and set bonus scores for anybody you like. Usually I see scores between 1000-2000 from my preferred provider, but your mileage may vary.
Next you'll want to setup CouchPotato to automatically add anything it finds with the searcher, into your preferred torrent client. I like μTorrent, but feel free to pick your own. Settings are pretty simple, so do that and proceed on to the best part, the...
Renamer
To make the most of CP, you'll want to set it up so it names your files following Plex's guidelines. I have μTorrent download to one folder, then move to a different folder (aptly named Finished) when its finished so I can keep the incomplete downloads out of CP. Set those in the first two boxes. In the folder naming box, you'll want to delete whatever is there, and change it to
Filename should be similar, with<themovie> (<year>)
<themovie> (<year>).<ext>If you want the same setup as me, you'll want to extract rars, search for subtitles in english (en), and I've heard rumors that Plex is going to start searching for trailers to play alongside movies, so I keep a copy of those locally as well. There is a submenu under the Renamer tab in the sidebar called Metadata, that does some of the heavy lifting for Plex, and I've got those boxes checked as well.
Automation
A neat feature of CouchPotato is the ability to automatically search and select movies for you. Under the automation sidebar tab, you'll see there are options to check your watchlists on a variety of sites, as well as keeping the top 250 handy on your hard drive. If you choose to do this, I suggest keeping lots of space free, as well as making the minimum requirements a lot more strict.
Notifications
Plex, as I mentioned earlier, will automatically scan your folders periodically and update its library accordingly. If you notice that movies you download are taking exceedingly long, you may want CP to tell Plex when it renames and moves files to their proper locations. Setup here is fairly simple, just enter the IP of your server, and any clients you have connected to have them refresh when things finish.
Manage
I personally don't use this feature, since I've got Plex, but if you're only here for movies, maybe it could be handy. It has links on each movie for IMDB, trailers, available files in your library, a listing of torrents to redownload if you get a bad copy, and a simple way to delete. Note that I don't believe the delete button is irreversible, though it does ask for confirmation.Sick Beard
Sick Beard is like CP for tv shows. With a little setup, you'll have it following Plex's rules and have the end of our little automation shop. First you'll want to get it running, but that's not the point of this post. Get the version of Sick Beard meant for torrents, get Python 2.7, start it up and it should open a webpage up for you.
Configuring Searches
Use the bar at the top of the page, and go into config > search settings. There are some general options available too, but I didn't change any of them. On the search settings page, my setup has it refreshing once every 6 hours. I don't subscribe to usenet, so check the torrent box, select black hole from the dropdown, and give it the folder that μTorrent watches for .torrent's.
Getting some providers
Much like CouchPotato, Sick Beard lets you search from tons of different torrent providers. Check the box next to each one you want to use, and rearrange until you're satisfied. If your providers require a login or API key, fill that in at the bottom.
Post Processing
This is my favorite part.. again. You can see I've got a drive specifically for media, and like I mentioned above, a folder for everything that's finished. Check the boxes to suit your fancy, but I keep originals so I can seed some back, don't move associated files because I don't like the clutter, rename episodes because its amazing and the whole reason to use this program, and scan and process because its the other whole reason to use this program.
My name pattern is set to custom, because the ones listed here weren't quite right. To fit Plex's rule, you have to use
S%0S\%SN - S%0SE%0E - %ENwhich translates to
S02\Show Name - S02E03 - Ep Name.extwhich is exactly what Plex likes. SB will download metadata just like CP will. I have it make an nfo file, a thumbnail, and get me subtitles (even though I've literally never used them). Hit save and move on to..
Notifications
The way my home network is setup, this won't work. Not entirely sure why, but it won't, and that's okay! Plex automatically scans my folder every once in a while, and will pick up that SB has dropped off something new. If you can get it to work, that's great and I'd appreciate a message on what your settings are. You can setup push notifications if that's your thing also, but I don't watch any shows that closely to have the thirst to be aware of when they're finished.
μTorrent
Setup however you like with your queuing settings. The only big part of this setup is in
Settings > Advanced > Run Programyou'll want to direct it to a batch file somewhere. Mine is
G:\Finished\process.bat %D %IIf you read the help text there, it tells you %D is the full directory of the completed torrent, and %I is the hash. The contents of that file are
FORFILES /p %1 /s /m *.rar /c "cmd /c 7z x -r -y @path"Some more tech savy readers might read that as: for all files in directory 1 and all subfolders, with filetype rar, run the command for 7zip to extract to the original filepath with overwrites; pause and ping me for 60 seconds while 7zip extracts, then run the python script to startup sick beard. [forfiles help][7zip help] This does require you to have both python and 7z in your system path, which you can find out how to do here.
ping -n 60 127.0.0.1
python.exe C:\Program Files\Sickbeard\autoProcessTV\utorrentToSickBeard.py "%2" "%1"
In the end..
..it doesn't even matter. I barely have time to watch any shows and actually enjoy them. School and Titanfall are keeping me way too busy.