You can view the page at http://uselessforums.com/content.php?27-Cutting-the-Useless-Cable-(Part-VI)
[Article] Article: Cutting the Useless Cable (Part VI)
- Thread starter fly
- Start date
I took a little Thanksgiving break with articles, but I'm back!
This is part six in the home theatre article series called Cutting the Useless Cable. This article will cover Sick Beard.
See Part I here.
See Part II here.
See Part III here.
See Part IV here.
See Part V here.
Now we're getting to the really cool stuff. So far we've covered how to manually get "things" from Usenet. But we're lazy. And forgetful. Well, at least I am. Additionally, anyone who has attempted to manually download shows from Usenet has been nailed by a 'DMCA Takedown Notice'. These are anti-piracy requests that content producers like NBC and HBO send to remove posted material. The best way around that is to get the shows you want, quickly. So now we're going to automate some things, specifically the downloading of those TV shows. Are you familiar with the Season Pass feature for TiVo? It's a feature that allows one to simply select the shows that you want to watch and the TiVo figures out when and how to record it. Fire and forget. That is essentially what we're going to setup, only better because the nice people that post these shows to the internet for us remove all the commercials. No fast forwarding required!
The software we have in mind for this task is called Sick Beard. I have no idea why it's called that. I mean the guy's beard in the logo looks cool enough. Maybe slightly unsavory, but not too bad. Certainly not sick. But whatever. Sick Beard describes itself as your Internet PVR. This is another FOSS (free, open source) tool that is currently in pretty active development. It's listed as Alpha software (which is supposed to mean pretty rough, unstable code), but I've found it to be extremely solid. It has never missed downloading a show for me, or crashed, or gave me herpes.
So, how do we do all this? First, none of this will work without SABnzbD setup. So if you haven't, make sure you read my article on newsreaders to get SAB up and running. Now, there are a couple of ways to actually run Sick Beard. We'll start with the easy way, which involves Windows. This would be good if you ignored my previous suggested architecture of building a Linux based machine and instead are using a Windows desktop (or server, I guess) to run Sick Beard. It will also give you a crash course in the Sick Beard UI without having to get into the nitty gritty of running from source (we'll cover that later). The 'down' side to this easy way is that you don't get updates as quickly, but its not *that* big of a deal. Find your way to:
http://code.google.com/p/sickbeard/downloads/list
and download the latest version (as of this writing, its Build 497). Now unzip it. No, not your zipper. Geez.
The setup:
Drill down into the Sick Beard folder structure and run 'sickbeard-console.exe'. The console version will help us troubleshoot initially if you mess something up. A black box will pop up, vomit up some text, and finally your web browser will magically open up to Sick Beard. Bookmark it! Right now! Yay, now we're getting somewhere! You could just start adding shows, but let's dive into the configuration first. (Seriously, did you bookmark it? You'll forget if you don't do it right now.)
Config > General
Everything here should operate just fine out of box.
Config > Search Settings
Usenet Retention: Time to make some changes. Find the retention of your usenet server. It's usually much longer than the Sick Beard default of 500. Making it 500 days may mean that you might not find some older shows, so get an exact day.
NZB Method: Remember that this setup requires SABnzbd to work! Change the dropdown to indicate that. Now you'll need your SABnzbd URL. You saved it right? If you're running it on the same box as Sick Beard (and you should be), then the example URL listed should work. Fill all the other information in as requested and then hit Test Server. I'm sure you're a genius and all is well. If not, post a comment and I'll do my best to help.
Torrents Search: Yes, it will work. Yes, torrents are bad. No, we won't discuss it here.
<<Save Changes>>
Config > Search Providers
This is how Sick Beard finds the shows you want to watch. You're going to need your NZB Matrix information for this. You did listen to my rantings in earlier articles and picked up a NZB Matrix account, right? Right??
Provider Priorities: Check NZB Matrix (assuming you listened and bought an account). Also check the Sick Beard Index. It's not as robust, but is free and a great backup for those occasions when NZB Matrix is down.
Configure Built-In Providers: Select NZB Matrix from the dropdown. Enter your username and API key. The API key allows Sick Beard to use your account without actually knowing your password. To find your API key, log into NZB Matrix, click the Your Account link in the upper right corner, and select the API link in that big list in the middle of the page.
<<Save Changes>>
Config > Post Processing
This is how Sick Beard is going to find the files that SABnzbd is going to download. It's also what and how the files will be arranged in whatever their final resting place will be.
TV Download Directory: Sick Beard needs to know the directory that SABnzbd downloads your TV Shows to. Enter it here. To find the directory, open SABnzbd and go to Config > Folders. In the User Folders section, you'll see a listing for Completed Download Folder. Enter that path for your download directory. Note: If you've setup categories in SAB, enter the path for the TV category. We haven't discussed those, so you're on your own if you did.
Naming: I would just leave this default, unless you already have some preferred naming scheme.
Metadata: We've already discussed XBMC, so if you're using it, select it here and check all the boxes except 'Use Banners'.
<<Save Changes>>
Config > Notifications
Here you can set Sick Beard to notify you in 35,000 different ways when it grabs something. I don't have any of these setup, so you're on your own. They're pretty straight forward though.
<<Save Changes>>
That's it. Now let's add a show or two. Browse to Home > Add Shows and select Add New Show. The process is pretty straightforward.
Step 1: Do your best job of spelling the name of the show correctly. Sick Beard will use that to go out the TheTVDB and guess what show you're talking about. It will generally list the year the show started, so pay attention to that. Select the proper show and hit Next.
Step 2: Now Sick Beard wants to know what the parent folder should be. Basically, the directory where are you storing all of your TV shows. If it's C:\TV Shows, select that here. It will automatically create a folder for the name of the exact show you're downloading in C:\TV Shows. Next!
Step 3: Last question! Sick Beard wants to know what you want to do with episodes that you have missed. If you're adding the show 24, do you want it to Skip all the old episodes or download them all. Generally speaking, it's best to say Skipped. Once it has downloaded all the information for the show, you can go back in and select episodes that you want. And the final thing, do you want Standard Definition copies of the show or High Definition? The difference is really just picture quality and file size. A 30 minute SD show is about 200MB and the same show in HD is about 500MB.
And that's it. Sick Beard will now take a few minutes to download all the information it knows about the show from the internet. Based on that, you can go back into the show, and easily download specific shows or seasons. Regardless if you want old seasons or not, as soon the show is aired on TV, Sick Beard will start patrolling Usenet for it. I've found that most popular shows are available and downloaded by midnight-ish on the day that they aired (technically midnight the next day, if you wanna be a whiny prick about it).
You've now automated downloading shows that you want to watch. Go you! Any questions?
Got an idea for an article of your own that we should hear about? Want free swag? Make a thread in the forum or email it to [email protected]. If accepted, you'll receive a free tshirt!
This is part six in the home theatre article series called Cutting the Useless Cable. This article will cover Sick Beard.
See Part I here.
See Part II here.
See Part III here.
See Part IV here.
See Part V here.
Now we're getting to the really cool stuff. So far we've covered how to manually get "things" from Usenet. But we're lazy. And forgetful. Well, at least I am. Additionally, anyone who has attempted to manually download shows from Usenet has been nailed by a 'DMCA Takedown Notice'. These are anti-piracy requests that content producers like NBC and HBO send to remove posted material. The best way around that is to get the shows you want, quickly. So now we're going to automate some things, specifically the downloading of those TV shows. Are you familiar with the Season Pass feature for TiVo? It's a feature that allows one to simply select the shows that you want to watch and the TiVo figures out when and how to record it. Fire and forget. That is essentially what we're going to setup, only better because the nice people that post these shows to the internet for us remove all the commercials. No fast forwarding required!
The software we have in mind for this task is called Sick Beard. I have no idea why it's called that. I mean the guy's beard in the logo looks cool enough. Maybe slightly unsavory, but not too bad. Certainly not sick. But whatever. Sick Beard describes itself as your Internet PVR. This is another FOSS (free, open source) tool that is currently in pretty active development. It's listed as Alpha software (which is supposed to mean pretty rough, unstable code), but I've found it to be extremely solid. It has never missed downloading a show for me, or crashed, or gave me herpes.
So, how do we do all this? First, none of this will work without SABnzbD setup. So if you haven't, make sure you read my article on newsreaders to get SAB up and running. Now, there are a couple of ways to actually run Sick Beard. We'll start with the easy way, which involves Windows. This would be good if you ignored my previous suggested architecture of building a Linux based machine and instead are using a Windows desktop (or server, I guess) to run Sick Beard. It will also give you a crash course in the Sick Beard UI without having to get into the nitty gritty of running from source (we'll cover that later). The 'down' side to this easy way is that you don't get updates as quickly, but its not *that* big of a deal. Find your way to:
http://code.google.com/p/sickbeard/downloads/list
and download the latest version (as of this writing, its Build 497). Now unzip it. No, not your zipper. Geez.
The setup:
Drill down into the Sick Beard folder structure and run 'sickbeard-console.exe'. The console version will help us troubleshoot initially if you mess something up. A black box will pop up, vomit up some text, and finally your web browser will magically open up to Sick Beard. Bookmark it! Right now! Yay, now we're getting somewhere! You could just start adding shows, but let's dive into the configuration first. (Seriously, did you bookmark it? You'll forget if you don't do it right now.)
Config > General
Everything here should operate just fine out of box.
Config > Search Settings
Usenet Retention: Time to make some changes. Find the retention of your usenet server. It's usually much longer than the Sick Beard default of 500. Making it 500 days may mean that you might not find some older shows, so get an exact day.
NZB Method: Remember that this setup requires SABnzbd to work! Change the dropdown to indicate that. Now you'll need your SABnzbd URL. You saved it right? If you're running it on the same box as Sick Beard (and you should be), then the example URL listed should work. Fill all the other information in as requested and then hit Test Server. I'm sure you're a genius and all is well. If not, post a comment and I'll do my best to help.
Torrents Search: Yes, it will work. Yes, torrents are bad. No, we won't discuss it here.
<<Save Changes>>
Config > Search Providers
This is how Sick Beard finds the shows you want to watch. You're going to need your NZB Matrix information for this. You did listen to my rantings in earlier articles and picked up a NZB Matrix account, right? Right??
Provider Priorities: Check NZB Matrix (assuming you listened and bought an account). Also check the Sick Beard Index. It's not as robust, but is free and a great backup for those occasions when NZB Matrix is down.
Configure Built-In Providers: Select NZB Matrix from the dropdown. Enter your username and API key. The API key allows Sick Beard to use your account without actually knowing your password. To find your API key, log into NZB Matrix, click the Your Account link in the upper right corner, and select the API link in that big list in the middle of the page.
<<Save Changes>>
Config > Post Processing
This is how Sick Beard is going to find the files that SABnzbd is going to download. It's also what and how the files will be arranged in whatever their final resting place will be.
TV Download Directory: Sick Beard needs to know the directory that SABnzbd downloads your TV Shows to. Enter it here. To find the directory, open SABnzbd and go to Config > Folders. In the User Folders section, you'll see a listing for Completed Download Folder. Enter that path for your download directory. Note: If you've setup categories in SAB, enter the path for the TV category. We haven't discussed those, so you're on your own if you did.
Naming: I would just leave this default, unless you already have some preferred naming scheme.
Metadata: We've already discussed XBMC, so if you're using it, select it here and check all the boxes except 'Use Banners'.
<<Save Changes>>
Config > Notifications
Here you can set Sick Beard to notify you in 35,000 different ways when it grabs something. I don't have any of these setup, so you're on your own. They're pretty straight forward though.
<<Save Changes>>
That's it. Now let's add a show or two. Browse to Home > Add Shows and select Add New Show. The process is pretty straightforward.
Step 1: Do your best job of spelling the name of the show correctly. Sick Beard will use that to go out the TheTVDB and guess what show you're talking about. It will generally list the year the show started, so pay attention to that. Select the proper show and hit Next.
Step 2: Now Sick Beard wants to know what the parent folder should be. Basically, the directory where are you storing all of your TV shows. If it's C:\TV Shows, select that here. It will automatically create a folder for the name of the exact show you're downloading in C:\TV Shows. Next!
Step 3: Last question! Sick Beard wants to know what you want to do with episodes that you have missed. If you're adding the show 24, do you want it to Skip all the old episodes or download them all. Generally speaking, it's best to say Skipped. Once it has downloaded all the information for the show, you can go back in and select episodes that you want. And the final thing, do you want Standard Definition copies of the show or High Definition? The difference is really just picture quality and file size. A 30 minute SD show is about 200MB and the same show in HD is about 500MB.
And that's it. Sick Beard will now take a few minutes to download all the information it knows about the show from the internet. Based on that, you can go back into the show, and easily download specific shows or seasons. Regardless if you want old seasons or not, as soon the show is aired on TV, Sick Beard will start patrolling Usenet for it. I've found that most popular shows are available and downloaded by midnight-ish on the day that they aired (technically midnight the next day, if you wanna be a whiny prick about it).
You've now automated downloading shows that you want to watch. Go you! Any questions?
Got an idea for an article of your own that we should hear about? Want free swag? Make a thread in the forum or email it to [email protected]. If accepted, you'll receive a free tshirt!
So, i reinstalled my whole server, and dropped the latest version of couchpotato on, and it still fuckin refuses to rename and move movies properly. It works occasionally, on maybe 1 in 10 movies, but isnt at all reliable. Same problem i had ages ago.
Also, installed plex. Took some fuckery to get it streaming nicely, but the transcoding with manual tuning to eliminate buffering works nicely. Still hate that you cant manually seek precisely in any XBMC based client, being able to drag the bar to a specific time in the movie is important to me, but its not bad overall.
Also, installed plex. Took some fuckery to get it streaming nicely, but the transcoding with manual tuning to eliminate buffering works nicely. Still hate that you cant manually seek precisely in any XBMC based client, being able to drag the bar to a specific time in the movie is important to me, but its not bad overall.
You're doing something wrong.
I'm pretty sure there is an error log for CP. Whats it say? Windows or linux?You're doing something wrong.
windows (18TB ntfs partion on my raid :/ i a) dont trust nix ntfs entirely yet b) would prefer not to have the massive speed reduction associated with it, no sense in having a 1000 buck raid card that can do a gig a second if the filesystem can only do 30 MB/s)
Then don't do ntfs in nix. Why would you?
Anyway, since its Windows, I suppose you can remove any permissions problems from the issue list. You sure that SAB is putting the completed movies in the directory that CP is expecting?
Then don't do ntfs in nix. Why would you?
Anyway, since its Windows, I suppose you can remove any permissions problems from the issue list. You sure that SAB is putting the completed movies in the directory that CP is expecting?
wanna give me a place to back up 36TB of data while i transition it to EXT?
Then don't do ntfs in nix. Why would you?
Anyway, since its Windows, I suppose you can remove any permissions problems from the issue list. You sure that SAB is putting the completed movies in the directory that CP is expecting?
yep, im sure. One thing im not sure of though is if CP does recursive subdirectory searches. Based on the few times it does work, it would seem so
heres my dir structure
root
newsgroups
complete
movienamefolder (named by SAB from the nzb name)
CP is pointing to the complete folder.
I assume that vB just sucks and those folders are all underneath each other. If so, then yes, that structure is exactly what CP expects. What OS is on the server. I seem to recall having an issue with moving files on WHS (2003).
Any chance that you might have SAB renaming on that is screwing things up? Not sure if it was specific to WHS. Trying to find the bug now. Who knows, its possibly already been fixed.
It will pass the category to SAB, but if you don't have anything set - it should just use the default.
