Missing Features vs Other Products

v3 Testing
#1

So Ive moved from SickChill to Sonarr.

Im still not sure whether or not it was the right move as there is some items that I consider basic functionality missing from Sonarr that I find very surprising.

Heres some of the items / functions that I believe Sonarr should include that SickChill (and other) TV Show downloaders already have:

  • Ability to dump bulk episodes in a location and have Sonarr automatically sort them out if the show is in the series list
  • This is basically what DroneFactory did which is gone in v3. I realize this is not a regular occurring need and Sonarr generally monitors and fetches shows very well as they are release, but sometimes, there is a need to do this, particularly with older TV shows.
  • Ability to complete a “Manual Search” at season level
  • This functionality is only available at episode level. Users should be able to manually search for an entire season as it may be found easier than individual episodes, particularly if its an older series or season. Having this feature also minimizes the need to bulk dump episodes and have Sonarr sort them out (see first point).
  • Ability to “Modify Episode Files For Series” at season level
  • Users cannot delete an entire season without viewing all seasons and selecting each episode. To delete just one season, I have to select each episode I want to delete instead of selection each season I want to delete.
  • Ability to remove series from email notifications
  • From what I can see, there is only a global email notification setting and no ability to attach it to a particular series. A user may not want email notifications for all series, the notifications should be able to be disabled for certain series.
  • User should be able to define the subject line in email notifications
  • Right now, the subject line is “Sonarr- Episode Downloaded”. Not really useful information and the user does not have visibility at this level of what the series or episode was that was downloaded. Ideally, the user should be able to have some control of the subject line content or at a minimum, it should display the series & episode, with either no message content or further details about the episode quality, size etc as the message content. Something like: “Sonarr- The Flash S05E10 Downloaded” in the subject line and then “The Flash- S05E10 The Fast & The Furious HD720p Downloaded by Sonarr!” as the message content.
  • The “Series Editor” should have more functionality
  • Im not even sure what the point of this is, other than to change monitored status or refresh entire series. I see potential here for it to morph in to some form of batch editing tool, where users could also delete whole series or seasons of series (and remove from monitored at the same time), rename whole series or seasons and so on.

Thats all I have for now. Sonarr has benefits over other TV Show downloaders and the UI is much slicker, however, it also has some glaring deficiencies that could be easily rectified and put it on a pedastool above all other platforms.

#2

Wanted -> Manual Import -> Browse to folder. If files are named reasonably, hit automatic import. If not, manual import.
Alternative: dump them in the correct series/season folders, hit rescan in sonarr for that series. After scan, use the renamer to automatically apply sonarr’s episode naming scheme if desired.

This was added in v3 (currently in beta)

v3 has a “manage episodes” button at the series and every season level. From here you can bulk delete (top checkbox to select the entire season), bulk change quality, bulk change language. I don’t recall if this was already available in v2 as I have never used it.

Apply a tag to series you want notifications for. Apply the same tag to the email notification.

I think there is a github item requesting that somewhere. In my humble, personal opinion, there are far better notification tools like e.g. Pushover instead of email spam. But maybe email works for you for another reason, and I agree, I used to have email notifications and they are not that useful.

There are two tools, season pass and mass editor (I can’t recall the exact names in v2, I’m on the v3 beta at the moment but they were both already there in v2). Season pass is to quickly change monitored status at the season or series level. Mass editor allows you to rename entire seasons/series, delete, change quality profile, … kind of everything at series level, but you can apply those settings to multiple series at once.
it feels like more functionality was added to them, but the major things were already in there in v2… I’m not sure.

#3

Thanks Thirrian, sounds like I need to check out v3, assuming its stable.

Ill sus your other tips as well.

It was the whole Drone Factory thing that has stopped me (plus the Beta status).

#4

You can use the API to do that, as mentioned in the wiki page when it was deprecated.

It’s in v3…

In v3.

Use a tag then it’ll only send them for series with that tag.

There is already a GHI for this.

Again, v3.

#5

So ive switches to V3 and am pleased to see most of my suggestions are there!

The whole completed download handling is still a big gap.

I probably need to read a bit more but I cant see an easy way to dump an episode or series on to a folder and have sonarr sort it out fro me, particularly if I have already downloaded it in the past.

I cant really wrap my head around the whole manual import thing when in a series, Im not sure what the [point of it is as if the episode does not exist, whether its wanted or not, it doesn’t populate in the list.

I probably need to read a bit more about that.

I realize that Wanted> Manual Import will allow me to import bulk episodes but the catch is the episodes you want to import need to be monitored / wanted.

Still cannot establish an easy way to dump a whole heap of episodes in a folder and have sonarr sort out automatically for me, regardless of their monitored or wanted status and regardless of whether I have searched for them in the past.

Also manually downloading a historical episode doesn’t always show up in sonarr (download status) and I have to manually intervene to import the files (wanted>manual import). Not to mention the need to mark the episode as wanted first!

Sometimes, I may have past seasons not monitored but then want a particular episode or episodes. If searching via Sonarr returns no results I then have to manually source the episodes, meaning a need to mark those episode as wanted, manually monitor the download, upon completion use Wanted> Manual import in order to move them to the correct folder and rename etc.

Other platforms allow a dump in to a folder (completed download folder) and then the rest is done.

So basically, add the torrent to the client and say SickChill does the rest.

Anyway, these are not frequent practices for me but is a feature that I found very use full when using SickChill.

Other than that, pretty happy with Sonarr v3 and will stick with it.

#6

No they don’t. Monitoring doesn’t affect import eligibility, just whether Sonarr will grab them automatically.

If the episode is in the correct category in the download client and Sonarr can determine which series/episode it’s for then it’ll pick it up automatically. Again it doesn’t need to be monitored for this to function.

Sonarr is already capable of doing what you’re looking for as long as Sonarr is set to use a category in the download client, the download has the correct category ans Sonarr can figure out what it’s for and in the case of the first two being true=, but Sonarr can’t figure out what it is, you can show unknown items in the queue in Sonarr and use manual import.

#7

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