Nzdrone grabbing multiple copies of the same episode

Help & Support
#1

For some reason, Nzbdrone keeps grabbing multiples of the same episodes. Even days after it has successfully downloaded certain episodes. One example is last night it grabbed a copy of Game of Thrones, then 1 minute later, it marked the original as bad even though it wasn’t. Then an hour later it grabbed another copy and that one downloaded. However, it moved both of them after they each had been downloaded from the sabnzbd completed directory. So I end up with multiples of the same episodes. Another example is today it decided to grab a couple more copies of the final episode of the Walking Dead even though a week ago it had already grabbed a couple copies.

Any thoughts as to why? I set sabnzbd to NOT do any kind of renaming as I saw that suggested in another thread.

The one thing I can think of that may be causing it is I re-rip everything after it downloads from whatever format I pull it in to .m4v so that I can tag it and shove it in to iTunes. Could this be cause it? Sickbeard used to still detect the downloaded file and would update it’s record with the new extension. Being that it’s marking it as failed less than a minute later, could it be because I have Sickbeard to a pre-check to see if the nzb is good? That usually take 20-30seconds or so? I have the drone factory scan interval set to 1 minute. Should I up that to see if that makes a difference?

#2

Hi, have a look here: http://forums.nzbdrone.com/discussion/1239/multiple-same-episode-downloads-renamed-thread#Item_19

#3

When you convert to .m4v do you have the quality in the file? Is the cutoff for the quality profile met after the file is imported?

If SAB is doing a predownload check and it fails then drone would try another release (GoT is one of he biggest DMCA targets), you can check the reason why it failed in history (click the ‘i’ on the right).

Drone factory interval only matters on import and wold cause things to be re-downloaded.

More info on quality profiles: https://github.com/NzbDrone/NzbDrone/wiki/Quality-Profiles

#4

It’s not a case of proper/non-proper.

See screenshots below:

Well, SAB is doing the pre-download check, but it’s not failing, it’s succeeding, nzbdrone is marking is as failed though.

When I do the converting, I convert the file named as it sits. However, when it gets added to iTunes, iTunes renames it to the episode number and episode name (i.e. “15 Us (1080p HD).m4v” for the Walking Dead episode it has downloaded multiple times).

#5

Whats the cutoff for your profile?
For the ones drone detected as failed, whats the reason? (will be in the details available from the History page).

#6

Cutoff is set to HDTV-720p.

They just say “Aborted. Cannot be completed” Which isn’t correct as you can see above in my sabnzbd log, they are downloading successfully.

#7

That error looks like a SAB error, which seems to match the SAB setting: Abort jobs that cannot be completed, why it was able to complete the download is a mystery to me though.

I tried to test it myself, but couldn’t replicate it (my provider reported all articles as present).

Whats the flow look like for downloading and converting and importing to drone? (Whats the order). This issue seems to be unique to your setup, so the more details I can gather the better.

#8

The order I don’t believe is anything unique. The only thing unique is what I do with them AFTER they’ve been imported. So my setup is drone watches for the episodes, sends to sabnzbd (sab doesn’t do anything other than download them at this point), drone watches sabnzbd completed directory and then imports and renames episodes in to drone. From that point, I have a script that recursively watches the directory where drone places it’s downloads and when it finds a non-m4v file, it rips it to an m4v, tags it, and imports it in to iTunes.

Since iTunes also maintains the same directory structure as drone [dir]/[TV Show Name]/[Season #]/ I use the same directory for iTunes as I do for nzbdrone.

Since posting this, I’ve downloaded the above mentioned episodes another 4-5 times, along with anything else multiple times that has aired since first posting.

I wish I could easily see the status of each episode. In sick beard, you can easily see if it’s remaining in a “Wanted” state or if it’s changed to Snatched, Downloaded, etc. With drone, you can’t see this and so since it’s successfully downloaded and imported, all you can do is ASSUME it’s no longer looking for it. There’s also no way (that I’ve seen) to tell it to stop looking for an episode.

Is it possible through the API to import a file in to drone so it will stop looking? So when I convert the file to an m4v, I can tell it it’s here and stop looking for it?

#9

The status is shown on the series details page (under the status column), once the file is imported it will stop looking, if the cutoff was met, if it hasn’t been met it will keep looking.

Once your script comes in and picks up a file and converts what’s the final filename on disk? If the file does not contain a valid quality (as parsable by drone) it will more at the default for the extension (m4v is SDTV I believe). Which would not met the cutoff and force a re-download when it comes across another suitable one.

Knowing the final converted file name will be useful to determine the issue.

#10

If it’s relying on the quality to be in the name then it will never be met. I have the drone settings to name the file as {Series Title} - {season}x{episode:00}…no format. As I mentioned earlier, I then convert it exactly as that from whatever format to m4v named the same.

So is drone trying to be a media manager too? I would think that once it identifies the file as being downloaded (i.e. sees it in the sabnzbd complete directory) and moves it to it’s final location (as defined for each series), it should mark it as done and quit caring about it. That doesn’t seem to be the case.

#11

It is a media manager, you’re changing something it knows about and its handling it as its supposed to, despite it not being what you expect this is all intended behaviour.

You have a few options if you want to keep using drone:

  1. Put the quality in the filename (this is always recommended as everything would be detected at the extension quality if the database was lost)

  2. Turn on ignore deleted episode files (advanced setting on media management), drone will treat the files as deleted when your conversion script converts them and then treat the associated episodes as ignored; if the file was ever deleted you would need to start monitoring the episode again to have drone grab it automatically.

  3. Do the conversion before drone imports the file, using the original file name (that contains the quality), not sure if you need to tell iTunes about the file being there or not.

#12

Thanks, I’ve set it to ignore deleted episodes. We’ll see if that works.

#13

Since setting it to ignore deleted episodes, I haven’t had any duplicates downloaded. Thanks for the help in figuring this out.

#14

Awesome, happy to help.

#15