So I don’t think this is a feature, but it would be nice to be able to prioritize which index sites NzbDrone uses first. e.g. when downloading a new episode it will try Nzb.su first and if it can’t find it there it will search NZBRus and so on. The main problem is some of the other free sites like NZBclub will have crap files posted and Nzbdrone will keep downloading from them instead of one of my more preferred sites like NZB.su. Another way to get around this would be to have a “download from alternate source” button next to each episode, much like Couchpotato does for movies. Either way, great program and thanks for all the hard work! I’m liking NzbDrone over Sickbeard atm.
@thebro Glad you liking it.
This feature has been requested a number of times, but has not been implemented due to how NzbDrone is designed as well as a major flaw in the prioritization logic. The flaw I mention is this:
Indexer #1 has HDTV 720p release available
Indexer #2 has HDTV 720p and WEBDL 720p
Now lets assume your quality profile will accept HDTV 720p, WEBDL 720p and Bluray 720p with the cutoff at HDTV 720p. If NzbDrone went with the prioritized indexer first then you would end up with the HDTV 720p and NzbDrone would stop there.
I hope that explains the negative effects of prioritizing the indexers sufficiently. That said, there could be things to prioritize downloading from Indexer #1 when bother indexers have the same qualities available, hopefully preventing some of the less desirable releases that get picked up.
We could prioritize indexes only when the quality is equal. Same way we prioritize newer releases.
Fair enough, that makes perfect sense. I should probably just set preferred download dates as most crap downloads seem to happen a bit before an episode is actually aired. Thanks for the fast replies!
What about choosing from a list of available indexers at show level? That way, for a particular show that we get ‘crap’ downloads for, we could simply stop it from using the free index sites by unchecking them for that particular show.
This would also assist with DMCA’ed stuff - for a particular show, some indexers will provide .nzb’s whose content is quickly DMCA’ed, and others provide nzb’s from more obscure groups that don’t necessarily get hit as quick. This would allow finer control over actually getting a release for those of us (like me) who can’t download fast enough to get the release before it gets taken down.
@BetaQuasi - That would be a MAJOR undertaking and I don’t think the benefits outweigh the development time, sure it would be great for some people, but on a whole I feel this feature would be unused and likely confusing.
Ah well, seems me and my country internet might have to go back to torrents 
Thanks for responding in any case!
To workaround DMCA you can always use a European usenet server (giganews/tweaknews/etc…), they don’t have this problem since it’s a US only regulation.
Most of the time stuff get peered from US to European usenet servers and once there it stays complete.
@RickDB said:
To workaround DMCA you can always use a European usenet server (giganews/tweaknews/etc…), they don’t have this problem since it’s a US only regulation.
Most of the time stuff get peered from US to European usenet servers and once there it stays complete.
unfortunately they do still have DMCA issues or something similar with BREIN (Euro Version of MAFIAA) breathing down their necks however a small comprimise to get around this is providers like tweaknews said “Ok we will remove items as requested however it does not say how fast we have to do it” so tweaknews makes copyright holders and anti-piracy organisations like BREIN make individual takedown requests by filling out a form for each piece or material which as you can imagine takes some time then after that they submit it tweaknews then recieves it but it sits on a server somewhere until a Human Physically Processes the request which also takes time this is why tweaknews is good because whereas an episode of something downloaded from a Astraweb server where they have automated software that scans and processes removals therefore an episode can disappear in some cases within an hour of being uploaded
with some euro providers this will take a couple of days if not more as the process is manual
well sounds like the euro servers would be much better then! Any suggestions other than meganews or tweaknews? they both look great, but they’re fairly pricey in comparison to usenetserver or astraweb.
With Giganews this has not been my experience, most of the stuff that would usually be taken down is complete months after being uploaded.
According to what little information is known about them it seems they have no office just a bank account somewhere where the US can’t touch them, it’s not the cheapest server out there but at least it’s the most reliable imho.
BREIN doesn’t have the authority to demand takedowns afaik (only request) since they are a non-profit organization but have more of an overseer role, normally go after sites and have won a few cases they know they could win but that’s because they need the good PR to fill their own pockets.
Since the Netherlands has no expanded anti-piracy law like the US they go after index sites instead because they are easier to pick off and don’t have the money to fight back, the usenet servers on the other hand are too big a fish for them at the moment.
Best to stay clear of small european servers though since they do scare easily and might give into the pressure of a false takedowns or lawsuits.
I realize this topic is a little old, but it was the first that showed up in a google search. Would it be possible to set certain indexes to only be used in the event there is not a match found or all matches have been blacklisted… like emergency use only? Or possibly only when you hit the manual search button? Some of them only allow 5 or 10 downloads per day and they are nice to use as a backup only.
@sophiadaemon don’t those same low download limit indexers have a limit on the number of API calls?
All feature requests are on Trello, this one is about indexer prioritization: https://trello.com/c/gwz5wiAo/350-alternative-to-indexer-prioritization
Yes they do. I don’t know enough about programming to know how the API calls and usenet work. I was just hoping there might be a way to not query certain predetermined indexers unless certain conditions were met. i.e. not finding a file at all on my main indexer. It wouldn’t be prioritizing servers in order so much as primary or secondary.
See, I pay for the main indexer I use. Most files that I want are available from that one. So there is no need to query the other indexers at all if the file is available. Yet, when I go in to do a manual search, all the API calls for those backup indexers have already been used on files that were available on my main(hence wasted). Would it be possible to set attributes so that certain indexers are set to backup or secondary and kinda quarantined so they are not used on a regular basis? Maybe set them to only become active after not finding searched file for a certain amount of time or unless we push an emergency-use-only button at the bottom of the manual search page? Manual might be easier.
I saw your reply above about qualities on different indexers and such. But, for some of us this is not an issue. I just want it to retrieve something, I don’t care about the quality. It sounds simple in theory, but might be difficult if not impossible to implement. Either way, I love what you are doing here. Thanks for all the hard work.
Drone does not differentiate between manual searches and automatic searches, this is not likely to change.
Changing when indexers are used is a major change, not something we will be investigating, its possible as described here: https://trello.com/c/gwz5wiAo/350-alternative-to-indexer-prioritization that we could make some changes to allow people to further customize their indexers, (disable searching or disable the normal RSS checks), if this is something you would want to see, vote for it, but as it has very little support its going to be some time before we consider implementing it.
I’d recommend picking a good second indexer and paying for that as well, two indexers has been a good sweet spot for me and as long as they are good they should serve you well.
@markus101 said:
I’d recommend picking a good second indexer and paying for that as well, two indexers has been a good sweet spot for me and as long as they are good they should serve you well.
Out of curiosity, what two indexers do you use?
I’ve found Dognzb and Omgwtfnzb to be working well for me. I’m a member of several good indexers but these particular indexers pretty much catch everything I’m interested in. Both seem to compliment each other.
Dog and nzbs.org have accounts with most indexers, but those two work well for me.
Is dog invite only?
They do open up for a few hours Sometimes, holidays and special events, but mostly invite only.
Yeah, really need this! +10